e-Procurement: From Strategy to Implementation

The Story So Far

It is only necessary to go back a few years to enter into pre-e-procurement history. Prior to 1997, electronic exchange of information concerning purchasing was pretty much limited to either faxed purchase orders, or for a select group of large and progressive companies, to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). In fact, for most people in business, EDI is still synonymous with electronic procurement. It is true that large companies have been using EDI with their major trading partners for almost 25 years now, but these EDI systems were based on leased lines, were expensive to establish and to use, and were hindered by a lack of agreed-upon standards—most of which were designed for, and therefore proprietary to, certain industries. ...