The Impact of the implementation of an application on the digitization of the purchasing department at an OEM in the context of the automotive industry

Abstract

Over the last few years, digitalization has been drawing increasing attention in the purchasing and supply management (PSM) field due to the necessity of a more connected ecosystem among businesses and in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. Since digitalizing Business processes can benefit companies by increasing the efficiency of their processes and enabling automation, by reducing the workload of administrative tasks to enabling better decision-making, digitalization represents a great business lever. In order to keep up with the market trends, companies are increasingly being required to proceed to an in-depth transformation of their business model, through finding the best practices within and outside in order to maximize their value creation. Which can be achieved through digitalization, as purchasing being an important function of supply chain management that is in charge of procuring products and services, thus it is primarily concerned with digitalization. Digitalization of the purchasing function aims to achieve lower costs with minimal supply chain risk; it puts into question the company’s overall sourcing strategy in order to ensure that the company’s requirements are being met making a disruption with the different practices that were previously spread in the purchasing field. In a competitive industry that is the automotive one, companies are constantly being challenged in order to keep up with the highly changing environment that they are operating in. since digitalization does no longer represent an advantage but more of an industry standard. This study aims to measure and assess the effect that the implementation of an application called TEM had on the purchasing department of an OEM company in its different sites in France and Morocco.   Keywords: digitization, purchasing, the automotive industry Classification JEL: D23, D33, F14  Paper type: Empirical researchOver the last few years, digitalization has been drawing increasing attention in the purchasing and supply management (PSM) field due to the necessity of a more connected ecosystem among businesses and in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. Since digitalizing Business processes can benefit companies by increasing the efficiency of their processes and enabling automation, by reducing the workload of administrative tasks to enabling better decision-making, digitalization represents a great business lever. In order to keep up with the market trends, companies are increasingly being required to proceed to an in-depth transformation of their business model, through finding the best practices within and outside in order to maximize their value creation. Which can be achieved through digitalization, as purchasing being an important function of supply chain management that is in charge of procuring products and services, thus it is primarily concerned with digitalization. Digitalization of the purchasing function aims to achieve lower costs with minimal supply chain risk; it puts into question the company’s overall sourcing strategy in order to ensure that the company’s requirements are being met making a disruption with the different practices that were previously spread in the purchasing field. In a competitive industry that is the automotive one, companies are constantly being challenged in order to keep up with the highly changing environment that they are operating in. since digitalization does no longer represent an advantage but more of an industry standard. This study aims to measure and assess the effect that the implementation of an application called TEM had on the purchasing department of an OEM company in its different sites in France and Morocco.   Keywords: digitization, purchasing, the automotive industry Classification JEL: D23, D33, F14  Paper type: Empirical researc