E-procurement

Electronic Procurement (also known as e-procurement) is a way of using the Internet to make it easier, faster, and less expensive for businesses to purchase the goods and services they require. While e-procurement is a general term that covers a wide assortment of techniques, such as reverse auctions, its overall goal is to streamline the purchasing process so businesses can focus more management time on earning revenue and serving customers. (EPIC)

PEPPOL

Pan European Public Procurement Online (PEPPOL). The vision of the project is that any company (incl. SMEs) in the EU can communicate electronically with any EU governmental institution for all procurement processes. This includes tendering, bidding, ordering and invoicing.

Links and material on PEPPOL project

ePractice presentation

eGovernment resource center

Industrial Services

Information and communication technology (ICT) is one of the major drivers for industrial businesses today. Internet, radio and satellite networks, mobile computers and phones as well as tracking technologies such as RFID free us from the confines of time and space. These new technologies have already offered great opportunities to redesign business processes and to restructure whole clusters of industries by enabling the development of new products and the delivery of new kinds of services and thereby challenging the old bases for competition. The introduction of new types of business models for technology-mediated services and working environments calls for more intensive risk management especially within knowledge intensive organizations and global supply chains. To succeed in this new era of global and mobile ICT applications we need more profound knowledge on how organizations can use the new kinds of tools for mutual benefit and how companies and networks of organizations can use them to offer more advanced services for sustainable competitive advantage. To face these challenges we need new theory, approaches and computer-based tools, i.e. we need new business technologies.

At the Helsinki School of Economics, the service science research program investigates how manufacturing companies are making the move towards service-based concepts. Objectives of the research project include:
- investigating what will be the service relationships and the emerging structural foundation for the network-based firms?
- examining the effective service arrangements between the buyer and the seller (institutional alignment for mutual value and market power, operational efficiency including global optimization, risk pooling and incentive mechanisms)
- examining the implications of the service shift to industry structures
- examining the prerequisites of the service focus

Bibliography on industrial services

Anderson, Eric T. (2002), "Sharing the Wealth: When Should Firms Treat Customers as Partners?," Management Science, 48 (8), 955-71.

Helander, Anton (2004), "Customer Case in System Business," Doctoral Dissertation at the Helsinki School of Economics, A:233.

Hill, T. P. (1977), "On Goods and Services," Review of Income and Wealth, 23 (4), 315-38.

Hill, Peter (1999), "Tangibles, intangibles and services: A new taxonomy for the classification of output," Canadian Journal of Economics, 32 (2), 426-46.

Kela, Ali (1993), "Assessment and Coordination of Manufacturing Capabilities, Case Studies in Finnish Corporations," Doctoral Dissertation at the Helsinki School of Economics, A:91.

Laukkanen (2007). "On the integrative role of information systems in organizations : observations and a proposal for assessment in the broader context of integrative devices," Doctoral Dissertation at the Helsinki School of Economics, A-294.

Oliva, Rogelio and Robert Kallenberg (2003), "Managing the Transition from Products to Services," International Journal of Service Industry Management, 14 (2), 160-72.

Penttinen (2007). "Transition From Products To Services Within The Manufacturing Business," Doctoral Dissertation at the Helsinki School of Economics, A-314.

Penttinen, E. and J. Palmer (2007), "Improving Firm Positioning Through Enhanced Offerings and Buyer-Seller Relationships," Industrial Marketing Management, 36, pp. 552-564.

Penttinen, E. and T. Saarinen (2005), "Opportunities and Challenges for B2b Industrial Manufacturing Firms - Case SKF," in Managing Business in a Multi-Channel World: Success Factors for E-Business, T. Saarinen and M. Tinnila and A. Tseng, Eds.: Idea Group Publishing.

Quinn, James Brian (1992), Intelligent Enterprise: A Knowledge and Service Based Paradigm for Industry. New York: Free Press.

Sarpola (2007). "Information Systems in Buyer-Seller Collaboration," Doctoral Dissertation at the Helsinki School of Economics, A-293.

Stremersch, Stefan, Stefan Wuyts, and Ruud Frambach (2001), "The Purchasing of Full-Service Contracts: An Exploratory Study within the Industrial Maintenance Market," Industrial Marketing Management, 30, 1-12.

Tinnila, Markku and Ari P J Vepsalainen (1995), "A Model for Strategic Repositioning of Service Processes," International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6 (4), 57-80.

Vargo, Stephen L. and Robert F. Lusch (2004), "Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing," Journal of Marketing, 68 (1), 1-17.

Wise, Richard and Peter Baumgartner (1999), "Go Downstream: The New Profit Imperative in Manufacturing," Harvard Business Review, 77 (5), 133-41.

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Contents

E-procurement

PEPPOL

Links and material on PEPPOL project

Industrial Services

Bibliography on industrial services