Evolution of Electronic Procurement in Egypt

Emerging information and communication technology is driving transformation and change in the cyberspace. Speed, competition and globalization are key factors for development and growth in the reengineered global business environment where electronic business promises to grow in volume helping the digital economy to mature and dominate. This chapter demonstrates the case of an Internet startup that capitalized on the opportunities presented by the information economy. Since its establishment in 2001, the business2business platform of speedsend.com pioneered the electronic procurement industry in Egypt through a customized Web-based platform. The transformation of classical emerging markets challenges into opportunities has been a critical success factor that related to all building blocks of the business venture including technology infrastructure deployment, community awareness, information availability, and cultural adaptation of the online business amongst others. The owners of Speedsend. com developed a set of models to drive down procurement costs while providing a practical and reliable electronic solution that can boost enterprise procurement efficiency and effectiveness and that could be appealing to a community that is known for being resistant to change and not really mature in terms of information technology adoption, diffusion and adaptation. The case focuses on the models deployed by speedsend.com demonstrating the internal and external challenges faced and lessons learnt.

A Proposed Template for the Evaluation of Web Design Strategies

This chapter is the result of a two years effort to design a template aiming at standardizing, as much as such a task is feasible, the evaluation of Web sites. It is the product of a few publications in international conferences and journals. A thorough review of the international literature on the subject led the authors to conclude there is a very large number of opinions, thoughts and criteria from different professionals involved, directly or indirectly, with the process of designing a good Web site. To make matters even more complicated there are a number of different terms used by various scholars, scientists and professionals around the world that often refer to similar, if not the same, attributes of a Web site. However, it seems that all these differences could boil down to a systematic approach, here called evaluation template, of 53 points that the design strategies of the Web sites should be checked against. This template was tested on a significant number (232) of Web sites of Greek companies and proved it can be used to evaluate the quality of Web sites not only by technology experts but by non-experts alike. The evaluation template, suggested here, is by no means the solution to the problem of standardizing the process of evaluating a Web site but looking at other work done on the subject worldwide it is a step ahead.

Electronic Commerce Reality in Tunisia

This chapter has as an aim the identification of the present reality of the e-commerce activity in Tunisia and the challenges its faces. After giving an overview on the e-commerce birth in the country, it focuses on two distinct experiences: First, the e-commerce transactions via the Tunisian Post Office (known as the ONP) and secondly the e-commerce operations via the Banking Association (known as the SMT). While exploring the general scheme of the two different techniques notably concerning the relation with the merchants’ commercial Websites (CWS), it gives statistics related to the evolution of transactions in this field. We depart from that point to discuss the general situation of the Tunisian e-commerce activity, to explore the problems it faces and to give potential solutions for its real expansion and development in the country. In this regard, we believe that the spread of use of bank cards and other forms of electronic payments would make citizens used to those forms and would constitute therefore the real takeoff point of the e-commerce activity.

Guidelines for Preparing Organizations in Developing Countries for Standards-Based B2B

B2B development has been faster in the developed world comparing to developing countries. This chapter proposes a “tool” for managing CSF in B2B settings. The tool is in the form of guidelines, which are concrete and detailed, and which enable a more clear view of actions needed during the preparation stage of B2B projects. We argue that developing countries seldom have the luxury of affording failure in new B2B ventures, but that they instead must learn from the mistakes already made by the developed countries. Thus, our proposed guidelines are based on an existing framework and experiences made in the developed countries. The guidelines are furthermore discussed with regard to the specific problems and conditions that developing countries face. Much work still remains, and problems still must be resolved. From a global perspective, this is important for all of us!

An Economic Framework for the Assessment of E-Commerce in Developing Countries

This study presents a theoretically-based model for economic analysis of electronic commerce in developing countries. The Porter diamond model is adopted for proper economic examination of the factors that affect e-commerce. The model not only captures the factors as the driving forces of e-commerce, but also facilitates the assessment of e-commerce and identification of the global competitive advantages of the firms. The new model can be used as a framework for better policymaking by the public and private sectors and to predict changes in the rapidly expanding e-commerce in the global environment, especially in developing countries.

E-Governance in Uganda

E-governance is a powerful tool for bringing about change to government processes in the developing world. It operates at the crossroads between Information and Communication Technology and government processes and can be divided into three overlapping domains: e-administration, e-services and e-society. To succeed, e-governance must be firmly embedded in existing government processes; supported, both politically and technically, by the governments; and provide users with reasons to use these on-line domains. To maximize the impact, process change must be part and parcel of e-governance. This chapter presents and evaluates the ongoing DistrictNet e-governance programme in Uganda which was set up in 2002 to provide transparency at the local government level and improve the provision of public information using ICT. DistrictNet’s achievements are presented and evaluated according to the criteria of the three domains of e-governance and their impact on government processes. On the basis of this evaluation, we elicit lessons that can be used to guide smaller programmes at the local government level in the developing world.

Identifying Factors for Lack of E-Commerce in Developing Countries

The past few years have seen a rise in the number of companies’ embracing e-commerce technologies in developing countries and the volume of e-commerce has been growing. However, as compared to developed nations, developing countries still have been lacking in e-commerce. This chapter identifies some of the reasons that may be responsible for lack of e-commerce in developing countries. For the scope of the study, we have limited developing countries to China, India, Indonesia, Philippines and Sri Lanka. The study identifies factors at the macro level to understand why the adoption of e-commerce in developing countries has been not taking off as expected.

E-Commerce in Developing Economies

This chapter undertakes a meta-analysis of the published literature on e-commerce in developing economies (DEs). The aim is to take stock of the literature, identify enduring research themes, classify the existing work based on such themes and review the theoretical and conceptual approaches used. The analysis covers 245 articles published between 1993 and 2006 in 76 different journals on electronic commerce, information systems, global information technology, development and developing countries. The findings indicate that the research area is rapidly growing and relatively well-spread across the assessment of e-commerce potential and its adoption and implementation issues in DEs. We make a case for future research to focus on developing a broad development perspective of e-commerce benefits and a strategic understanding of how to achieve and sustain these benefits. The chapter thus serves both as a synthesis of current research, and as a road map providing future directions for both academics and practitioners.

Mobile-Commerce Intention to Use via SMS

With the widespread use of mobile phones in the Arab world, companies, including banks, are offering different communication channels for their customers to access their services. Among these channels, this study investigates the level of intention to use SMS for banking transactions. To reach this objective the study compares the explanatory power of six technology adoption models to predict SMS intention to use. These models are: the theory of reasoned action, the theory of panned behavior, the technology acceptance model, the decomposed theory of planed behavior, Nyvseen’s et al., (2005) model, and a new model proposed by the authors. A convenient sample of 171 users in Kuwait was used to compare these models using regression analysis. Results show that the decomposed theory of planned behavior has the largest explanatory power, followed by the new proposed model. Results also reveal that the technology acceptance model and the theory of reasoned action have the least explanatory power. These results provide researchers and practitioners with some insights on the adoption of SMS. For researchers, such insights would be useful in understanding the adoption phenomenon, while for practitioners, such insights would provide some basis for adopting certain policies to promote adoption.

Cultural Differences, Information Technology Infrastructure, and E-Commerce Behavior

E-commerce has been a widely used mean to purchase goods and services all over the world. This study investigates the role of cultural differences and information technology infrastructure on usage of e-commerce in developed and developing countries. As shown in Genis-Gruber and Tas (2007) cultural differences are expected to play a major role on e-commerce behavior especially in developing economies. In order to identify cultural differences, we use Hofstede’s classification. We classify the countries according to these indices and their technological and economic development. We make several cultural comparisons among various countries and we empirically investigate whether these cultural differences play a significant role on e-commerce behavior. We implement OLS and fixed effect regression methods. Using dummy variables and interaction variables, we estimate the effect of cultural differences on e-commerce purchases and other e-commerce variables. Besides the effects of cultural factors, we also investigate the effects of information infrastructure and education level of the countries. We conclude that cultural dimensions play an incremental role on e-commerce and relationship between infrastructure and e-commerce. We control for several other factors like information infrastructure and education level, and use different econometric techniques to achieve our results.