Confidentiality
This is why effective benchmarking studies are so often ‘blind’, which means that whilst overall industry performance can be measured and reported to all, the results for individual participants are visible only to themselves. Potentially sensitive data remains totally confidential, yet can be used to arm companies with information about where they compete best (industry ‘Champions’) and where they need to focus resources in order to improve (industry ‘Challengers’).
In this sense, benchmarking is uniquely collaborative, whilst simultaneously facilitating competitive advantage for participants by offering industry improvement opportunities and not specifically eroding one or another participant’s competitive advantages