О.Н. Левшина

At transition of Russia to the market economy, especially sharp arises the question of domestic businessman competitiveness. In competitiveness, the basic economic categories are the quality of production and price, the commodity policy and marketing, scientifi c and technical both industrialtechnological potential of the enterprise and level of its manufacture concentrate. At the creation of business competitive industrial base it is necessary to pass to such priorities of branches innovative and technological development, as resourses and power savings; the increase in the share of high degree processing production; the maintenance of technologies updating necessary dynamics through reduction in innovative-production cycle at the expense of application of a modern information technology.

Economic heterogeneity of the market space of Russian regions caused by a set of reasons the consequence of which are: the process of differentiation territories in terms of economic development, strengthening of economic imbalances, impaired relationship between economic actors in the market area.

One of the most effective methods of increasing the competitiveness and steady improvement of the operation of an entity is benchmarking. The benchmarking is a systematic process to identify best products, services, processes and practices that can be used by the entity for reduction of its production costs, production cycle times, increase in the reliability, inventory reduction, etc.