Abstract

There has been a rapid increase in the number of organisations undertaking business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce initiatives. One of such initiative that has a far reaching impact on electronic communication, information exchange and business transaction is e-procurement. With the view to promote the use of e-procurement in enterprises, this review endeavours to identify the prominent factors that significantly influence its use by organisations as a key component of their supply chains. The basis of this review is the numerous publications related to e-purchasing and e-procurement adoption from the years 2001 to 2010. Eighteen (18) driving factors are uncovered by this review as motivating enterprises to adopt e-procurement to strengthen existing practices. By categorising these factors into four dominant groups - cost, time, quality and competitive advantage, the authors of this review hope that the information would be of benefit to organisations bent on injecting improvements into their supply processes. Additionally, the insights gained from this review can be of benefit to future research. For instance, a study can be carried out to check out the factors that can influence the use of e-procurement in the construction industry supply chain.

Key words: E-purchasing, e-procurement, driving factors, supply chain.