IMPLEMENTING E-PURCHASING IN CONSTRUCTION ORGANIZATIONS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY TO IDENTIFY ORGANIZATIONAL CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

Year 2012, Volume: 4 Issue: 1, 209 - 225, 01.06.2012

Rafikullah Deraman Hafez Salleh Faizul A. Rahim

Abstract

Studies have shown that e-purchasing offers benefits in terms of time and cost saving, and increases business efficiency. In construction industry, the adoption and implementation of e-purchasing system offers many benefits such as reducing material cost and enhancing productivity. Although e-purchasing provides a wealth of new opportunities and ways of doing business, the implementation presents a series of challenges particularly in the construction industry. One of the challenges that has been identified was system adoption failure. Studies have reported that between 75-85% of all e-purchasing system failed to achieve the promised results. The high percentage of epurchasing failure reported has led researchers to investigate the reasons particularly in area of critical success factors (CSFs). Unfortunately, little work has been done to investigate the CSFs on e-purchasing implementation, especially in the construction industry. This has contributed to the limited available list of CSFs in the context of organizational aspect. This paper is set out to fill the gap and to provide a framework of organizational CSFs in e-purchasing implementation in construction organization through an exploratory study. Based on the literature review, 26 factors were identified. Interviews were conducted using open-ended questionnaire with 10 experts from different background in the construction industry. Qualitative analyses were used to validate the existence of these factors. The result of the study will provide a framework for the development instrument for future empirical study

Keywords

E-Purchasing, Organizational CSF, Construction Industry, Construction Organizations

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