"Cost benchmarking” refers to the process of systematically evaluating and comparing a company's cost structures, processes and performance with those of other companies. The main objective is to assess the performance and competitiveness of a company in terms of costs.
Typical variants are internal benchmarking (comparison of costs within the company), benchmarking in the competitive environment (comparison with direct competitors) and functional benchmarking (comparison with companies from other sectors that have similar business functions).