Introduction
The wave of IT revaluation has shaped our business community to replace traditional procurement with e-procurement. The pioneer of technology adoption has argued to quick turn into e-procurement, when the classic thinker stands for traditional procurement. As a market leader of European Forest Industry, Finnforest Corporation has been demonstrated itself as an outstanding supply-chain benchmarked company with e-commerce platform. This dissertation would justify the accomplishment of e-procurement in business including its performance and gaps with traditional procurement with the evidence of Finnforest and shape the research questions as-
- How e-procurement technologies redesign the role of management in traditional procurement?
- What E-Procurement Quality measures would be appropriate for Finnforest’s e-procurement implementation?
- To what degree the implementations of e-procurement would be success for Buyer’s Power and return on Investment.
- What extents do Finnforest Corporation has assessed the relationship of e-procurement and traditional procurement?
Literature Review
The literature Review of this dissertation has gathered the writings and opinion of modern authors and noteworthy researchers to answer the research questions and to establish the dissertational topic with the perspective of-
- Introduction to E-procurement as supplier exchange that has to consider under the business model of B2B, B2G, or B2C while purchase and sale would be conducted with featured software automation.
- Elements of E-procurement has been pointed out as E-market, Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul, E-sourcing, E-tendering, E-reverse auctioning, E-informing and Web-based ERP for better understanding (Fylnn 2000, p. 13).
- Typical adoption strategies have pointed out with tools to attain desired goals or objectives.
- E-procurement Infrastructure has been designed to perform the supply management tasks with automated software rather paper work.
- E-procurement Process Flow has been presented through Purchase-requisition, Requisition-approval, Workflow management, Order delivery & Receiving and reconciliation with Reporting and analysis (Holma 2006, p. 21).
- Efficiency of e-Procurement Process Flow with E-Procurement Quality (EPQ) measurement scale has discussed with the best practice of e-procurement.
- The role of management for e-procurement has pointed with dilemmas of e-procurement implementation (Finnforest Corporation 2005, p. 38).
- The e-procurement & traditional procurement and their relationships have gathered with ROI (Finnforest Merk, 2008, p. 32).
Research Methodology
The research methodology of this dissertation has designed to argue with e-procurement and the process of designing a complete strategy for acquaintance with the theoretical research predicament and the sensible experiential research design. It has provided the procedures to collect empirical data as well as to analysis of data. It also included three types of research such as exploratory research, descriptive research, and causal research to finding the cause and effect relationships between variables with particular techniques for the desired course of action (Cohen, Manion, Morrison 2007, p 117).
Secondary & Primary research
Secondary research mainly established the premise of theories and Finforest reports. The primary research has employed to collect information of Finnforest e-procurement those are not available or that does not subsist. The techniques engaged in primary research are survey with procurement managers of Finnforest through online surveys and questionnaires, face-to-face interviews and over telephone. In this research work, the researcher used the interview technique to obtain the interested information from Finnforest Corporation.
The Interviews
The researcher of this dissertation had interviewed 20 people taken from the Finnforest Corporation and persons from the supply chain of the company to know about the efficiency of e-procurement. There were different inquisitive questions presented for better understand the subject. The researcher interviewed all these people for evenness those agreed to provide relevant information (Kvale 1996, 16).
Data Analysis
The data analysis from the interviews for Finnforest managers and staffs has coding and scoring by qualitative in nature and hence, data analysis does not actually portrait the actual scenario. Several techniques for the analysis of interview data has engaged as
- Calculating the occurrence of a particular answer with verifying the pattern of the occurrences with knowledgeable guess to reach a conclusion;
- Categorising of the collected information into classification and reduction of collected information by retaining those meet the theory;
- Find out the relationship between variables by clarifying the dominant variables with knowledgeable lucidity and tracking causality to set ideas.
Findings
- The existing e-procurement process of the Finnforest’s has been automated with SAP along with Do It Yourself (DIY) retailers, merchants of timbers and builders
- The key supply chain process of Finnforest has been organised with Forest primary manufacturing, Secondary manufacturing Finished product warehouse Retail outlets.
- Its Data gathering process, Activity time and Inventory is fully automated with manual data input facilities
- With the Effectiveness of these process flow Finnforest has reduced it Lead-time.
- Finnforest has achieved economies of scale with advanced scale of production and boosted sales value.
- Finnforest has adopted modern technology proper distribution, appropriate capital formation and adequate information with coordination among the chain partners.
- Finnforest e-procurement has facilitated risks diversification and scopes of portfolio investment satisfaction are available among the partners.
- In traditional procurement, the ROI has more focused on product development in market when e-procurement more focused on technological development.
Recommendation
Positive impact of the e-procurement has continued to a sound quality of product to the customers and DIY retailers. Implementation of e-procurement with niche specialisation may drive the market towards an effective value chain, elevated return scale, and vast transaction. Finnforest would capable to propagation of potential suppliers by –
- Price reduction
- Precise requisition
- Administrative cost reduction
- Maverick
- Lower inventory costs
Conclusion
The e-procurement strategy to implement as part of opportunistic e-supply chain has considered upon economic analysis, supplier-purchaser relation, social & emotional impact, cost effectiveness. Finnforest data may be useful for straight feedback on the achievement of e-procurement that argue for suitable resource allocation to reduce cost of traditional procurement and strength the competence of e-procurement for future business.
Reference List
Cohen, L. Manion, L. Morrison, K., 2007, Research Methods in Education, 6th edition, London: Routledge, ISBN: 978-0-415-36878-0, pp 19- 70
Finnforest Corporation, 2005, Interim Report of the Finnforest Corporation, pp. 3-9. Web.
Finnforest Merk, 2008, Excellence in Timber Construction, pp. 17-42. Web.
Fylnn, M., 2000, E-Procurement Technology Trends Changing Business, pp. 1-22. Web.
Holma, H. 2006, Supply Chain Management and Industry Cyclicality: a Study of the Finnish Sawmill Industry, Universitatis Ouluensis, Oeconomica, pp. 12- 278. Web.
Kvale, S., 1996 Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing, London: Sage, ISBN: 9780803958197, pp. 7- 19.