Benchmarking: A Quantitative and Qualitative Look at Southwest Airlines and British Airways

Benchmarking: A Quantitative and Qualitative Look at Southwest Airlines and British Airways In today's competitive marketplace, all firms are seeking ways to improve their overall performance. One such method of improvement, recently adopted by many firms, is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a technique used to evaluate internal business processes. "In this analysis, managers determine the firm's critical processes and outputs, baseline those processes, then compare the performance of each process against a standard outside the industry" (…

…ays lead their respective markets due to slightly different world-best practices. Each of these companies can adapt the other's world-best practices to fit their organization. By doing so, these companies can improve their performance with slightly modified techniques. Information sharing will ultimately lead to increased success and expansion. In an industry as competitive as that of the airline, British Airways and Southwest Airlines must remain flexible and able to respond to changing market demand.