Benchmarking e-procurement in the AEC industry.

摘要

As there are no suitable strategic electronic procurement (e-procurement) solutions for the industry, the Canadian architecture-engineering-construction (AEC) industry applies a wait-and-see approach. The benefit of e-procurement is only anecdotal for an industry prior to determining its value. It is therefore necessary to evaluate e-procurement and measure the added value after implementation. In this thesis, a survey was conducted to provide a clearer picture of the level of penetration of e-procurement. Functional benchmarking parameters were established to quantify the values of e-procurement. An adoption of these parameters in the AEC industry was applied for a later comparison between the construction sector and manufacturing industry. The results of this comparison indicate potential opportunities for e-procurement in the AEC industry. The industry can improve the implementation of e-procurement in areas such as: more leading roles by large enterprises, better customer relationships, more staff training and education, and better technology infrastructure. However, there is a conflict with the actual situation in the industry in that e-procurement service providers are focused on the supply side rather than the demand side; there is another conflict with the actual situation in the industry in that e-procurement technological providers are focused on the individual enterprises as opposed to industry associations. To overcome the conflicts, an electronic business platform is suggested as a strategic e-procurement model for the industry with supporting technological approaches.