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Launching a new business or project leads managers to make decisions and choose strategies that will then apply in their company. Most often, they take decisions only on instinct, but there are also companies that use benchmarking studies. Benchmarking is a highly effective management tool and is useful in the new competitive environment that has emerged from the need of organizations to constantly improve their performance in order to be competitive. Using this benchmarking process, organizations try to find the best practices applied in a business, learn from famous leaders and identify ways to increase their performance and competitiveness. Thus, managers gather information about market trends and about competitors, especially about the leaders in the field, and use these information in finding ideas and setting of guidelines for development. Benchmarking studies are often used in businesses of commerce, real estate, and industry and high-tech software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated in a competitive environment, the companies are forced to know better their costs, to determine as precisely as possible the sales prices and the profit margins achievable per product. When the entrepreneurs initiate a new business, invest in a new project or when they supervise the current work, the study of breakeven allows minimizing of the risks and the uncertainties, and also allows measuring the performance of the projects. Break-Even is an indicator that allows the company management to set minimal commercial targets to meet the expenses of the enterprise or that sets the degree of utilization of production capacities in relation to a desired level of profit. It highlights the correlations between the dynamic of production, implicit of income and the dynamic of costs, grouped into variable costs and fixed costs. Used in a prospective fashion, Break-Even allows planning and optimizing of the enterprise's sales and costs, not only short-term but also medium and long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]