E-procurement: A Strategic Approach to Public Works Tendering

Abstract

With the Public demanding efficient and transparent procedures and the clients as well as the vendors seeking lower cost and flexibility in Public Procurement Process (PPP), PPP is becoming more complicated, expensive and fragile. Proper methods of feasible benefits of Public E-Procurement (PEP) are quickly becoming a major influence in the mainstream of Public Procurement Enterprises (PPE). PEP is intended to improve transparency, efficiency, and value for money by exposing various procurement activities as tasks over the internet. Current PEP Procedures lacks an organized framework to capture the essential tasks required for successful Procurement Processes, it also pays little attention to task complexity as an important key design feature that impacts other internal PEP attributes. Although traditional Procurement methods have been with us for sometimes, until now no one has provided a reliable PEP framework. This paper proposed a framework based on Business Process Management and Notation Approach (BPMN) for the implementation of PEP by dealing separately with strategic tasks. The BPMN can help PPE simplify and regulate PEP implementation by explicit identification of PEP specific tasks in the BPMN. We provide an example case study to demonstrate proposed PEP task. Twenty users were engaged, the result showed the tool to be a preferred choice to the traditional method of a bidding process. The benefits of PEP to its adopters were also investigated.