How E-Procurement Facilitate Supplier Relationship

Prior to the emergence of e-procurement, the procurement process was more or less paper based and face-to-face interactions between buyers and suppliers. The emergence of e-procurement was greeted with high criticism as regards to how it can ensure supplier relationship. It was believed that the non existence of face-to-face interactions between business partners with the use of e-procurement, it will be difficult to establish buyer-supplier relationship. Over the years, the criticism by managers on how e-procurement can facilitate supplier relationship had led to this research and it had demonstrated that e-procurement can facilitate relationships between buyers and suppliers through information sharing, integration, partnership, supply base consolidation, coordination and collaboration. Also, managers had over the years questioned how e-procurement contributes to the performance of supply chain management. In this book, e-procurement had been found to have a critical impact on cost reduction and internal efficiency through the automation and streamlining of the procurement processes.