e-Procurement Implementation : Critical Analysis of the Impact of Success Factors on Project Outcome

Twenty-first century has seen the migration of many governance functions and services to the Internet. The terms like e-governance and m-governance are no longer unfamiliar words but are a political reality. The adoption of e-procurement by government entities to optimize and economize public procurements has been the buzzword of transparent governance. In fact, e-procurement has been touted as the panacea for issues like corruption and bureaucratic red-tapism. Literature is replete with studies which underline numerous benefits of migration of procurement functions to the Internet. However, e-Government Procurement (e-GP) has not taken off in India, though it is an integrated mission mode project as a part of the National e-Governance Project (NeGP) launched by the Government of India in 2006. A recent review of the e-procurement implementation by the Government of India brought out that the progress of e-procurement project implementation has been dismal. Against this backdrop, the study aims to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSF) for e-procurement project implementation. The research methodology followed included a detailed analysis of e-procurement CSFs reported in research literature and qualitative study of a few successful e-procurement implementations in India. The study concludes that the existing CSFs and their study models do not take the cultural and project context dimensions into account. Therefore, the existing body of knowledge does not aid managerial decision making. Finally, the paper brings out research gaps and suggests directions for future research