e-Procurement: From Strategy to Implementation

The Strategic Nature of E-Procurement

Over the past several years, I have facilitated many executive workshops concerned with the procurement process. In more recent times, when examining e-procurement as part of a company’s overall approach to e-business, I am still surprised to find that when selecting potential attendees for these strategy workshops, the initial reaction by managers and executives alike is to nominate only directors and managers who are directly engaged in day-to-day procurement activity to attend.

The reason is, of course, that many people still view the procurement process as a cumbersome, manual support operation (which, for most companies, it still is)—in any case, not an area to concern top management. Many people once ...