Automated buying usually accelerates purchase cycle time, increases inventory control and improves contract compliance (Lysons and Farrington, 2006).
Automated buying appears in many forms under the e-Procurement banner and has a long history of use across many different industries and contexts. For example, Baker and Taylor developed the first vendor-based automated acquisitions system for libraries (commonly re-ferred to as BATAB) in 1969. It was a modular batch system that supported five major buying areas: selection lists, automatic purchase order printing, open orders and claiming, fund ac-counting, and history and statistics (Hale, 1995). The BATAB system, which had to be mounted on a mainframe computer, also provided vendor lists, order record cards, edit listings, book histories, exception reports, invoice summaries, receiving, new titles and audit reports. Im-portantly, it provided a significant advancement on previous systems which had to be config-ured to local specifications, and which involved many hours of programming (Hale, 1995).
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ECommerce offers a wide range of benefits to customers and to businesses, including cost and time savings (Laudon and Laudon, 2007).
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EProcurement gives companies the ability to compare supplier prices, service levels, and product quality (Jaeger, 2011).
ESourcing automates contract lifecycle management (CIPS: Electronic Commerce and e-Business).