Using Benchmarking for Strategic Analysis in SMEs

TIn today's modern conditions the small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) face the constant necessity of having to adapt to the present and future market realities, including the competitors' changing innovative reactions and the search for new strategically meaningful organizational structures. In response to this challenge many different methods can be used. Among them benchmarking represents one of the newest in the modern economic theory and practice. The benchmarking method provides a profound methodological basis for the accomplishment of strategic analysis for SMEs, including improvement of business structures - organizational, managerial and inter-company. Inappropriate structure or hampered interrelations are reasons, which can seriously decrease the effectiveness and even threaten the development of a SME, and vice versa, the choice of proper structure can substantially enhance competitive advantages. Nowadays, one way of ensuring the relationships between SMEs from a particular sector is by establishing a cluster-type structure. This paper offers summarized results of a research done among SMEs from the knitwear industry in South-central region of Bulgaria. It presents the aspects, in which the enterprises see the possibility of forming a cluster, and also the managers' attitude towards the initiative of creating such a structure. Benchmarks have been found in the concept for setting-up and development of a similar inter-company net in Austria.