Final answer:
When Joanna compares her company's key performance features with those of industry front-runners, she is engaging in benchmarking. This process helps understand industry best practices and guides companies towards performance improvement by comparing their practices to industry leaders.
Step-by-step explanation:
When Joanna compares her company's key performance features with those of industry front-runners, she is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a process through which a company measures its products, services, and practices against the industry leaders to identify areas where they can improve. By doing this, Joanna's company can understand the best practices in the industry and work towards implementing them to enhance their own performance.
Benchmarking is not to be confused with employing a balanced scorecard, exemplifying standards, exemplifying quality control, or controlling. A balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system used by organizations to communicate what they are trying to accomplish and to measure and monitor progress towards strategic targets. Exemplifying standards generally means to serve as a typical example or be representative of a certain level of quality, while exemplifying quality control refers to acting in a way that demonstrates the company's commitment to maintaining a certain level of product or service quality. Controlling, in a business context, often involves managing or regulating processes or systems within a company.
Through benchmarking, companies are able to gain insight into how their competitors achieve their performance levels and what they need to do to not just keep up, but to potentially outperform them. This helps in setting realistic performance goals, adopting best practices, and continuously improving their process and products. Benchmarking can assist in various aspects of business, including operations, strategies, processes, and performance improvement efforts.