Title: The effect of benefits and risks on e-procurement implementation: an exploratory study of Swedish and Indian firms

Authors: Vinit Parida, Kittipong Sophonthummapharn

Addresses: Division of Entrepreneurship and Industrial Management, Lulea University of Technology, SE-971 87, Sweden. ' Faculty of Business Administration and Information Technology, Rajamangala University of Technology Suvarnabhumi, Wasukri Campus, Ayutthaya 13000, Thailand

Abstract: E-procurement is constantly receiving lots of attention from industries and government agencies. Analysts believe that utilisation 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.

Keywords: e-procurement; adoption; implementation; Sweden; India; case study; business-to-business; B2B; information technology; communications technology; ICT; electronic procurement; benefits; risks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2010.032407

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology, 2010 Vol.2 No.3, pp.186 - 201

Published online: 02 Apr 2010 *

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