E-Procurement For SMI

Internet-based business-to-business (B2B) commerce is revolutionizing the way business is conducted between organizations. Business procurement has emerged as the key driver of this B2B revolution. Online procurement services, or eprocurement, that automate all or part of the requisition-to-settlement processes and the new strategic emphasis on the purchasing function has made eprocurement the hottest area of Internet commerce today.
The procurement of goods and services is a source of frustration and costly inefficiency in many organizations due to continue relience on inefficient manual,
paper-based processes. E-Procurement promises to change the purchasing process dramatically, making it faster, cheaper and result in huge cost savings and increased efficiency. E-Procurement solutions can help organizations to manage the entire workflow and administration involved in procuring goods and services and at the same time encourage better sourcing and supply management. One of the Malaysia's pioneer e-government projects, e-procurement, will officially take over the registration of the government's 28,000 suppliers nationwide as soon as the system and infrastructure are ready. Most small to
medium enterprises however, have paid little attention to the automation and integration of purchasing operating resources, such as office supplies, telephones, overnight delivery, travel and entertainment, and printing and publishing. These costs are often a greater portion of total revenue, additionally most companies do not realize how much capital is invested in the inventory and management of operating assets. This project is concerned with defining and developing an e-Procurement system
that would help the SMI companies to streamline the purchasing process. The procurement solution adopted for this project is based on the concept of private exchange. It is ideal for SMI companies and provides the opportunity for the organizations to create their own community. The ultimate goal of this project is redefining and streamlining the procurement process for indirect material and to find a more effective way to connect buyers to sellers and improving the efficiency of the purchasing process. Firstly, the paper presents the overall
concepts of e-procurement, followed by the alternative e-procurement solution that had been implemented in the market. A case study is conducted for a selected SMI company to further understand the operation and identify the potential areas of utilizing the e-procurement system. System analysis will emphasize on the business requirement of the procurement process and identify the limitations of the SMI companies in terms of the availability of various
enterprise-wide solutions. System design is concerned not only with designing the new proposed system but to redefine the current process and practice of procurement in the SMI companies. In addition, company approaches to eprocurement depends on the structure of the organization and the industry it competes in. Structured system analysis and design methodology is used to conduct the full study of the proposed system. Lastly, a proposed e-procurement model for the SMI companies will be developed and presented.