Since the beginning of the nineties the increasing use of the management method benchmarking leads in the enterprise world to a growing need for supporting advice services. The information centre benchmarking (ICB) has decided to advice and support, not only little and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) as well as large-scale enterprise but also organisations and institutions of the public administration at the planning and execution of benchmarking activities.

The IZB does not accompany only complete benchmarking projects but also carries out inde-pendent studies as well as benchmarking seminars and trainings which are accompanied by an interdisciplinary team from economy economists, engineers, computer scientists and social scien-tists. Furthermore the IZB promotes the information and knowledge exchange over the current state of the application-oriented benchmarking research in the context of regular benchmarking con-ferences. The experiences of the IZB from more than ten years of proactive discussion with the topic show that benchmarking is not a temporary trend but has established itself as a lastingly efficient management method. The multisided and flexible ranges of application and the optimization of business processes up to the strategic orientation makes the benchmarking so successful.