E Procurement Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Summary: Eadie et.al (2010a, 2010b) identified 20 advantages in the adoption of e-procurement within a construction organisation. The Glover report (2008) indicated that by the end of 2010 all public sector procurement should be electronic. The use of e-procurement within the construction industry has been inadequately researched. Martin (2009) examined quantity surveying organisations perspectives on the use of e procurement across the United Kingdom. This paper seeks to address the knowledge gap that exists in the analysis of the level of usage of e-procurement within the construction industry. It compares the findings for the construction industry with other industries on company size and spend. Martin (2009) does not seek to investigate the size or spend on procurement activities of those quantity surveying organisations who have adopted e-procurement. This paper investigates the correlations between size, procurement spend and adoption of e-procurement in construction organisat...

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- Computer Science, Information Technology, Economics, E Procurement

The improvement in the importance of knowledge, technology complexity, globalization and the accessibility of digital computerized data innovations are driving this transformation. This has led to an exponential growth of electronic business applications that is leading organizations to embark on huge investments in inventive technologies, for the purpose of preserving their competitive advantage in a gradual dynamic marketplace. However, business investments of IT need to be the subject of appropriate appraisal and assessment. Whilst the literature recommends potential advantages of these adoption technologies, little has been written on the nature of the business case for e-procurement usage in the public hospitals. We evaluated the use of e-procurement system and procurement practices on the performance of public hospitals in Ghana. A bootstrapping technique with 500 subsamples was adopted to investigate the statistical significance of the parameters in our self-designed model. T...

- by Patrick Sarpong
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- Business, Procurement, E Procurement

With the current emerging development pattern in Malaysia, E-Government has been unveiled by the Malaysian Government to be one of the multimedia super corridor flagship applications to implement digital technology to improve government operations. Eprocurement was originally utilized by businesses to minimize turnaround times and prices, but recently it was often used as a platform for sustainable procurement. However, there have been few attempts to investigate E-procurement technology in Malaysia concerning sustainable procurement. Also, there is no consistent and reliable framework of Eprocurement technology for sustainable procurement practices. The focal area of this research is ISO 14001 accredited firms in Malaysia, the population of these organizations is 55, sample size (N)=162 respondents including procurement managers, executives and staff which are involved directly or indirectly in the process of procuring products and services. This study is conceptual and aims to explore how the adoption of E-procurement technologies influence sustainable procurement practices within ISO 14001 accredited firms in Malaysia.

a b s t r a c t E-procurement is gaining in popularity in business practice and its benefits encourage its adoption for a variety of areas, including IT (Information Technology) purchases. The problem with assessing the value associated with e-procurement has been addressed by researchers and practitioners, but a clear methodology to determine the benefits related to e-procurement adoption is still missing, especially for IT. This paper defines e-procurement and identifies the six most significant drivers for e-procurement adoption, which are the pillars of the proposed value assessment methodology. The authors have also applied the developed methodology to real cases in order to verify its validity and robustness. Finally, although the developed model takes into account the peculiarities of IT purchases, it also raises more research opportunities for other purchasing categories.

- by Alessandro Brun
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- Marketing, Information Technology, Purchasing and Supply Management, IT adoption
- by Timo Vallius
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- Business, GUI, User Interface Design, E Procurement

E-Procurement is more than just a system for making purchases online. Some companies implement e-procurement and succeed while others fail. This study was carried out on the adoption of e-procurement among large scale manufacturers in Nairobi, Kenya. The study had three objectives: To ascertain the extent to which large scale manufacturers in Nairobi have adopted e-procurement; to determine the critical success factors influencing the success of e-procurement in large manufacturing firms in Nairobi and to establish the challenges that face e-procurement adoption in large scale manufacturing firms in Nairobi. The research involved a cross-sectional survey of the large manufacturing companies operating in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive approach in trying to establish the factors that influence the success of e-procurement projects. A sample size of 46 respondents was selected from a list of 455 large manufacturing companies. Data was collected from the respondents through a questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS and presented in tables. The study revealed that majority of the large scale manufacturers in Nairobi, Kenya has adopted e-procurement with the following e-procurement practices:

- by Muranga Njihia
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- Adoption, Kenya, E Procurement, Critical Success Factors

The increasing emphasis on supply chain management is creating a greater focus on the supply management link in the supply chain. This focus will become even more intense as firms continue to adopt e-procurement strategies to leverage the competitive advantages of the Internet. Supply managers need to understand the impact of technology and gain competency in making a business case for e-procurement. The implications are profound for the industrial marketer. D

- by Ajai Kumar
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- Marketing, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain, Competitive advantage

E-procurement is constantly receiving lot of attention from industries, and government agencies. Analysts believe that utilization of e-procurement can lead to enormous cost saving and efficiency in procurement process. Though, e-procurement has benefited the global business tremendously, its expected growth rate has been moving downwards. The present study explores how the benefits and risks associated to e-procurement affect the e-procurement implementation. The differences and similarities among firms in different setting are also investigated. By using Swedish and Indian firms, the results show that cost benefit is the main driver for companies to implement e-procurement. The problems of implementation and integration of existing infrastructure are holding back companies from implementing e-procurement. But benefits are overpowering risks and companies are moving toward more aggressive strategic approach of implementing e-procurement. Finally, e-procurement is typically used for buying indirect material and the buyer side model is most dominated in industry.

- by Alzain Musa
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- Business, Computer Science, Information Technology, Adoption

Public e-procurement is the use of electronic means for publishing, processing, exchanging and storing all the information related to institutional purchases in public organizations. It requires complex technological tools which must comply with legal and organizational constraints. We present in this article an analysis of French public purchase procedures and a state of the art concerning available platforms for public eprocurement in France. This analysis is the basis of a critical evaluation of the selected platforms.

- by Imed Boughzala
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- Public Administration, Electronic publishing, Procurement, E Government
- by Mercedes Rivolta and +1
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- Marketing, Public Administration, Privacy, Manufacturing
- by Tanvi Kothari
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- Management, Marketing, Information Technology, Supply Chain Management

This paper presents a case study of Malaysia's e-procurement initiative. This initiative is locally known as e-Perolehan. The case reports among others, the vision of the Malaysian government in the light of embarking on e-procurement, the process flow within e-Perolehan, and the issues therein. The general consensus amongst both the buyer and seller communities is that e-procurement will become an important management tool to enhance the performance of the supply chain, especially in the public sector. We expect that between the next three and five years, more suppliers will grab the opportunity and benefit fully from the e-Perolehan initiative in Malaysia.

- by Tanvi Kothari
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- Marketing, Supply Chain Management, E Business, Hospitality

Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services. Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.

- by Bernardo Nicoletti
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- Information Systems, Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Procurement

- by Colnel Ndung'u
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- Marketing, Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain, Competitive advantage

Most empirical research on e-procurement has focused on large economies and technology-related industries, paying little attention to smaller economies and traditional industries. This paper addresses this gap by presenting a study on the state and development of e-procurement in the Greek food and drink industry, based on four case studies with some of the largest organisations in the industry. This study indicates that the uptake of e-procurement has been slow and reveals some important impediments, such as the uncertainty of the technology and its benefits, the lack of infrastructure and skills and the traditional nature of the industry. These results led to a series of findings, propositions for further investigation. The drivers and impediments to e-procurement have been classified into four different levels: global, country, industry and firm. Each of these levels requires a different approach to dealing with it, having implications for practitioners and policymakers. r

- by Carlos Mena
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- Marketing, Purchasing and Supply Management, Business and Management, Case Study

The emergence of social media is enabling researchers to consider new data collection and triangulation strategies. Quantitative researchers have taken advantage of the emergence of the Internet as a medium to gather data. Meanwhile, interpretive researchers are only now being able to harness the potential that social media provide in generating more insight into collected data. Using a case of government e-procurement implementation and use in an Indonesian regency, we illustrate how social media exchange, postings, and conversations can be used as a source of rich qualitative data to enhance understanding of a topic being studied. Our findings show that monitoring social media exchange, postings, and conversation can strengthen our understanding and interpretation of offline data (such as interviews). This study contributes to literature on the use of online media for interpretive data collection.

A single information system cannot meet all the business requirements, and not all e-procurement systems for the procurement of indirect goods are equally suitable for supporting different business processes throughout their distinct phases. Companies need to adopt different e-procurement systems or business models in a hybrid and seamless manner. Existing literature addressing e-procurement systems or business models have focused on the indirect procurement at high-level granularities only or at a low-level granularity only, either within a single e-procurement system or without matching between procurement processes and different e-procurement systems. In this paper, we provide the matching between indirect procurement process and different e-procurement systems, at both the high-level and low-level activities, for identifying and articulating the areas where various e-procurement systems can be utilized in a hybrid and seamless manner. The output of this paper can help companies adopt various e-procurement systems or business models and redesign their e-procurement processes. #

- by Joong-In Kim
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- Distributed Computing, Computer Software, Manufacturing Engineering, Business Model

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) plays an important role in the reduction of costs and the optimization of performance in industrial enterprises. Despite enormous investments in innovation, the health care sector has not experienced fundamental change yet. However, increased market dynamics and the implementation of economic principles will force health service providers to optimize cost structures as well as effectiveness and efficiency of business relationships. This paper reviews the current state of the art in the field, translates and amends the current findings for the health care context, and presents a case study illustrating the impact of the implementation of SRM principles in a leading Swiss hospital.

- by Tobias Mettler
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- Information Systems, Marketing, Business Networks, Process Optimization

In academic literature, only limited research has been undertaken in exploring the value creation of B2B (Business-to-Business) e-Marketplace models in the aviation industry. The aim of this publication is a theoretical analysis to explore whether or not B2B e-Marketplaces can make a contribution to the achievement of competitive advantage in procurement in the aviation industry. The research focuses on the potential of B2B e-Marketplaces in terms of improving an airline’s competitiveness in its procurement value chain and discusses empirical results from a survey among international e-Marketplace / portal operators

- by Austin Smyth
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- Business, Procurement, Aviation, Value Chain

Procurement is one of the major aspects for an enterprise to improve its supply chain management and hence enterprise performance. The advent of Internet has introduced e-commerce and drastically changing the way procurement is done to improve operation efficiency and reduce transaction cost significantly. Thereby, this lead to the term "e-procurement" or "e-purchasing". However, many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) still perceive e-procurement as infeasible although e-procurement is introduced in the early 2000. Hence, this paper attempts to provide a comprehensive survey on existing literature with regards to the benefits and barriers of e-procurement in the perspective of Malaysian SMEs. Highlighting the benefits and identifying the major barriers of SMEs e-procurement implementation enables formation of effective solution to encourage more adoption of eprocurement system in Malaysian SMEs.

- by Norlia Mustaffa
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- E Business, Smes, E Procurement, On

During the last few years, a large number of new procurement business models has been developed, mostly concerning companies operating in the private sector. Their main objective is the introduction of new technologies such as e-business for the fulfilment of the procurement process of indirect goods. Lately, such models are also developed for organisations operating in the public sector all over Europe. This paper presents a case study concerning the analysis of the Greek governmental purchasing process carried out from the General Secretariat of Commerce, part of the Ministry of Development and the functions' definition of the new e-procurement system. The methodological approach as well as the tools used are analysed and the achieved results are presented. The objective of the analysis is the identification of potential problematic areas and the design of new processes in order to maximise the possibilities of a successful implementation of a new e-procurement system. The outcome of the new process design enabled the definition of the analytical functional specifications of the appropriate solution. r

- by Jaymund Poblacion
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- Supply Chain Management, Public sector, Multidisciplinary, New Technology

Electronic government procurement (eGP) is quickly becoming an essential piece of national e-government programs, since it enables active transparency and favors efficient vendor relationships; however, little attention has been paid to the need for periodical measurement of eGP portals' performance and goal satisfaction. Although maturity levels schemes have been proposed for other domains, most notably ITrelated, to the best of our knowledge no maturity level model of eGP has been widely deployed yet. This article presents the e-Government Procurement Observatory Maturity Model (eGPO-MM), which focuses on both legal and institutional arrangements, and portals' technical aspects; the model consists of two Leverage Domains, seven Key Domain Areas, and 25 Critical Variables, which are valued with a weighted scoring system that produces quantitative indicators about portal capabilities and allows direct comparisons. The model was used to evaluate eGP portals from 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; the measurements are presented, and fit well with previous rank perception, leading to a good reception by participant agencies. eGPO-MM has already allowed to identify areas for joint action and fostered knowledge-sharing among governments, including identification and dissemination of e-procurement best practices; it also established clear reference points to allow each agency to determine a roadmap to higher e-procurement maturity.

- by H. Astudillo
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- Knowledge sharing, Maturity Model, Joint Action, Library and Information Studies

- by Norlia Mustaffa
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- E Business, Smes, E Procurement, On

Kajian terhadap prosedur pengadaan jasa konstruksi untuk mengetahui adanya indikasi kecurangan dalam pelaksanaannya dan apakah E-Procurement dapat mengurangi adanya indikasi kecurangan tersebut. Perlu suatu penelitian untuk mendapatkan tanggapan dari responden atas permasalahan tersebut. Target penelitian adalah masyarakat jasa konstruksi di antaranya pengguna jasa, konsultan dan kontraktor, responden yang dapat dikumpulkan sebanyak 115 responden terdiri dari 20 pengguna jasa , 23 konsultan dan 72 kontraktor. Pemahaman dan partisipasi responden terhadap pengadaan jasa konstruksi secara konvensional adalah: 76.20%, 63.63%, 69.16%, yang dinyatakan oleh pengguna jasa, konsultan, kontraktor Pemahaman responden terhadap e-procurement adalah: 81.54%, 77.54%, 81.35% yang dinyatakan oleh pengguna jasa, konsultan, kontraktor. Penilaian responder terhadap adanya indikasi kecurangan dalam proses pengadaan jasa konstruksi secara konvensional, 48.72% cukup setuju dinyatakan oleh pengguna jasa , 56.80%, 57.40% setuju dinyatakan oleh konsultan dan kontraktor. Penilaian responden terhadap e-procurement apakah dapat mengurangi adanya indikasi kecurangan, setuju bahkan sangat setuju dinyatakan oleh pengguna jasa, konsultan, kontraktor .

- by sigit purwanto
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- E Procurement

Electronic business is the process which uses Internet technology to simplify certain company processes, improve productivity and increase efficiency. It allows companies to easily communicate with their suppliers, buyers and customers, to integrate “back-office” systems with those used for transactions, to accurately transmit information and to carry out data analysis in order to increase their competitiveness.The aim of this work

The purpose of this paper is to theoretically and empirically explore how public e-procurement policies are translated into practice. The theoretical argument draws on actor network theory (ANT), coupled with Colebatch's [Colebatch,... more

- by Catherine A. Hardy
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- Actor Network Theory, E Government, Policy Development, Open University

Behavioral uncertainty of a supplier is a major challenge to a buyer operating in e-procurement setting. Modeling suppliers' behavior from past transactions, estimation of possible future performance and integrating this knowledge with the winner determination process can bring a new dimension to procurement process automation. We propose a states-space model to capture the uncertainty involved in long-term supplier behavior. The states represent the performance level of a supplier. This behavioral aspect is then integrated with the winner determination process of a multi-attribute reverse auction for efficient supplier selection using parallel MDP. We also propose an implementation framework to collect the feedback on supplier, generate an aggregate performance score and integrate it with the winner determination process. The performance aggregation and winner determination with help of Markov decision process effectively uses the past performance information. In addition, it updates performance information in regular invervals and allevates the problem of maintaining a long history. We compare the MDP-based selection with that of performance score-based selection through a simulation experiment. It is observed that our scheme gives better buyer utility, selects best suppliers and fetches better quality product. The benefits realized through these attributes to the buyer increases the efficiency of the MDP-based selection process.

We have examined standards required for successful e-commerce (EC) architectures and evaluated the strengths and limitations of current systems that have been developed to support EC. We find that there is an unfilled need for systems that can reliably locate buyers and sellers in electronic marketplaces and also facilitate automated transactions. The notion of a ubiquitous network where loosely-coupled buyers and sellers can reliably find each other in real time, evaluate products, negotiate prices, and conduct transactions is not adequately supported by current systems. These findings were based on an analysis of mainline EC architectures: EDI, company Websites, B2B hubs, e-Procurement systems, and Web Services. Limitations of each architecture were identified. Particular attention was given to the strengths and weaknesses of the Web Services architecture, since it may overcome some limitations of the other approaches.

- by Dr. Douglas Dean
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- Information Systems, Information Technology, Information Management, Procurement

The outcome of public procurement reforms being carried out in most developing countries is negligible and has not provided significant support for good governance in the procurement sector despite having sound objectives with the initiatives. Presently, most of the governments around the world are implementing e-government procurement (e-GP) systems as a tool for public procurement reform for better governance in the public procurement sector. The implementation of e-procurement has been accepted as one of the most promising and feasible options for governments in delivering enhanced governance in the acquisition of goods, works, and services for the public sector. This action research analyzed the implementation of the e-GP system in a developing country using quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis following the utilizationfocused evaluation framework. The study focused in the utility of the e-GP system, addressing different dimensions of good governance and emphasi...

- by Dr. Rajesh K Shakya
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- Business, Public Administration, Procurement, E Government

The reason for this examination is to inspect the intervening function of occupation fulfillment on the connection between the components of authoritative culture, association culture, consistency culture, flexibility culture and mission culture with hierarchical execution on the financial segment of Pakistan. This investigation was directed to advance the idea of hierarchical culture out in the open banks with the goal that it very well may be reflected in the exhibition of the bank. The example of this investigation comprises of 320 including branch chief (BM), provincial supervisor (RM), operational director (OM), and colleague branch administrator (ABM) workingin eight public banks inside the region of Punjab and Sindh,Pakistan.Dimensions of hierarchical culture weremeasured by a prior approved 12item instrument, work fulfillment 16 things and authoritative execution were estimated by 7 things. Factor examination was utilized to develop four elements of hierarchical culture (i.e...

SUMMARY: The possibilities afforded by E-business are evident, but the level of implementation and penetration was not as expected within the construction industry. The potential benefits for construction are suggested by the E-business accomplishments in other industries. Yet its poor uptake (less than 20% of documentation is currently tendered electronically) suggests the unpopularity of e-procurement in UK construction. Many drivers and barriers to general e-procurement have been identified in published literature. Previous studies in the US (Davila et al, 2003, Minahan and Degan, 2001) and Australia (Hawking et al, 2004) have ranked these drivers and barriers for the general procurement of goods and services. In previous research, Eadie et al (2007) ranked the drivers and barriers to e-procurement from a construction contractor’s perspective in the Northern Ireland public sector in a pilot study for this current research. In the current research, a focus group was established co...

- by Professor Srinath Perera
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- Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, Public sector

In the hotel business, the flow of goods, services, and information should be designed to efficiently transform raw materials into finished products/services with values. Lodging services regularly purchase a large quantity of supplies for which procurement systems play a crucial role in maintaining daily operations and quality. Today, a major goal of a hotel's supply chain management is to efficiently apply information technology to its procurement systems. This research examined Philadelphia area hotel purchasing managers' views about e-Procurement. Perceived costs and benefits of e-Procurement are identified and the strategic role of IT in procurement is described.

- by Clark Hu
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- Management, Marketing, Information Technology, Supply Chain Management

Unlike the private sector for which the adoption of e-procurement systems has widely been discussed, little is known about the motivations behind government agencies' introduction of e-procurement systems and the challenges they encounter in implementing them. This research addresses this gap through an exploratory case study involving a Melbourne-based city council. The findings indicate the reluctance of the council in fully committing to e-procurement system while being not entirely motivated by financial gains. A major hurdle is the difficulty to integrate e-procurement to the council's financial applications. The study has implications for public sector financial managers and IT practitioners.

- by Sharif As-Saber
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- Adoption, Public sector, Electronic Procurement, E Procurement

Electronic government holds tremendous promise for improvements in internal governmental management as much as it does for the public service delivery. Efforts to e-procure goods and services estimated at about 12-25% of GDP (OECD, 2002) from vendors since 1999 is expected to provide significant savings to the government. But the uptake among the vendor community is still less than satisfactory. This paper reports on a study of the suppliers’ perception of efficiency and transparency of the public e-procurement system called “e-Perolehan”. A cross-sectional survey of 91 suppliers of one key federal ministry was carried out for their perceptions of the e-Perolehan system. A model of adoption developed identified attitude towards-procurement and government procurement, knowledge of e-procurement and knowledge of government procurement as exogenous variables and ease of use of e-procurement as the moderator of the two outcome variables namely, perception of efficiency and transparency of the e-procurement. The perception of efficiency of eP was influenced by knowledge of eP and government procurement and subjective norms of suppliers while perception of transparency of EP was influenced by attitude towards EP and government procurement and EOU. The vendors either vicariously or experientially are unconvinced that the eP is more effective way of transacting with the government. There are still strong residual concerns about the transparency of the process. There is a feeling that the more personal or “high touch” mode gives them greater control of the outcome of the bid than can the “impersonal” and high tech approach. To achieve greater level of adoption and usage, the government must pursue a dual policy of coercion and persuasive. Datelines for adoption must not be extended any further as has been the case before and it must listen to and address small vendors concerns of high cost and poor integrity of the privatized eP system.

- by Ridzuan Kushairi
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- Public Procurement, PUBLIC SECTOR PROCUREMENT, E Procurement

This article describes a recent trend in the area of sourcing and spend management which is in line with current calls for ways to source raw materials and (semi-) finished products more efficiently. It also covers a new approach to compare prices of different products versus the market prices as the traditional tendering process became unusable. The latter is a consequence of the high price volatility brought about by the financial crisis of 2008. We propose sourcing and benchmarking techniques that are already used in a meta-search database – www.YQmatrix.com - containing more than 7.5 billion data points. These can be used to quickly determine the supply sources as well as the value performance of the purchase of a raw material or a (semi-)finished) product. This search process includes prices and price comparisons for more than 15,000 raw materials, semi-finished products and finished products (http://www.YQmatrix.com/products.php). Login creation is free of charge (http://www.Y...

- by Thierry Decocq
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- Engineering, Procurement, Procurement Management, Purchasing and Supply Management

In the everyday business world, the sourcing process of multiple goods and services usually involves complex negotiations (via telephone, fax, etc.) that include discussion of product and service features. Nowadays, this is a high-cost process due to the scarce use of tools that streamline this negotiation process and assist purchasing managers’ decision-making. With the advent of Internet-based technologies, it has become feasible the idea of tools enabling low-cost, assisted, fluid, on-line dialogs between buyer enterprises and their providers wherever they are located. Consequently, several commercial systems to support on-line negotiations (e-sourcing tools) have been released. It is our view that there is still a need for these systems to incorporate effective decision support. This article presents the foundations of Quotes, a commercial sourcing application developed by iSOCO that, in addition to cover the whole sequence of sourcing tasks, incorporates decision support facilities based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques that successfully address previous limitations within a single and coherent framework. The paper focuses on the computational realization of sourcing tasks along with the decision support facilities they require. While supported negotiation events are Request for Quotations/Proposals (RFQs/RFPs) and reverse auctions, decision support facilities include offer generation, offer comparison, and optimal bid set computation (winner determination) in combinatorial negotiations. Additionally, the paper presents a compound of experiences and lessons learned when using Quotes for real sourcing processes.

- by Maite López
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- Information Systems, Marketing, Artificial Intelligence, Decision Making

Advent of business over Internet have given rise to a number of innovative trading mechanisms. In this work we propose a new auction mechanism, called as discount auctions, for procuring heterogeneous items. The buyer, who is the auctioneer, has an unit demand for M distinct items. The suppliers, who are the bidders, specify individual costs for each of the items. In addition, a supplier also specifies a discount function: a non-decreasing function over the number of items. This discount bid, in essence, conveys the individual costs for each of the items and the discount that can be availed based on the number of items bought. The winner determination problem faced by the buyer is to choose the optimal set of winning suppliers and their respective winning items such that the total cost of procurement is minimized. First we show that this problem is N P-hard upon reduction from the set covering problem. Next we propose two exact algorithms to solve the problem to optimality. The first one is a branch-and-bound algorithm, called as branch-on-supply (BoS), which does not use mathematical programming formulation but rather exploits the embedded network structure. The second is a suite of branch-and-cut algorithms. We derive valid inequalities to the integer programming formulation, which serve as cuts for the LP relaxation. A heuristic branching technique, called as branch-on-price (BoP), is proposed that branches on the current price of an item, which is partially supplied by more than one supplier. The design philosophies of the above are different in the sense that BoS searches for the optimal number of items from the suppliers, whereas BoP searches for the optimal price of the items. We compare the performance of these algorithms with extensive computational experiments.

- by Kameshwaran S
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- Cost effectiveness, E Procurement, Business Process, E Commerce

Participation of small businesses in the market for public contracts is widely recognized as a key policy issue. It is also commonly held that the adoption of e-procurement solutions can be effective in pursuing such an objective. To this end, we analyze the transactions completed in the period 2004-2007 through the Italian Government's eprocurement platform, that is, the marketplace managed by the Italian Public Procurement Agency (Consip S.p.A.). Although descriptive statistics indicate that micro suppliers are the most represented group of firms in the marketplace, our econometric treatment provides some evidence that the former are less successful than all other suppliers in getting public contracts. Degree of loyalty with buyers, location and the use of other MEPA negotiation tools, also emerge as relevant factors of success in the eprocurement market.

- by Marta Fana
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- Small Business, Performance, Public Procurement, Small Firms

In recent years, government organisations are expressing a growing interest in the uptake of eProcurement systems in order to achieve many of the benefits that their counterparts in the private sector have reported. These systems represent a specific instance of internet-based inter-organisational initiatives that streamline organisational purchasing processes and facilitate electronic exchange of transactions and other procurement related documents between organisations and their suppliers. Although some literature exists on the adoption of e-procurement systems within the government sector, relatively little has been focused on the outcomes of these systems particularly within the Australian local government context. Furthermore, much of the attention of the existing eProcurement literature is on understanding adoption decisions of these systems from the perspective of senior management, and few research efforts have been made to examine how employees who actually use these systems perceive the benefits arising from these systems. In addition, although the role of demographic characteristics of users is recognised in the innovation adoption and broader IS/IT adoption literatures, it is not clearly known how the demographic characteristics of employees (who interact with such systems) may influence their perceptions about eProcurement benefits. To address this gap in the literature, we analyse the views captured from sixty employees working in three large city councils located in the state of Victoria, Australia. The findings indicate that the outcomes of eProcurement systems adoption were largely seen in a positive light as the employees reported favourably about the attainment of benefits from their use of these systems. 252

Adoption of an E-procurement system offers a company many benefits in terms of tremendous cost savings and efficiency in procurement process. Therefore, E-procurement is constantly receiving lots of attention from companies in global markets. Although the benefits of e-procurement are plenty, the reality is that it is not being adapted to the much extent in developing countries. However, Indian and Chinese companies are planning to successfully adopt strategic approach for adopting e-procurement systems. Since the compatibility of e-procurement is somewhat barrier for implementation and integration of existing infrastructure, however in reality the cost savings are overpowering the risks. The present study explores how the tangible benefits and risks associated to e-procurement affect the e-procurement adoption and further explores the impact of e-procurement adoption in India and China. By using Indian and Chine firms, the results show that cost benefit is the main driver for companies to adopt e-procurement in India.

- by Dr Vijaykumar Rambhau Salkute
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- E Procurement, E Commerce

The web is having a significant impact on how firms interact with each other and their customers. Past stumbling blocks for supply chain integration such as high transaction costs between partners, poor information availability, and the challenges of managing complex interfaces between functional organizations are all dissolving on the web. In this paper, we examine how the web is changing supply chain management. We present a survey of emerging research on the impact of e-business on supply chain management including descriptive frameworks, analytical models, empirical analysis, and case studies.

- by QI LIAO
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- Supply Chain Management, Operations Management, E Business, Business and Management

Participation of small firms in the market for public contracts is a key policy issue. E-procurement is becoming a way through which such participation can be made more effective. Using a large sample of transactions completed through the MEPA (the Electronic Public Administration's Marketplace) in the period 2004-2007 we show that (very) small suppliers are arguably the most represented group of firms in the Marketplace, absorbing more than 60% of awarded contracts and 42% of total transactions value. Regression analysis, however, provides a more complete picture about the role of size and other factors potentially affecting the suppliers' success. Measuring performance with the frequency of awarded contracts (Y), the estimated predicted value of Y varies with the firm's size in a direction that is not in favour of the smallest suppliers (i.e., micro suppliers). Location and degree of loyalty with buyers emerge also as relevant explanatory variables. SMEs appear as successful as large suppliers. Surprisingly, micro suppliers appear less successful than all other suppliers. Success increases when suppliers are located in the most developed areas (North), and are more inclined to serve a restricted pool of purchasing administrations.

- by Marta Fana
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- Small Business, Performance, Public Procurement, Small Firms
- by Ravi Perera
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- Business, Computer Science, Procurement, Public sector

Emerging technologies such as electronic procurement have rapidly become common practice in recent years. With the advent of internet technologies and open innovations, the traditional procurement system is transformed into an electronic procurement system. Technology adoption is influenced by multiple factors, including the adopter, technology, and ecosystem in which they function. Considering this, E-procurement is still being adopted slowly. This research aims to investigate the extension of the adoption of E-procurement and identify the relationships between the E-procurement technologies and green procurement practices across different sectors of ISO 14001-certified Malaysian enterprises. This research is supported by the Technology Acceptance Model, one of the significant theories of technology adoption. Using SPSS and SmartPLS, the survey data is analyzed quantitatively. The structural model explains 86% of the variance in green procurement and shows the positive significant ...

- by PRATIK KUMAR SINGH
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- Business, Procurement, Open Innovation, Supply Chain

This study investigated the perception of electronic procurement (eprocurement) system and rate of adoption in the federal public hospitals in Edo State of Nigeria. The rate of adoption is premised on Rogers' diffusion of innovations approach using the process of innovation characteristics: relative advantage, trialability, compatibility, observability, and complexity of e-procurement system to evaluate the rate at which organizations adopt new innovations. The degrees of difficulties faced by the hospitals in the adoption of eprocurement system and the benefits of the e-procurement system adoption were also studied. The study used convenience sampling technique to select 45 management staff of procurement departments of three federal public hospitals spread across Edo State. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique was used to estimate the model that was developed. The findings showed that the greatest challenge faced by the hospitals in the adoption of EPS was the lack of e-procurement system infrastructure due to inadequate funding. On the benefits of adopting EPS in the hospitals, the findings showed that reduction in wastage in the time lost in the process of procurement of materials and mistakes that emanate from retyping