A Next-Generation Digital Procurement Workspace Focusing on

Information Integration, Automation, Analytics, and Sustainability

Jan-David Stütz1 , Oliver Karras2 , Allard Oelen2 , and Sören Auer2

1 Robert
Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany
2 TIB- Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, Hannover, Germany
[email protected], {oliver.karras, allard.oelen, soeren.auer}@tib.eu

Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Procurement, Automation, Analytics, Sustainability

arXiv:2303.03882v2 [cs.CY] 22 Mar 2023

Abstract: Recent events such as wars, sanctions, pandemics, and climate change have shown the importance of proper
supply network management. A key step in managing supply networks is procurement. We present an ap-
proach for realizing a next-generation procurement workspace that aims to facilitate resilience and sustain-
ability. To achieve this, the approach encompasses a novel way of information integration, automation tools
as well as analytical techniques. As a result, the procurement can be viewed from the perspective of the envi-
ronmental impact, comprising and aggregating sustainability scores along the supply chain. We suggest and
present an implementation of our approach, which is meanwhile used in a global Fortune 500 company. We
further present the results of an empirical evaluation study, where we performed in-depth interviews with the
stakeholders of the novel procurement platform to validate its adequacy, usability, and innovativeness.

1 Introduction related data are rarely present, while sustainability is

sometimes completely lacking in existing tools.
Today (2023), twenty-seven years are left until the Well-known Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
goals of the Paris Agreement have to be reached. Fa- systems and specialized procurement applications
cilitating resilience and sustainability in supply net- provide solutions. However, as Pekša and Gra-
works in procurement can contribute to accomplish- bis (Pekša and Grabis, 2018) argue, customizing ERP
ing the set goals. Recent events, such as wars, sanc- systems are cost and time intensive. Particularly in
tions, pandemics, and catastrophes, show even more the face of rapidly occurring supplier or entire supply
the crucial role of a resilient and sustainable supply chain failures, rapid development and adaptation of
chain. Some known supply chains that were consid- these critical systems is essential for driving compet-
ered stable are now disrupted. Failing suppliers can- itive advantage and improving business performance.
not be used any longer and must be exchanged with In addition, existing day-to-day operations involve
new, more stable, or environmentally friendlier ones. complex manual processes, lack collaboration, are
Current inflation pressures procurement and supply error-prone and time-consuming, do not provide new
chain management (SCM) even more. Prices and insights, and do not support decision-making (Pekša
product quality should ideally be stable, which can and Grabis, 2018; Tarigan et al., 2021).
be a difficult challenge since Europe’s raw materials In this work, we propose a customized Digital
and energy costs are rising (Ari et al., 2022). Procurement Workspace (DPW) that includes a Pro-
At the Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch), there is cur- curement Information Space (PIS), a Procurement
rently no central digital procurement tool that com- Automation and Analytics Space (PAAS), and a Sus-
bines data silos and provides valuable features in the tainable Sourcing Space (SSS). The application and
day-to-day work of purchasers regarding information spaces aim to facilitate a faster, more supportive, re-
integration, automation, analytics, and sustainability. silient, and sustainable procurement process. The PIS
Various tools are used alongside the entire procure- provides personalized, automatically aggregated, and
ment process, which increases the complexity even summarized purchasing- and user-relevant informa-
for simple tasks. Purchasers have to pull external tion to support purchasers in their daily decisions, to
and internal information. Automation of simple and keep them up-to-date, and to allow a quick overview
low-risk tasks and analytics of various supply chain- of the most relevant information such as announce-
ments. The PAAS provides features to access ana- on ontology learning including a basic workflow (Ma
lyzed or aggregated data. PAAS also highlights key and Molnár, 2019). Pekša and Grabis (Pekša and Gra-
data and allows triggering bots to reduce human-to- bis, 2018) reviewed existing research on the decision-
human interaction as well as to automize low-risk but making capabilities of ERP systems. They identified
time-intensive work. While the SSS provides analyt- different approaches for integrating decision-making
ical features, it focuses entirely on environmental im- logic for companies. Since decision-making tech-
pact, risk detection, and overall sustainability by, for niques should be modifiable, scalable, and portable,
example, providing a sustainability score. they suggest decoupling decision-making logic from
We defined overall goals so that the DPW could ERP systems. This decoupling enables the usage of
solve the current problems. Based on those goals, advanced decision-making techniques. Implementing
concrete requirements are inferred to ensure that the decision-making directly into existing ERP systems is
required functionality is implemented. After the im- seen as inflexible and cost-intensive, leading to com-
plementation, in-depth expert interviews were con- petitive disadvantages.
ducted and analyzed using Mayring’s qualitative con- In the last years, many articles regarding SCM
tent analysis to evaluate the developed application, and procurement are published. For example, Re-
ensure that the defined goals and set requirements jeb et al. (Rejeb et al., 2018) outline the potential of
were met, and discover novel use cases and bene- new technologies like Big Data analysis, Automatiza-
fits. As the interview outcomes indicate, the three tion and Robotics, IoT, and Blockchain Technology
key advantages of our approach are increased trans- in procurement-related work since the entire supply
parency, efficiency, and decision-making. However, chain has already and will continue to have techno-
this work outlines further dependencies and prerequi- logical shifts. Nevertheless, the article does not fo-
sites of benefits. For example, centralization is a criti- cus on ERP systems. However, Tarigan et al. (Tarigan
cal prerequisite for increased transparency and collab- et al., 2021) investigate and show enhanced ERP’s im-
oration. Based on those findings, recommendations pact on firm performance through green SCM, sup-
going beyond the presentation of the concepts and the plier integration, and internal integration. The study
developed applications are provided. suggests that a company must improve productivity,
Paper structure: section 2 presents related work. efficiency, speed, and services to innovate and sur-
In section 3, we present our approach and its imple- vive in the market, which results in upgrading and
mentation. We present our interview study and its re- adjusting the ERP system. This suggestion, in turn,
sults in section 4. In section 5, we interpret and dis- leads to customizations at the ERP systems that are
cuss our findings before we conclude in section 6. regarding Grabis (Grabis, 2019) time-consuming and
cost-intensive. Nevertheless, this study also suggests
that fit-gaps (differences between provided function-
2 Related Work ality of the ERP system and the company’s needs)
should be closed. As another gap, literature often in-
Applications that support procurement are not new: dicates a need to consider a supplier’s green perfor-
Odoo, Precoro, and Prokuria are a few examples of mance more instead of only focusing on the classi-
systems that provide typical procurement functional- cal purchasing criteria. Igarashi et al. (Igarashi et al.,
ity. Besides those tools and some features contained 2015) conceptualize the inclusion of green (in terms
in ERP systems, there is also an increasing rise of lit- of environmental- and climate-friendly) criteria into
erature regarding SCM, public (green) procurement, the supplier selection process in public procurement
and different technologies supporting those topics. since purchasers tend to ignore those impacts. Includ-
ing the environmental and climate impacts in the pro-
curement process can be done when all relevant data
2.1 SCM and Procurement are gathered and provided to the corresponding pur-
chasers. To achieve that, Barrad et al. (Barrad et al.,
The majority of legacy ERP systems are heteroge- 2020) focus in their study on emerging technologies
neous systems that different software companies de- and concepts and their ability to improve procurement
velop. Ma and Molná (Ma and Molnár, 2019, p. 231) operations. It suggests that classical Big Data ap-
mention that it is a “big challenge for organizations proaches like analytics and complex event processing
to develop and implement centralized and integrated can be explored and adapted to already present pro-
management systems based on their existing legacy curement processes to help reduce costs. The work of
ERP systems to respond to the dynamic business envi- AlNuaimi et al. (AlNuaimi et al., 2021) also investi-
ronment with agility.” They suggest the usage of on- gates Big Data analytics and procurement. Their work
tologies and propose an integration framework based
determines that digital procurement does not influ- of research on the investigated topic. Appolloni et
ence green digital procurement but nevertheless has a al.(Appolloni et al., 2014), on the other hand, indicate
significant impact on the Big Data analytics capabili- that an increase in literature is recognizable. Since
ties of the company. Furthermore, Big Data analytics Appolloni et al. (Appolloni et al., 2014) considered
as a mediator between digital procurement and envi- only the private sector until 2013 and the other two
ronmental digital procurement leads to a positive im- articles only the public sector until 2017 and 2018,
pact on environmental digital procurement. In other it shows either a decrease regarding the topic, the
words, this work describes the impact of Big Data on different handling of the corresponding sector done
a purchaser’s decision-making process. by researchers, or a subjective view on the amount
A further improvement in a purchaser’s perfor- of published articles. Nevertheless, the work of
mance can be reached with more user-friendly dash- Masudin et al. (Masudin et al., 2022) presents a
boards. Magnus and Rudra (Magnus and Rudra, peak and further increase of literature regarding
2019) discovered a gap between theory and prac- green procurement for both the private and the public
tice regarding the availability of a user-friendly dash- sectors in 2018. Considering the indicated increase
board, where the dashboard design is based on princi- in literature and the more emerging awareness of
ples of cognition. The authors claim that dashboards society for sustainability, research will probably
can facilitate transparency and that improved dash- continue focusing even more on green procurement.
boards enhance decision-making in a supply chain.
They also indicate that if the information is extracted To the best of our knowledge, procurement re-
and displayed conducive, users have a faster overview search mainly focuses on public procurement, while
of needed data. It should be of interest to compa- the focus on supply chain-related topics often com-
nies to create better applications with the goal of user- bines topics of ERP systems, their integration, and
friendliness since that will enable employees to work their impact. Researchers often publish studies re-
more efficiently along the supply chain. Another po- garding the impact of new technologies, especially
tential obstacle to enabling Big Data analytics is in- Big Data, in procurement and SCM. At the same time,
formation silos. To break down the information silos researchers often combine Big Data with work that
along the supply chain, Zhan and Tan (Zhan and Tan, fosters green and sustainable supply chains.
2020) propose, in their work, an integrated infrastruc- In summary, it seems like current research lacks in
ture in order to enhance supply chain performance. defining requirements for digital procurement appli-
Even though there are still obstacles left, the work of cations, conceptually describing such an application
Handfield et al. (Handfield et al., 2019) predicts ma- at all, as well as in evaluating novel and innovative ap-
jor shifts in the sourcing and supply chain technol- plications in industrial settings. This is why our work
ogy environment in the next years. As proposed in introduces requirements that outline and summarize
some other literature, fostering collaboration between the set goals. We further present concepts based
logistics and purchasing departments responsible for on the specified requirements. Current research, for
managing the supply chain makes sense. (Ilie-Zudor example, the work of AlNuaimi et al., Grabis, and
et al., 2014). Hecht and Hofbauer (Hecht and Hof- Tarigan et al., also influenced the motivation, con-
bauer, 2022) expect potentials of up to 15 percent that cepts, and implementation. Evaluating the developed
are not realized in procurement, even though strate- application with in-depth expert interviews and the
gic procurement decisions achieve competitive advan- resulting suggestions and interpretations enrich this
tages and guarantee a company’s success. work further. In the end, the developed DPW should
Literature reviews provide a strong outline of the be comparable to other procurement applications and
research direction. The comparison of literature re- ERP systems. Thus a similar comparison as done by
views regarding green procurement done by us (Stütz Gomez Llanez et al. (Gomez Llanez et al., 2020) can
et al., 2023) using the Open Research Knowledge be achieved. Gomez Llanez et al. (Gomez Llanez
Graph (ORKG) shows the relevance of the topic for et al., 2020) compared the ERP systems Odoo and
both the private and the public sectors. Significantly, Openbravo while describing the tools in general, their
the findings of the compared articles indicate the features, and technical details.
consideration of user behavior and suggest a critical
analysis of the current priority for monetary factors 2.2 Procurement and ERP Systems
versus sustainability while purchasing. The arti-
cles of Sönnichsen and Clement (Sönnichsen and Different software applications support purchasers
Clement, 2020) and Adjei-Bamfo et al. (Adjei-Bamfo already during the procurement process. Precoro,
et al., 2019) indicate missing literature and a lack Odoo, and Prokuria are such well-known and estab-
lished applications. In the following, we briefly in- ity of allowing communication between suppliers and
troduce these applications to give an overview on the purchasers based on the internal message system.
current state of procurement applications.
The presented applications claim to work well in
Precoro’s1 goal for its purchasing tool is to enable
small to medium-sized companies and only if the en-
transparency and collaboration while eliminating dis-
tire procurement process is done inside the applica-
order from the procurement process. Therefore, the
tion. Customized features can not be easily added
tool focuses on procurement and is meant for the pur-
and developed, and a further dependency arises as a
chasing department of a small to medium-sized com-
company. Bosch is a company with distributed de-
pany. Since the first step of the procurement process is
partments and already existing solutions for various
the Request of Quotation (RfQ) the applications entry
business cases. For this reason, a transfer to such an
point is the RfQ-related view. There, a section of the
application does not make sense. Furthermore, the
created RfQs and all relevant information and actions,
presented solutions miss general features or possibili-
like exporting, filtering, searching, and expanding, are
ties for customizations regarding information integra-
provided. As soon as an RfQ is approved or rejected,
tion, analytics, and automation mainly because some
a notification as an email is triggered. Through this
of the company’s data is deeply embedded in a tech-
email, the notified user can directly access the next
nological ecosystem. Additionally, aspects of sustain-
step of the procurement process, where a user can ei-
ability are not taken into account at all. For this rea-
ther place a purchase order or create a Request for
son, among others, this work presents a proposal that
Proposals. One prominent feature of Precocor is the
solves the mentioned problems.
creation of customized charts, e.g., to show the pur-
chase order based on the supplier or the department.
Odoo2 is considered an ERP system, but pro-
vides features to support a company’s procurement 3 Approach
processes. When selecting the purchasing view, all
relevant details and actions like filtering, grouping, Requirements are a prerequisite to building an appli-
searching, and assigning tasks of created RfQs are cation. Therefore, we first introduce the goals fol-
displayed. Creating further RfQs and bills is possi- lowed by the application’s requirements. The actual
ble, which can then be downloaded as PDFs or shared implementation of the containing spaces is described
directly with colleagues. In general, Odoo provides as a result of the goals and the concrete requirements.
fewer features to support the procurement process. Thus the application can be evaluated and validated
However, as an ERP system, it also covers other busi- based on the set requirements.
ness areas like human resources or marketing that are
irrelevant to this work (Gomez Llanez et al., 2020). 3.1 Requirements
Another procurement application that allows the
management of RfQs and suppliers is Prokuria3 . In Among other things, requirements specify and con-
comparison to the other applications, it also provides straints the functionality of an application. Therefore
features regarding auctions. Starting the application requirements are of value for other managers or de-
leads to a customizable dashboard view that displays velopers who also want to adapt the concepts of this
different kinds of customizable and interactable so- work to their implementation or existing system. An-
called widgets, like a table that shows only the cur- other advantage is that stakeholders can easily verify
rently active RfQs or a table containing all suppliers. requirements, and a further evaluation of the system
Prokuria provides different kinds of detailed views, can provide meaningful new insights (Glinz, 2007).
for example, for suppliers and events that contain An application usually reflects a vision and there-
RfQs and auctions. Since suppliers can directly place fore has some goals. Five domain experts in the pur-
bids on open and active RfQs, they automatically get a chasing and business development field have been in-
notification via email if they are selected. Purchasers terviewed to figure out the goals of the DPW. They
can compare the suppliers’ bids in a comparison view are all employed at Bosch and responsible for the
that offers visual representation in the form of a chart, management and/or development of digital products.
where a scoring system is provided. A report can be Through the interpretation of these interviews, the vi-
viewed and downloaded to analyze the entire gener- sions of the applications could be built, which signif-
ated data. Another prominent feature is the possibil- icantly reflect the following goals.
1 https://precoro.com/ 1. Enabling digitalization and acceleration of digital
2 https://odoo.com/ processes that were previously not digital or only
3 https://prokuria.com/ partially digital.
 2. Display aggregated data and allow interaction The User Interface (UI) handles user logins via
with them. Single-Sign-On and then allows the fetching of user-
3. Allow parallel work and collaboration between relevant, supplier-relevant, and/or material group4 -
colleagues and also departments. relevant data. This way, the separation of concerns
is granted. Other views are, for example, the news
4. Create knowledge transfer in terms of trans- feed and the admin dashboard.
parency between departments and colleagues. Besides the main features contained and described
Since those goals are difficult to verify, more con- in the corresponding spaces, more minor features will
crete requirements are inferred. The requirements only be mentioned and not described in detail. Those
were specified following the template for require- are, for example, filtering and searching of data, sup-
ments by The SOPHISTs (TheSophists, 2016) and are pliers, material groups, and users, favoring news, sup-
summarized in the sequel: pliers, and links, downloading tables, and showing
context help for new hires. It is possible to adjust the
1. The DPW shall be able to show user-relevant data, application’s layout in widget sizes and positions to
information (clustered, aggregated, and summa- allow a personalized view. Additionally, users can
rized news), and tasks. switch between the user-, team5 -, and alias-view6 .
2. The DPW shall be able to show aggregated data Some widgets can be seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2.
that are not only maintained by the user’s depart- Figure 3, on the other hand, shows the implemented
ment. features of each space, the different views, and the
3. The DPW shall be able to allow collaboration with minor functionalities in a five-pillar model.
all colleagues that uses the application.
4. The DPW shall be able to allow working on pro-
cesses that were not digital before.
5. The DPW shall be able to provide analytical eval-
uations in the form of calculations as well as
through visual representations.
6. The DPW shall be able to provide clustered as
well as searchable and filterable data.
7. The DPW shall be able to be personalized for ev-
ery user.
8. The DPW shall be able to break down the supply
chain for all relevant products.
9. The DPW shall be able to offer potential new in-
sights based on analyzed data.
10. The DPW shall be able to automate low-risk pro-
cesses.

3.2 Implementation
Figure 1: Overview of open auctions of a purchaser and the
We implemented the requirements in an application total purchase order volumes in Euro.
that includes three main concepts: Procurement In-
formation Space, Procurement Analytics and Automa-
tion Space, and Sustainable Sourcing Space. To en- 3.2.1 Procurement Information Space
able these three spaces, the application consists of
multiple import jobs that fetch data from different The Procurement Information Space provides all
data silos. Those silos can also be from other depart- needed information regarding news, the latest posts,
ments and are not only maintained by the purchasing community updates, and announcements. It repre-
department. The imported raw data is aggregated, an-
alyzed, and interpreted before being stored in a single 4 A material group, e.g., screws and springs, categorizes
database. In this way, we can fetch data faster, and materials with the same attributes.
5 The team-view also shows data from team members.
reduce the number of on-the-fly calculations.
6 The alias-view allows seeing data from other users.
 2. Supplier-relevant data like RfQs, auctions, and
contracts belonging to the selected supplier
3. Material group-relevant data like RfQs and auc-
tions for the selected material groups
The structured data is mainly displayed in a table
view, as can be seen in Figure 1 (widget names “Total
Purchase Order Volume” and “Supplier Auctions”),
but for a faster overview of some widgets, a chart view
is the default view, as can be seen in Figure 2 (“Total
Purchase Order Volume” and “Supplier RfQs”). The
chart view naturally cannot provide the same richness
of details as the table view, but highlights the most
important values, like statuses. In contrast, the ta-
ble view additionally provides further interaction. In
this way, procurement-relevant data is updatable from
the responsible user. Besides a graphical summariza-
tion of procurement-relevant data, users can also trig-
ger procurement-relevant bots in trivial and/or low-
risk tasks and processes. Those aim, for example, to
Figure 2: Overview of total purchase order volumes (top), reduce human-to-human interaction regarding nego-
and all RfQs related to the selected supplier (bottom).
tiating low-risk volumes of materials. Another use
sents a central point of information gathering and case is the bundling of RfQs across different depart-
aims to keep users up-to-date and well-educated in ments. Using these and other bots saves time and
their profession. Various structured and unstructured money since actual work is automatized and volumes
data sources are accessed to automatically collect, ag- measured in Euro are optimized. Other features of
gregate, and summarize their content to provide all the PAAS support the decision-making of purchasers
the user- and purchasing-relevant information. Af- since they provide, for example, a supplier rating
ter an automatic summarization, the information is based on different well-maintained characteristics, a
clustered and provided in natural language to a user. forecasting of purchasing volumes, and a material
Even though there can be different data sources with group share that indicates the share of each supplier
nearly the same content, those are considered and for the selected material groups. Improving trans-
handled the same way to ensure the validity of the parency is achieved by breaking down complex cross-
information so the PIS can act like a single point of department processes while highlighting the current
truth. Data sources for news, posts, community up- state of the processes and the actual task logged-in
dates, announcements, and drop-off points to other users have to fulfill.
tools are configurable and provide even more infor-
3.2.3 Sustainable Sourcing Space
mation. While interacting with the features of the
PIS (for example, the news feed), the information Transparency regarding environmental and risk im-
gets more and more personalized but also considers pact, as well as fostering a sustainable supply chain,
purchasing-relevant news based on team members’ is the main subject of the SSS. Therefore, this space
suggestions and reading history. The PIS aims to im- monitors the environmental and climate impacts of
prove decision-making and time-saving as new infor- actual materials, products, and suppliers. In this way,
mation could lead to better and faster decisions. purchasers can directly see the impact of their sourc-
ing decision. The SSS automatically gathers informa-
3.2.2 Procurement Analytics and Automation
tion and data on suppliers and their products from in-
Space
ternal and external sources to calculate a transparent
The PAAS allows users to access, analyze and interact so-called sustainable score. As a result, we can re-
with procurement-relevant data like open RfQs, auc- duce manual research of purchasers and supply chain
tions, and many more. All that data is divided into experts. This sustainable score can trigger alerts since
three focus groups: a potential risk in the supply is detected or suggests
materials or products from different, more sustain-
1. User-relevant data like open RfQs, auctions, and able suppliers. Generally, the sustainable score ex-
contracts of the logged-in user ists in four stages but concentrates either on Corpo-
 Procurement
Application

User View Team View Alias View

Information User Supplier Material Group Sustainable Sourcing

dynamic information related information related information related information related

Posts Projects Certificates Top Parent MG Share Environmental Impact
News Action Plan Measures Company Share Sustainable Score
performance related
Community Updates My Suppliers General Information External Product Chain
Auctions
Announcements Contracts Supplier Hierachy
RfQs action related
Contracts
static performance related Bundling Bot
action related
...
Bookmarks Auctions
Negotiation Bot
Links RfQs performance related
Bundling Bot
Auctions
action related
RfQs
Activities
Financial Ratings
Volume

action related
Negotiation Bot

User Management | Role Management | Feature Handling | Alias Function | Panel Personalization | Context Help | Excel Export |
Search | Filter | Charts | Notifications

Figure 3: This figure illustrates the Digital Procurement Workspace. The left pillar represents the PIS, the three in the middle
the PAAS, and the right one the SSS. The top indicates the different views. The bottom lists all fundamental functionalities.

rate Carbon Footprint (CCF) or Product Carbon Foot- sions of current products can be reduced, the com-
print (PCF). The first stage is the monetary CCF ap- pany’s reputation can be increased, and, as Valbuena
proach. In this approach, the CO2 emissions are ob- and Mandojana (Valbuena-Hernandez and Ortiz-de
tained based on the responsible revenue of a sup- Mandojana, 2022) describe, effective and sustainable
plier. For example, if the Anonymous Company is strategic partnerships can be achieved.
responsible for 10% of a supplier’s revenue, it also
obtains 10% of its CO2 emissions. The second CCF
approach is based on the determined CO2 emissions 4 Evaluation
for different sectors done by a third party. So exter-
nal databases are accessed to retrieve data about the
We conducted several interviews to evaluate the de-
CO2 emissions if, e.g., steal-related products are pur-
veloped application. The interviews aimed to analyze
chased from a specific supplier. The third approach
whether the requirements and overall goals were ful-
is also based on third parties and external databases.
filled, and the expected benefits were obtained.
There, the determined emissions for specific products
are taken from such databases. In this third stage, the
PCF is calculated, which also applies to the last stage. 4.1 Study Design
There, the actual emissions measured by the supplier
are communicated and taken for further CO2 emis- To verify that the introduced requirements are cor-
sions reporting. In general, there is a focus only on rectly implemented in the application, qualitative and
CO2 emissions. Other environmental- and climate- quantitative analysis in the form of expert interviews
relevant values are represented in CO2 equivalents. has been done. The interviews were held after the
As a result of the sustainable score and the entire SSS, launch of the first version of the DPW. The experts
the supply chain should be more resilient, less prone have been asked about their experiences a purchaser
to stoppages, and more environment-friendly. This makes while interacting with the developed applica-
way, the goals for the overall purchasing strategy can tion that contains the described concepts. First, they
be achieved more quickly, and the time for finding are asked about the benefits of each concept. Then
a fitting supplier is reduced. Additionally, the emis- the interview changed to a quantitative manner, and
the experts could choose between different predefined
answers regarding the time savings for each concept.
The same has then been done regarding decision-
making support. After that, the interviews changed
again to a qualitative manner to summarize the main
benefits of the application and to give the experts a
chance to say anything about the DPW the interviewer
had not asked for.

4.2 Sample
In total, ten experts were interviewed. Two of them
are women, and eight are men. The experts are all
employed at Bosch and have different job roles like
product owner, department lead, sustainability expert, Figure 4: Number of answers regarding time saving.
junior and senior purchaser, and innovation manager.
The interview showed that most experts could answer
mostly without any counter questions. Nine of the
ten interviews were valid, and all interviewees had
the same interviewer and the same interview style,
and all interviews were conducted online, while nine
were held in German and one in English. One inter-
view could not be considered since the interviewee
struggled with answering the questions and wanted to
avoid the interview in general.

4.3 Data Analyses

The interview transcripts were, according to Mayring
(Mayring, 2000), answer-by-answer summarized, an-
alyzed, and further categorized. This way, various Figure 5: Number of answers regarding support.
categories have been found. Using Mayrings meth-
ods, the summarization continues until statements can For the three concepts, the weighting and occa-
be generalized and further clustered so that categories sionally the benefits as a whole differ. The PIS mainly
can be combined (Mayring, 2000). As a result, each increases the purchasing experience regarding scout-
category is defined by a definition statement. To com- ing new suppliers and day-to-day workflows, result-
pare the categories in their importance, they have ing in increased efficiency, which five of the inter-
been counted. The description of the complete cod- viewed experts noted. Increased efficiency for a pur-
ing scheme is beyond the scope of this paper, but the chaser means more suppliers can be contracted man-
emerging categories are presented in the results sec- ually and with better preparation which, based on the
tion. The quantitative part of the interview is han- experts, leads to better results in Euro.
dled differently. The answers to each question regard- On the other hand, seven of the experts noted that
ing time-saving and support in decision-making are PAAS mainly leads to optimization, while six experts
counted and presented in the next subsection. see increased efficiency in, for example, sourcing, ne-
gotiation, and contracting. However, it also provides
increased transparency and leads to time savings for
4.4 Results purchasers. Transparency is seen as the SSS’s main
benefit, which eight of the experts noted. However,
In total, eleven categories describing a DPW’s bene- the space also increases decision-making and adher-
fits are found. They are listed and further described ence and further development to the central purchas-
in Table 1 and published in their raw data on Zen- ing strategy. Some benefits of the single spaces had
odo (Stütz et al., 2022). During the interviews, some only a few mentions. Nevertheless, some of them are
experts mentioned several shortcomings and risks. highlighted as the main benefit of an application that
Since we have not explicitly asked for shortcomings contains such concepts. This fact applies especially to
or disadvantages, those are further discussed and in- the collaboration aspect. While the respective spaces
terpreted in section 5.
 Table 1: Overview of categories mentioned across all three spaces, with definitions and examples.
Category Frequ- Definition Example Require-
ency ment
Transparency 14 Statement that indicates an “If we want to achieve a certain target, in terms of 2, 8, 9
increase in transparency CO2 footprint, then of course that relates to the en-
tire supply chain.”
Efficiency 11 Statement that efficiency in “You can organize activities in a more targeted man- 4
time and the financial out- ner and thus work more efficiently, of course, and
come is increased. you can also improve processes and then lower
prices.”
Decision- 9 Statement that the process “It brings together decision-relevant information 9
Making of decision-making is im- quickly and compactly so that the buyer makes
proved and better decisions the right decisions or is supported in the decision-
are made. making process.”
Centralization 8 Statement that information “You have personalized information in one place 1, 2, 3
and tasks can be worked in without system and media discontinuities.”
one central application.
Optimization 8 Statement that the applica- “Now you see: where I haven’t had a price change 1, 2, 5, 6,
tion optimizes the workflow for a long time, how have my raw material prices 9, 10
of purchasers. developed, is this a good time to negotiate, or a bad
time to negotiate.”
Strategy 7 Statement that the company “If I also have a real conflict of goals as a result and 3, 9
or department-wide strat- I notice the effects on my subgoals more strongly,
egy is adapted or adhered then I probably decide differently.”
to.
Time-saving 7 Statement that actual time “If the buyer today somehow has to do a lot of re- 4, 10
is saved. curring, i.e. relatively monotonous, tasks that add
zero value, this naturally ties up capacity that is now
freed up.”
Personal- 5 Statement that the applica- “You have the information straight to you, they are 1, 7
ization tion provides personalized Tailor-Made for you.”
information and is still fur-
ther adjustable.
Insights 4 Statement that new insights “Purchasers don’t really know 80 to 90 percent of 9
are gained. their suppliers. This means that if there is potential
there, you have to actively point it out to them.”
Collaboration 3 Statement that the collab- “Today, this is used not only for purchasing, but 3
oration and communication also for other areas such as logistics, sales, and pro-
of employees are increased. duction, so that everyone can talk directly to each
other.”
Informed 3 Statement that employees “This also ensures that everybody is at the same 1
are in general better in- level of information.”
formed.

miss basic features regarding collaboration, experts participants were asked if the respective space (PIS,
mentioned collaboration as one of the main benefits PAAS, SSS) does not save time, saves some time,
of the application. In general, the main benefits are in- or saves much time. The same was done regard-
creased transparency and time saving, better decision- ing decision-making, while the predefined answers
making, an increased collaboration of purchasers and were no support in decision-making, some support
departments, and a higher purchasing experience in in decision-making, and much support in decision-
day-to-day work through personalizing the entire ap- making. As the evaluation in Figure 4 and Figure 5
plication containing the three spaces. shows, most time-saving can be achieved by imple-
The quantitative part of the interview focused on menting a feature-rich PAAS. Based on the experts,
decision-making and time-saving since those two can decision-making is supported almost equally while
be seen as the main advantages of business infor- implementing a PAAS and SSS. Nevertheless, PIS is
mation systems and are also mentioned as the main considered in both categories as some support.
goals of the domain experts interviewed while set-
ting up the application requirements (Mesároš et al.,
2021). During the evaluating expert interviews, the
5 Discussion decision-making. Besides a company’s performance,
climate change and the goal of reaching the set goals
One of the goals of this work is to evaluate the appli- of the Paris Agreement for 2050 are additionally rele-
cation against the set requirements. The expert inter- vant. Since the experts mentioned that the enrollment
views were designed to verify the requirements. of the DPW improves the company’s performance but
also fosters procurement regarding sustainability and
5.1 Verification of the Set Requirements resilience, the overall goals can be seen as achieved,
even though not all relations of the found benefits and
All requirements introduced in subsection 3.1 are ful- the created requirements are described here in detail.
filled due to the implementing of the concepts.
User-relevant information is displayed via the PIS, 5.2 General Findings
and tasks can be assigned inside the PAAS. The ex-
perts also mentioned as a benefit that due to these Besides verifying the set requirements, other mean-
spaces, users are more informed, and the workflow ingful new insights are found, like dependencies of
is considered more optimized. Thus, the first require- benefits, some risks of the application, and sugges-
ment is fulfilled. Assigning tasks to others and com- tions for potential enablers of such a DPW.
menting on processes or RfQs leads to increased and In general, it is recommended to focus more on
optimized collaboration. This was indicated by the the PAAS and SSS. Figure 4 shows that according to
experts directly and is seen as an overall benefit of the interviewed experts, the most time can be saved
the developed application while fulfilling requirement by implementing the PAAS concept, while SSS could
three. On the other hand, requirements one and seven become more and more relevant in the future. On the
are fulfilled by favoring suppliers, selecting the news, other hand, Figure 5 shows that SSS leads to better
and adjusting the application’s layout. That leads to decision-making. Due to the increased impact of pur-
time savings and a personalizable application. Fur- chasers’ daily business regarding sustainability and
thermore, the implementation of the PAAS provides the environment and studies that have already shown
the interaction (filtering, searching, adjusting) of ag- that green digital procurement applications foster Big
gregated data from different data sources. Those data Data analysis competencies, it is recommended to set
sources are partially maintained by different depart- fundamentals for SSS early in development (AlNu-
ments. The aggregated and analyzed data allows fur- aimi et al., 2021). Concretely it is recommended to
ther evaluations and visual representations. Accord- start with centralizing information and allow as well
ing to the experts, this results in an optimized appli- as support personalization features from the begin-
cation that improves decision-making, increases effi- ning of development since they influence time-saving
ciency, and saves time. Thus requirements one, two, and decision-making and are independent of other
five, six, nine, and ten are fulfilled. In some cases, categories. After centralizing and during the develop-
processes that were not digital before are automatable ment of new features, keep in mind that the new fea-
using bots. Besides, some triggerable bots can also tures should either improve or support transparency
automate low-risk processes and thus reduce human- (e.g., showing the supplier’s responsible), collabora-
to-human interaction. Those bots save time and are tion (allowing assigning tasks), or optimization (ag-
responsible for fulfilling requirements four and ten. gregate data). As a result, new insights should occur,
The SSS offers to break down the supply chain and and the possibility to adapt the purchasing strategy
provides further insights regarding the sustainability, based on the new insights is given. To sum it up, if
risk, and environmental impact of single materials and done right, a centralized and personalizable applica-
products. According to the experts, that leads to in- tion leads to the mentioned time-saving, higher effi-
creased transparency and new insights, fulfilling re- ciency, and improved decision-making but enables, in
quirements two, eight, and nine. Furthermore, the general, all other benefits presented in Table 1.
increased transparency and the new insights can also The DPW generally provides more features than
lead to strategy adjustments, which can directly re- the presented competitors from subsection 2.2. Espe-
flect carbon emissions. cially SSS- and PIS-related features are entirely miss-
Among others, most business information systems ing in those applications. While introduced function-
have the goal of reducing costs and time (Mesároš ality of PAAS also lacks in those applications. The
et al., 2021). Either while saving time for employees found benefits of the DPW are also not transmittable
or improving decision-making so the company can to the earlier described applications. Moreover, it is
reach a better result in Euros. By implementing the in- doubtful that the found and introduced benefits can
troduced concepts, the DPW saves time and improves also be achieved in those applications. Therefore, im-
 5.4 Future Work
The evaluation of the developed application focuses
mainly on the benefits for the company itself and its
positive impact on the users. Future work should also
consider the disadvantages of such an application.
Even though centralization and the lack of proper UX
are mentioned, experts can deliver even more possible
disadvantages if they are specifically asked for them.
Today the entire application does not use a knowl-
Figure 6: Influences of the different categories. The arrow edge graph architecture. Currently, all the data is
direction indicates the influence direction. imported from different sources and stored in a cen-
tral database. Ma and Molnár (Ma and Molnár, 2019)
plementing a customized DPW is a good solution. suggest using ontologies and a knowledge graph
because that is considered an effective technology to
5.3 Dependencies and Risks integrate data from multiple heterogeneous sources.
Therefore, future work should use a knowledge graph
While evaluating the results, we discovered some de- as the underlying technology while implementing the
pendencies of the found benefits presented in Table 1. presented concepts and features. Even if an appli-
In fact, some benefits act as a prerequisite for oth- cation implements the presented features based on
ers. For example, Centralization is considered and knowledge graphs (or any other underlying technol-
also actually mentioned as the prerequisite for en- ogy), there is still a risk left. Poor UX could lead to
abling Transparency and Collaboration. That, on the unsatisfied users, and as Magnus and Rudra (Magnus
other hand, leads to new insights, which further leads and Rudra, 2019) claim, dashboards built based on
then to improved decision-making and time-saving. principles of cognition enhance decision-making in
Another example, according to the experts, is that a supply chain. Therefore, future work should focus
personalization regarding news, blog posts, and an- more on UX-related topics.
nouncements lead to more up-to-date users, resulting
in better decisions. All of those dependencies are out-
lined and contextualized in Figure 6.
While centralization is considered a prerequisite 6 Conclusion
for most other benefits, as seen in Figure 6, it is also
mentioned as a risk for the company since a central Due to the urge to accomplish carbon neutrality, wars,
application could lead to a single point of failure. Be- sanctions, the pandemic, and catastrophes, sustain-
sides that, increased feature richness could lead to able SCM has become even more important for com-
complex maintenance, which results in higher costs panies. As a global Fortune 500 company, we have
that purchasers must balance with a more efficient developed an application that encompasses a novel
procurement. Nevertheless, initial high costs and the way of information integration, automation tools as
maintenance for developing applications and new fea- well as analytical techniques. All developed fea-
tures inside the application are generally known is- tures can be categorized into one of the three intro-
sues in service-oriented software applications. duced concepts - the Procurement Information Space,
Due to too many powerless features with a poor the Procurement Analytics and Automation Space,
User Experience (UX), users could start to work less and the Sustainable Sourcing Space. In-depth ex-
efficiently or, worst case, avoid the application. To pert interviews were conducted to verify that the im-
prevent unsatisfied users, it is helpful to educate them, plemented spaces perform as expected. The results
either with software or through personal training. An- of the interviews show that the set requirements are
other suggestion is to allow user inputs as early as met. Besides that, the interviews revealed increased
possible because if that is not the case, users must time-saving and support in decision-making, espe-
use different additional tools for updating data, which cially due to the Procurement Analytics and Automa-
leads to decreased user acceptance and satisfaction. tion Space and the Sustainable Sourcing Space. In-
creased transparency, efficiency, and decision-making
support are mentioned most as a benefit, but they may
not be the most important ones. This work encour-
ages other purchasing departments to build their own
DPW and provides valuable suggestions on what con- Igarashi, M., de Boer, L., and Michelsen, O. (2015). Inves-
cepts and features a DPW should implement. Exist- tigating the Anatomy of Supplier Selection in Green
ing applications can also profit from this work since Public Procurement. Journal of Cleaner Production,
new concepts are presented, and the evaluation of 108.
the benefits could lead to strategy adjustments. Such Ilie-Zudor, E., Kemény, Z., Ekárt, A., Buckingham, C. D.,
and Monostori, L. (2014). A Solution for Informa-
strategy adjustments could then influence procure- tion Management in Logistics Operations of Modern
ment regarding a more sustainable, resilient, and more Manufacturing Chains. Procedia CIRP, 25.
carbon-reduced supply chain so that a Digital Pro- Ma, C. and Molnár, B. (2019). A Legacy ERP System
curement Workspace can help reach the goals of the Integration Framework based on Ontology Learning.
Paris Agreement in the next twenty-seven years. SCITEPRESS.
Magnus, S. and Rudra, A. (2019). Real-Time Opera-
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Supply Chain Management: Some Considerations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SCITEPRESS.
Masudin, I., Umamy, S. Z., Al-Imron, C. N., and Restupu-
We thank all participants from the Robert Bosch tri, D. P. (2022). Green Procurement Implementation
GmbH who were, in whatever case, involved with the Through Supplier Selection: A Bibliometric Review.
Digital Procurement Workspace and this work. Cogent Engineering, 9(1).
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