ISM & Forrester Research identify online direct-materials purchasing upsurge
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/1/2003 6:00:00 AM
A recent Institute for Supply Management (ISM)/Forrester Research Report on e-Business that tracks online activity indicates the percentage of direct materials organizations purchased via the Internet surpassed the percentage of indirect materials purchased using the Internet for the first time since the fall of 2000, when this report was first developed.
Survey respondents spent an average of 11.7 percent of their total direct materials spend using the Internet in Q2 2003, up 1.7 percent from Q1. Indirect materials spending remained flat at 11.0 percent.
"Large companies that procure more than $100 million per year also increased their use of online auctions," says Edith Kelly-Green, spokesperson for ISM and vice president and chief sourcing officer for FedEx. "Two of the main concerns keeping survey respondents from wider adoption of the Internet include the lack of supplier enablement, and integration with internal and external systems."
Other key findings include an increase in supplier collaboration, a rise in online requests-for-proposals; and an uptick in large companies' use of e-procurement tools.
