E-Procurement

E-Procurement is primarily the electronic tendering and procurement of goods and services. The Internet has enabled large companies or even government authorities to implement some form of e-procurement on the Web. An example is the US Department of Defense (www.dod.org) and the Singapore Ministry of Defense (www.mips.mindef.gov.sg) which has set up an E-procurement site to enable various supplies to tender for the provision of different products and services required by these organisation.

E-procurement has enabled organisations to reduce cost in the procurement process through automated tender processing and more cost-effective offers. For the organisations, further benefits of E-procurement are in having a wider choice of suppliers which is expected to lead to lower cost, better quality, improved delivery and reduced cost of procurement (e.g. tender specifications can be downloaded electronically by tenderers instead of being mailed by post). For the suppliers, the benefits are in more tendering opportunities, possibly on a global basis, lower cost of submitting a tender and possibly tendering in parts which may be better suited for smaller enterprises.