Purchasing Cloud-Based Product-Service Bundles in Value Networks - the Role of Manageable Workloads

The implementation of electronic procurement processes for product-service systems, consisting of material and service components requires a consideration of strategic, tactical and operational issues in procurement processes and information technologies. Increasingly, in certain industries, these product-service systems consist more and more of cloud-based components like online storage or web applications. In the past, the alignment of business processes with a focus on traditional procurement processes for products or services has been well established. But with the rise of product-service systems as core offering from companies, the design of hybrid procurement processes in value networks has to be developed. The merging of different procurement processes for products and services, however, has severe problems and does not reflect the specific requirements in the procurement of product-service systems, especially with cloud-based components. This article highlights the need for a process-oriented view in procurement at multiple levels of abstraction and describes a model for the design of electronic procurement process in value networks for cloud-based product-service systems requirements. Different process characteristics are examined for applicability to hybrid value performance and allow an adjustment proposal for the hybrid procurement process. The proposed procurement model is validated in a typical case-study in the IT industry.