As the keynoter of a recent conference, I received some hard-hitting questions from the audience. The one that kept gnawing at me seemed simple at first. Nevertheless I went back to do my homework. The question: "What’s the difference between E-Procurement and E-Commerce?" A lot has changed in the last couple of years since the term E-Procurement was first coined to represent a subset of E-Commerce: "focused primarily on point-to-point ordering relationships with key suppliers". It’s time to revisit E-Procurement and understand what it means for Print.

Over the last three years the Internet has emerged as a critical channel for supply management activities. Businesses today are extending E-Procurement beyond controlling the purchases of office supplies and goods for maintenance to reap even bigger benefits when dealing with supply management of both direct and indirect goods and services. Even the sales function is becoming all about E-Procurement. Knowing how much is being purchased online is only part of the story. Understanding the impact on how this generates sales with these new kinds of buyers is crucial.

The latest Report on eBusiness that is conducted by NAPM (National Association of Purchasing Managers) and Forrester Research found that E-Procurement and the Internet remain an important part of supply management’s plans. Led by small-volume supply managers, more organizations achieve cost savings from purchasing on the Internet while large-volume buyers report the most significant changes from their processes. Over 70% of organizations use the Internet for RFP’s (i.e. Request for Proposals) and 20% of buyers use auctions. And it looks like there is no turning back. E-Procurement will continue to take on a larger role within supply management organizations by changing not only their processes but also how they interact with their suppliers. The numbers to prove it are starting to come in and they are compelling.

Print is no exception. Raine Research shows that in recent interviews with Procurement Executives with Global 2000 Corporations; it’s just a matter of "when" not "if" E-Procurement will eventually impact all types of print from books and catalogues to annual reports, sales collateral, and packaging.

The barricade to going full-blown E-Procurement has been the fact the print has always been viewed as a set of attributes, even by the customer. As buyers move away from seeing print as attributes and create print SKU’s, (i.e. stock keeping unit) the procurement of print will change dramatically. This is an important point. Once customers do the hard work to create print SKU’s or part numbers... like they do for office supplies, and direct materials... then it’s a fast slide to online ordering.

We believe the customers of print will radically change the way they buy print in the short term however, will be very slow to shift away from the tried-and-true print applications that have made them successful. In other words, the page counts will slowly decrease over time but the "price per page" will drop dramatically in the next two years due to streamlined ordering (i.e. E-Procurement) and excess inventory of capacity.

Within the next few years, E-Procurement will involve the complete transformation of the supply chain - everything from the sales process through to distribution. It will be a comprehensive, web-based, fully integrated relationship between customer and supplier enterprises. After doing some homework, we believe questioning what the difference between E-Procurement and E-Commerce is today may be irrelevant. The questions to answer are: "Is your customer’s technology getting ahead of your company’s technology?" and "How do you plan to respond to keep your customer coming back for more print?"