Research On The Potential Benefits Of E-procurement And Supply Chain Performance:Empirical Evidence From Chinese Manufacturers

Electronic procurement (e-procurement) has emerged as an important topic for researchers and practitioners as e-procurement helps to improve purchasing process as well as supply chains’performance. However, purchasing managers/buyers are not adequately prepared to implement e-procurement system and mostly organizations do not have effective e-procurement policies. The main purpose of this study was to determine the potential benefits of electronic procurement and its impact on supply chain performance especially focus on the benefits of electronic procurement in the purchasing supply. E-procurement enables volume purchases, allowed wider choice of suppliers and buyers, better quality, improves supply process, reduces paperwork, and lower administrative cost. Generally, e-procurement Web sites allow users to look for buyers or sellers of goods and services. Firms participating are expected to be able to control of parts inventories more effectively, reduce purchasing agent, lead time delivery, reduce cost, information sharing and improve Performance of Supply chain.Chapter 1 Introduction:The introduction presents background and different aspects of e-procurement. It starts with brief description of e-commerce and then detail description about e-procurement, understanding of e-procurement and impacts on supply chain performance within manufacturing industries and at the end it moves toward the statement of the problem and significance of this research.Chapter 2 Literature Review:This section covers a review of the theoretical background and relevant literature. This begins with theoretical background, which includes overview of procurement, and discussion in detail, the literature pertaining to e-procurement, role of e-procurement on purchasing process, e-procurement application and tools, supply chain management, supply chain performance, e-procurement benefits and the impact of e-procurement on supply chain performance, and the factors affecting supply chain performance.Chapter 3 Chinese Manufacturing Industry:This chapter covers establishment of e-procurement system in China Government and use of e-procurement in Chinese Manufacturing Industry. This chapter also covers an Overview of the Chinese Manufacturing Industry history, growth and present status of manufacturing sector. With brief introduction of Manufacturing Cities where from Survey data was collected.Chapter 4 Theoretical Model and Hypotheses Development:In this chapter researcher develops the basic conceptual and purposed research model. Hypotheses was developed on the basis of literature review provided previous and current studies about e-procurement and supply chain performance and the variables associated with e-procurement affecting supply chain performance. Finally, in details was discussed the model developed and the hypotheses designed for the present study.Chapter 5 Research Methodologies:The chapter describes the research methodology to be utilized in this study. This section discusses in detail the processes of developing the survey and measurements. The methodology meant to the theory of manner for undertaking a research, it contained researches theoretical and philosophical assumption and guidance of these items for the methods adopted.This chapter describes the methodologies used and explanation on how the study was conducted, this included the research design, questionnaire development, area of the study, sample size, sampling techniques, data collection methods, data analysis, data reliability and data validity.Chapter 6 Data Analysis and Findings:This chapter provides the results of data analyses. The profile of the survey participants, demographic characteristics and the assessment of the measurement scales, which establishes the reliability and validity of the survey instruments in this research. This chapter first presents descriptive statistics based on the data collected from the surveys. The responding companies’background information was analyzed, followed by statistical analysis of the data and discussion of the results with regards to the hypotheses testing.Chapter 7 Conclusions, Implications, Limitations, and Recommendations:This chapter summarizes the importance of research, conclusion and analyses the problems of this study. It also suggested some implication in manufacturing industry. The study has some limitation which was described in this section, also put forward future research prospects and at the end proposed some recommendations.This study used self-explanatory questionnaire designs using quantitative method was employed to gather data from employees of manufacturing industries in China. Data was collected from the procurement department, Admin/IT department, Supply chain staff/employees and the marketing department. A sample size of 324 respondents who were purposive to the study was selected. The self-administered questionnaires were the instruments of the study. Data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics, presented in frequency tables and Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) loadings were used to determine the content and construct validity of the e-procurement, buyer-supplier relationships, information sharing, supplier selection, cost reduction, inventory control, lead time delivery, and supply chain Performance constructs in establishing the relationship between e-Procurement, impact factors and supply chain performance. Similarly, Confirmatory factor analysis was used to measure the dimensionality of the scales in the measurement models in this research study. To ensure that how well the observed indicators serve as a measurement instrument for the latent variable is required before testing the causal relationships between the latent variables using first-order measurement model, then Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the measurement model and structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses. According to the findings from the study, e-procurement is not yet given much attention in most manufacturing industry in China and there is need to improvement both public and private sectors. The main objective of this research was to provide advance knowledge about potential benefits of e-procurement and the impact of e-procurement on supply chain performance; empirical evidence from the Chinese manufacturing industry. The study revealed several interesting results and hopefully benefited for manufacturer, buyers, suppliers, and practitioners.The finding of the study supported the constructs theoretically and empirically evidence from Chinese manufacturing industry. The potential benefits (financial & non-financial) of e-procurement in supply chain and procurement process which included shorter time to search supplier, improved visibility, lead time delivery, lower costs, improved quality of products, real time information sharing, buyer-supplier coordination, lower inventory, faster order fulfillment and improved order accuracy. These findings were confirmed on analysis of large number of samples collected by survey from different manufacturing industries in China. The research results show that the use of e-procurement in critical process areas affect a supply chain performance. Beside the effect on supply chain performance, e-procurement also enhanced the efficiency of procurement process. These results reinforce the importance of a manufacturer’s use of e-procurement, explicative and predictive models and fact-based management to drive its decisions and strategies.The empirical results from this study have important implications and contributions for manufactures, buyers, supplier, and for practitioners. It is important in any kind of research to provide strong theoretical contributions. The evidence presented in this study will help managers in finance, accounting, information technology, and purchasing departments to better prepare and plan for the adoption of e-Procurement technologies in their firms. The study suggests that moving away from traditional offline purchase processing to online sequencing presents significant savings, improved productivity and enhanced supply chain performance.