what is purpose of benchmarking

Benchmarking is a method of comparing your organization to similar organizations (or even one internal activity to another internal activity) on a wide range of issues (metrics). For internal purposes, you have a great deal of flexibility over the metrics. With external benchmarks you are more limited. Most benchmarking services use blind metrics, so in order to participate, you fill out a detailed questionnaire. You are then compared with other similar organizations on those metrics. You have no idea of what companies participate, so you really don't know if you are being compared with your direct competitor, but they still give out great information.

The company I work for has an excellet database, and if the moderators will allow, I will post the link below. I am also posting another excellent site, so I will not tell you which one I am associated with.

www.benchnet.com/
www.performancebenchmarking.org

hopefully, those will be a great help.

Refer this thread posted by Marc - Benchmarking - Definition (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=12832). It has also a link to Strategic Benchmarking.