Online internal business purchasing can bring enterprises three-fold returns on initial setup costs, but less than one-third of companies have implemented such systems, according to a Deloitte survey.
The survey, which sampled 200 global enterprises, including 55 Australian and New Zealand organisations, found that companies grossing between $US1 billion and $US5 billion could make back three times their e-procurement system implementation outlay and save 9 per cent of annual supply costs if they installed end-to-end e-procurement systems. The figures were based on an average implementation expenditure of between $US2 and $US4 million.
The term "e-procurement", according to Deloitte's manufacturing group principal Duncan MacCallum, refers to integrated "purchasing solutions for organisations including transactions with suppliers on a day-to-day basis".
The report found that, while 62 per cent of survey respondents were considering implementation of e-procurement systems in the next two years, only 27 per cent had systems already installed.
Yet, MacCallum said the low enterprise takeup of e-procurement technology was not surprising. "It [the low takeup] does meet my expectations from a local perspective. If you look at the last five, six, seven years, with the major ERP implementations, plus the Y2K issues, and then locally the GST, these things have all been inhibitors to the uptake of [e-procurement programs]."
MacCallum said this slow uptake would be short-lived, however. "Given that Y2K's come and gone, and the fact that GST concerns will obviously come to a conclusion for most companies in the middle of the year, I think we'll see a takeup well beyond that over the next 12 months to two years."
He said that until GST legislation had been finalised, corporates would take a "maintenance" approach to e-commerce systems, and that enterprises would revise rather than replace existing programs.
Most organisations that responded to the survey belonged to the manufacturing business sector. Specifically, they were high-tech, consumer packaged goods and retail organisations.
Energy, telecommunications, healthcare and financial services companies also responded to the survey, he said.