Understanding E-procurement: Qualitative Case Studies

E-procurement is constantly receiving attention from industries, business and government agencies. Analysts believe that utilization of e-procurement can lead to enormous cost saving and efficiency in procurement process. E-procurement also enlarges customer base, broadens the search for raw materials to lower its production cost. Though, it has benefited the global business tremendously, its expected growth rate has been moving downwards. While E-procurement can be used for the purchase of indirect or direct materials, the risks associated with the e-procurement has been holding the companies from adopting it. The purpose of this paper is to understand the e-procurement process by focusing on benefits, risks, practices and strategies of e-procurement and its emerging usages in the current business to business (B2B) environment. A qualitative method was used for the case studies in which two companies each from India and Sweden were studied and analysed. The results showed that cost benefit was the main driver for companies to implement e-procurement. Other benefits included were transparency and visibility across process, better internal and external relations and streamlined buying process. The problems of implementation and integration of existing infrastructure and security and control risks were holding back companies from wide usage of e-procurement. But most of all, lack of managerial commitment hinders the adoption process. Company’s needs were the deciding factor for the kind of approach they will follow regarding the adoption of e-procurement and emergence of a new approach. This paper compares the works of different authors in the field of e-procurement and its implications for the B2B