The effect of benefits and risks on e-procurement implementation: an exploratory study of Swedish and Indian firms

E-procurement is constantly receiving lot of attention from industries, and government agencies. Analysts believe that utilization of e-procurement can lead to enormous cost saving and efficiency in procurement process. Though, e-procurement has benefited the global business tremendously, its expected growth rate has been moving downwards. The present study explores how the benefits and risks associated to e-procurement affect the e-procurement implementation. The differences and similarities among firms in different setting are also investigated. By using Swedish and Indian firms, the results show that cost benefit is the main driver for companies to implement e-procurement. The problems of implementation and integration of existing infrastructure are holding back companies from implementing e-procurement. But benefits are overpowering risks and companies are moving toward more aggressive strategic approach of implementing e-procurement. Finally, e-procurement is typically used for buying indirect material and the buyer side model is most dominated in industry.