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.

Based on the overall flow of materials, companies can be seen as being composed of three primary processes: purchasing, manufacturing and distribution (Thawiwinyu and Laptaned, 2009). In the parlance of purchasing, direct procurement addresses all components and raw materials that are used in the manufacturing process of a finished product such as sheet metal, semiconductors and petrochemicals, whereas indirect procurement relates to products and services for Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO), and focuses on products and services that are neither a part of the end product, nor are resold directly (Puschmann and Alt, 2005).

For companies to remain cost-competitive in the market, they must reduce the costs of their components and materials by sourcing from least-cost suppliers. One method to achieve this is through open bidding via the Internet (Yu et al., 2008). This migration of procurement functions to the Internet is known as e-procurement. Scholars have defined e-procurement as an “Internet-based purchasing system that offers electronic purchase, ordering processing and enhanced administrative functions to buyers, suppliers (Panayiotou et al., 2004) and management” (Atkinson, 2007). In basic terms, e-procurement can be defined as “using Internet technology in the purchasing process” (Boer et al., 2002). e-Procurement is changing the way businesses purchase goods. Nowadays, since most products and services are procured using electronic data interchange and the Internet, the application of e-procurement is inevitable in both manufacturing and services (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2008). e-Procurement is gaining popularity in business practice and the benefits encourage its adoption in a variety of areas, including IT purchases. (Ronchi et al., 2010).

Supply Chain Management Journal, e-Procurement Implementation, Critical Analysis, Impact of Success Factors, e-Government Procurement, Research Methodology, Benefits of e-Procurement, e-Procurement in the Public Sector.