The Evolution of E-Procurement and Its Impacts

The market for solutions of e-procurement is relatively recent, however, it already has a very good level of maturity and several players are dynamic in this market. Indeed, the internet has opened up a lot of possibilities in terms of technological innovations and the development of solutions for the general public, but also for businesses. The field of procurement has also been transformed. New application solutions aim to cover all the needs of the procurement department. Several players have entered the market to offer purchasing solutions to businesses, this is what is commonly called e-Procurement today.

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The e-procurement market

E-procurement emerged to meet the needs of digitalization of purchases in business. The buyer profession and their needs have also evolved. The constant increase in competition and new entrants in the various markets has led to a race for prices and productivity. It was therefore necessary to use tools that would allow better procurement management while being more competitive.

For what purpose?

The main objective of e-procurement tools is to optimize corporate purchases. Since the first tools were created about twenty years ago, they were not efficient enough, because the IT environment was also under development. Moreover, the use of computers was not widespread enough and the reluctance of most actors to change had to be faced. Originally, e-procurement mainly referred to the dematerialization of catalogs that allowed access to online product references in order to facilitate orders. Today, this has evolved a lot, the solutions allow easy management of the purchasing process on online platforms. In addition, we manage to have very powerful tools offering several functionalities according to the needs of businesses (product research, quotation editing, order placement, invoicing...).

E-procurement solutions are widely used by TGEs, ETIs and some SMEs whose purchasing volume is quite substantial. These companies sometimes have difficulty clearly identifying the purchasing strategy to put in place because of the large volume of their purchases and therefore have every interest in integrating such a tool into the management of their purchases in order to have a more precise vision of their strategy. In addition, companies can thus adjust certain problems or obstacles in order to make the company more efficient in terms of monitoring, deadlines, costs and control.

E-procurement therefore represents an important lever for the purchasing function on three essential points, which are as follows:

• simplifying the daily management of tasks,
• improving the purchasing process,
• saving time and productivity for the company.