Editorial

Citation

Gunasekaran, A. (2001), "Editorial", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 8 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/bij.2001.13108aaa.001

Editorial

Benchmarking: An International Journal (BIJ) in 2001 and beyond

Benchmarking has been considered as a tool to help companies to improve their business processes. It is also referred to as best practice, business excellence, and world-class practice. Benchmarking involves the search for the best methods used by other agencies and/or companies that an organization can utilize to improve its performance and productivity. The perception about traditional management practices has changed with the application of Internet technologies. The real challenge in benchmarking is the management of information systems for collecting data and analyzing them for identifying suitable best practices for organizational competitiveness. To an extent, the process of benchmarking has been facilitated by the development of information technology such as the Internet, WWW and database management. There are several ways to benchmark business performance in various functional areas of an organization. Some of them should include industry group measurements, best practice studies, co-operative benchmarking, and competitive benchmarking. Benchmarking also involves what to measure and what not to measure so that the information collected should provide the right direction for improving organizational performance.

Considering the importance of benchmarking research and practices in the Global Internet Economy, it is time now to enlarge the scope of the journal (suggestions are invited!). The journal is entering into a new era of benchmarking which comprises performance measures for supply chain management, human resources and the social dimensions of knowledge and information technology management, Green manufacturing management, E-commerce practices, and Web-based enterprise integration and management. Also, the emphasis will be on Internet-enabled tools and methods for benchmarking. This should include identifying a set of metrics based on financial and non-financial performance measures and tangibles and intangibles.

Authors are invited to contribute to BIJ in the following areas (other areas may also be of interest for consideration):

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  Benchmarking of accounting practices.

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  Benchmarking human resource management practices.

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  Benchmarking world-class manufacturing.

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  Competitive intelligence.

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  Public sector benchmarking.

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  Maintenance benchmarking.

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  Business process and supply chain benchmarking.

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  Benchmarking for competitive advantage.

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  Benchmarking E-Commerce practices.

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  Benchmarking R&D project management.

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  Quality Management benchmarking.

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  Implementation of benchmarking results.

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  Internal auditing.

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  Virtual enterprise benchmarking.

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  Benchmarking of learning organizations.

BIJ encourages viewpoints and topics of interest on benchmarking as invited contributions. Proposals for special issues are also welcome.

I would like to thank the former Editor and presently the Editorial Director of BIJ, Professor Mohamed Zairi and MCB University Press for the opportunity to edit this prestigious international journal in benchmarking. It is a great privilege to be the Editor of BIJ as it has already become a well-established major international journal under the editorship of Professor Zairi. I have been working in the areas of performance measurement and benchmarking for some time and this has provided an opportunity to work with Professor Zairi which has led to my becoming Editor of BIJ.

Finally, I look forward to your continued support to our mission of improving and developing tools, methods and strategies for benchmarking in the Global Internet Economy. Any suggestions from readers are greatly appreciated. We strive to achieve excellence in benchmarking with our contribution to BIJ.

A. Gunasekaran