The Xerox Profile: Best Practices in Organizational Improvement is the second report in the profile series, a group of publications that compiles years of benchmarking research and tells the story of an organization's continuous improvement efforts. Unlike a report that simply indicates an organization's current perspective, this series details research from the early days of modern improvement efforts through to the organization's mature outlook as it experiences successes. Readers have an opportunity to examine how an organization began its improvement efforts, how its focus evolved, and what challenges it has faced. This is an excellent way to compare your own organization's improvement efforts. And unlike a focused benchmarking report, this series illustrates how organizations make improvement efforts in a variety of ways that often intentionally or inadvertently have a synergistic effect. The result is a powerful momentum in gaining management and financial support, as well as applying past lessons learned to new improvement efforts and seeing quicker results. Each year, Xerox continues to provide valuable lessons in performance and process improvement, which does much to explain the corporation's enduring presence in the marketplace. As Xerox itself asserts, "The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable advantage."