Where is e-procurement now?
While some exchanges were successful, Paul Liddiat, supply chain marketing director Asia-Pacific at PeopleSoft, says the model was too advanced for most organisations as they were only just moving from paper-based systems. “Crawl, then walk, then run,” is his advice. Another possibility is that procurement is traditionally a relationship-driven process and businesses on both sides of the fence were reluctant to treat goods and services as if they were commodities, unless that really was the case, and the only differentiators were price and availability. Some industry-based exchanges are still going, including those in the steel, chemical, and grocery markets, says Peter Dowling, Asia-Pacific procurement leader, IBM Business Consulting Services, but those in horizontal markets were less successful. Part of the problem was that some companies had enough buying power to drive prices down to where they wanted them, while some suppliers refused to participate in an environment that reduced
