Improving E-Procurement in Supply Chain Through Web Technologies: The HYDRA Approach

A supply chain is a network that enables the distribution options for procurement of both raw and finished materials, which can be transformed into finished goods and distributed to the end customer through various distribution channels. Commonly, the main goal of a supply chain is satisfy the customer’s requests as soon as they appear. This process is wellknown as e-procurement. E-Procurement is more than just a system for making purchases online. It provides an organized way to keep an open line of communication with potential suppliers during a business process. E-Procurement helps with the decision-making process by keeping relevant information neatly organized and time-stamped. In this book chapter, we covered the e-procurement process in Supply Chain Management borrowing features from service-oriented and event-driven architectures to provide support for supply chain management collaborations, covering the basic concepts and the participants in eprocurement, describing the main functions from the roles of producers, distributors, retailers, customers, and service providers in the e-procurement process, identifying the main information technologies for developing Web-based systems for e-procurement, presenting some selection criteria, implementation strategies, and process redesign initiatives for successful e-procurement deployment and finally discussing research and new trends for e-procurement in order to provide a guide for designing effective and wellplaned process models in e-procurement which is an important prerequisite for implementation success. With these aspects, Well-managed e-procurement systems can be developed to help reducing inventory levels. A properly implemented e-procurement system can connect companies and their business processes directly with suppliers while managing all interactions between them. A good e-procurement system helps a firm organize its interactions with its most crucial suppliers. It provides those who use it with a set of built-in monitoring tools to help control costs and assure maximum supplier performance.