E-Procurement and the U.S. Military

<p>The Department of Defense (DoD) is calling for transformation in both how it fights and the acquisition processes that support the war fighters. Meanwhile companies worldwide are undergoing transformation as they harness the power of Internet-enabled tools. One significant aspect of industry's transformation is electronic or e-procurement. E-procurement consists of multiple electronic facets including catalogs bidding English auctions reverse auctions market exchanges and paperless end-to-end systems. To varying degrees these different aspects of e-procurement allow for simpler and faster ordering reduced paperwork easy on-line comparison fewer human errors and ultimately lower costs. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the progress of the U.S. military with e-procurement. A qualitative case study of the IBM Corporation is used as an example for comparison with the military. In addition numerous interviews were conducted with e-procurement program managers in both the government and private industry. Assessments were also made based on recent articles in the business press. Through process teams the DoD should continue to thoroughly study procurement processes particularly the bottlenecks in the current systems. However a major cultural change will be required as highly bureaucratic paper-filled processes become electronic. As such the highest leaders within DoD will have to fully embrace e-procurement in order to make the organizational changes and financial investments that are required to capitalize on this new way of transacting business in the twenty-first century.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>