On the contrary, I believe yoavdothan's answer is exactly correct, since riky asked for the source of the term benchmark.
A benchmark is, effectively, a standard. In business usage a benchmark is a quantitative comparison of some aspect of business performance against other companies. You might, for example, benchmark your revenue-per-employee against the same measure for other companies in your industry to see if your business was either more or less efficient than the other companies.
Benchmarks are used for comparison, and the origin of the term goes back to the source cited by yoavdothan.