Benchmarking

really enjoyed reading your post about Apple being in an industry that depends on the process of benchmarking. I would also agree that Apples take no prisoner approach is one of the reasons in which the company is so successful in their particular industry. Apple is one of the leaders in the consumer electronics industry. Apple as a company strives on making various programs and devices convenient for it’s customers. From the making of Mac computers and IPhones, Apples exemplifies being a company that is always on the cutting edge of their particular industry. According to Dr. Vassilis Kelessidis (2000) benchmarking is a process in which an organization strives to improve upon their performance by continuously identifying, understanding, and adapting outstanding practices and processes found inside and outside an organization. There are five phases that are used in the implementation of benchmarking; Planning, Analysis, Integration, Action, and Maturity (Kelessidis, 2000). Benchmarking is also used to identify a company’s key success factors, and implement methods in which such factors can be enhanced (Blocher, Stout, Juras, and Cokins, 2013)
According to this definition not all benchmarking is done external to an organization. Since apple is one of the best in its industry they could look to benchmark internally. This means using internal data, and departments to improve and develop the company’s best practices (Muras, 2004). Internal benchmarking elements the problems of whether or not the information found is useful to the industry as well as the individual company as well as the use of old data that are used in external benchmarking (Muras, 2004). Apple has used and can continue to use benchmarking to improve applications and graphical user interfaces. One benchmarking method that has been used by Apple would be having Apple analyst test applications of competitors for time consumption and difficulty (Apple Inc, 2012). With this particular