Benchmarking is a key tool in helping primary care organisations to develop a structured approach to sharing and comparing ways of working.  It enables them to: establish a baseline position and define the dimensions of good performance highlight inter-practice variations, identify key issues to be addressed and win support for change monitor progress towards agreed good practice develop a culture of open communications, sharing and learning set the immediate and medium term development agenda. Having assisted several primary care organisations in this area of work, we have now developed a full benchmarking consultancy package.  This includes questionnaires that cover many of the “must measure” primary care performance indicators (complementing the GMS quality and outcomes framework) incorporated in the policy guidance.  Benchmarking has been found to be a particularly useful approach as it can stimulate debate within and between practices in an unthreatening manner.  It results in an easy to read report containing a series of simple “webs” that can distil large amounts of information without the need for wordy documents.