Electronic Procurement: Dealing with Supplier Adoption

Abstract

I AcknowledgmentsI would like to thank all the people that helped me in this project:Thank you to Professor Bráulio Alturas for their guidance and exceptional support.To my company PT-SI for all their openness and contribution during the master.To Ana for their support, patience and dissertation review.To Tiago for his suggestions and for providing me other points of view especially in the statistical field.To José Neves for the excellent site of questionnaires that supported the whole process of data collection.To all PT-SI consultants for their help and comments on the best way to pose questions to the companies inquired.For my family for their comprehension and support during this past year.To Professor Pedro Ramos for helping me to find a mentor in the initial phase of this work.To all companies that participated in the questionnaire, for their inputs that contributed greatly to this research.II Abstract E-procurement systems make purchasing activities more effective in terms of both time and cost. However over the past years there is evidence that some of the expected benefits have not been achieved. Among several appointed causes, supplier"s adherence to such platforms has been regarded as one. The focus of this research is in supplier adoption of e-Procurement.Such a study is important in order to better address the issues actually faced by suppliers within e-Procurement. We have conducted a questionnaire-based survey to 721 Portuguese companies and performed an empirical analysis of the results. The findings from this work provide empirical evidence that the supplier perceived benefits and business partner pressures are positively related to e-Procurement adoption while some barriers like implementation costs have the opposite effect. The main critical success factors on e-Procurement adoption are also presented.Keywords: e-Procurement, Collaboration, e-Commerce, e-Business. III ResumoOs sistemas de e-Procurement permitem melhorias significativas no tempo e custo associados aos processos de compra. No entanto, nos últimos anos existe evidência de que alguns dos benefícios esperados não têm sido alcançados. Entre as várias causas apontadas, a falta de adesão dos fornecedores a esse tipo de plataformas foi apontada como uma. O foco desta pesquisa está na adopção dos fornecedores ao e-Procurement, mais especificamente nos factores que levam a sua adesão. Foi realizado um questionário a 721 empresas Portuguesas e os dados obtidos analisados. Os resultados deste trabalho fornecem evidências de que os benefícios percebidos pelos fornecedores e as pressões dos parceiros de negócios estão positivamente relacionados com a intenção de adopção, enquanto algumas barreiras, como custos de implementação têm o efeito oposto. Os principais factores críticos de sucesso na adesão ao e-Procurement são também apresentados.Palavras-chave: e-Procurement, colaboração, comércio electrónico, e-Business.