Most of us have bought something over the Internet recently. Books, groceries, financial services and household items are all readily available. More to the point the process is easy – point and click – the software required is installed on your PC when you buy it, and the goods are delivered to your door. Software for replicating this process in your organisation is widely available but the application of it is complicated by factors that do not exist when you use your home PC.

The first obstacle is often created by internal audit requirements. How can you be certain that the goods to be ordered are properly authorised, checked on receipt, and paid for accurately – never mind the question of whether or not they are really needed in the first place?

At present you probably have some form of purchase requisition and purchase order; almost definitely a suppliers invoice and a goods received note. If you must match these before paying the bill, what benefits have you gained over simply ordering electronically? In one Metropolitan Borough we found no less than 4 differing (but audited) prices for copier paper…with each department claiming they had the best deal!

E-procurement provides a great opportunity to gather knowledge about your purchasing patterns in a way that would have taken somebody weeks to do with lots of paper and a specially constructed spreadsheet. That knowledge must then inform your whole purchasing strategy and thereby lead to better purchasing decisions.

One effective approach to gain some the benefits without losing the controls lies in effective process redesign. Another lies in successful change management, encouraging staff to change the ways in which they work to deliver the substantial benefits that can occur.

Those decisions in turn will lead to an improvement in the transactions that staff are required to make to buy on line and as they see the benefits for them start to accrue whereby the acceptance and uptake of the technology will increase.

E-procurement is not simply a way of ordering on-line it must be seen as a tool that will reinforce your corporate strategies and objectives and really deliver benefits in terms of internal process efficiencies as well as purchasing prices. That means that E-procurement is not just about installing software or joining an Internet portal arrangement, nor is it a way of satisfying your drive towards E-government, it is about improving service delivery.

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