Benchmarking Research Paper for Streamlining the Budgeting and

Benchmarking for Streamlining the Budgeting and Purchasing process of Public Safety Departments - Research Paper Example This aids public sector departments to challenge the way they do things and utilize their finite resources better, which may have significant impacts on public sector outcomes. The paper explores key institutional drivers that may contribute to enhancing public sector efficiency on aspects such as benchmarking (performance information) and its role in the budget process. Benchmarking Research Paper Introduction Benchmarking infers the process of gauging one’s business processes and performance metrics to other industry bests or best practices. The term refers to the incessant process for monitoring and learning from the work processes, products, or services of other organizations appreciated as representing the best practices, in the effort of process improvement. Benchmarking is a tool that aids to enhance the efficiency of business processes or to minimize the output costs. The benchmarking of processes, such as budgeting and purchasing, avails organizations with the necessa ry information regarding how competently the services are provided to the community. Benchmarking avails a prospect to discover the best practices for service delivery within the public sector departments (Zairi, 2001). ... This facilitates learning on how well the targets perform and the business processes that explain why the target firms are successful. Public administration literature prominently cites three general approaches to benchmarking applicable to the public sector. These approaches include process-improvement benchmarking, strategic benchmarking, and target benchmarking. Benchmarking avails a tool for public sector managers to cope with the changing needs of their constituents. Process improvement benchmarking (corporate-style benchmarking) equates to looking at industry best practices and replicating or adapting them to fit one’s own organization (Curristine, Lonti & Journard, 2007). Targeting infers the process of the setting of goals and objectives to be attained via strategic planning actions. In this form of benchmarking, the present conditions are analyzed and then compared to a certain target (vision) or condition in the future that is desired. The Benchmarking Process The be nchmarking process can be conceived as a four-phase process; plan, collect, analyze, and adapt. Benchmarking involves a number of activities, which include discovering the problem, establishing criteria for solutions, searching for promising practices, implementing promising practices and monitoring progress. Prior to engaging in benchmarking, it is crucial for managers to highlight the problem or activities that need to be benchmarked. The core activities identified may be essential to giving the organization a competitive edge (Stapenhurst, 2009). Establishing the criteria for solutions aid the organization to minimize omissions and errors and obtain a boost on its strategic goals, its primary business processes, and critical success