Tejari e-Procurement saves time and money for organizations in Kuwait

Kharafi National, a leading Pan Arab Company in engineering, construction, maintenance and multidiscipline contracting with diversified operations, registered as a prime member in Tejari, Middle East's business-to-business (B2B) online marketplace in July 2004, for conducting e-Procurement on the Tejari trading platform. The seminar presented National Kharafi suppliers with the features and benefits of e-Procurement services by being a part of the regional e-Marketplace.

Speaking at the seminar, Emad Makarem, Managing Director of Tejari Kuwait explained: "As the Middle East's first B2B online marketplace, Tejari is an open, horizontal business community that allows organizations to buy and sell goods and services using all purchasing methods. With nothing more than an Internet connection and browser, Tejari allows organizations to capture savings by enhancing strategic sourcing of all business needs. By extending beyond e-commerce our services allow organizations to extend their market reach, access global base, instantaneously share information and collaborate effectively across the supply chain. All this backed up by technology and scalability to provide a safe, secure and reliable environment for conducting business over the Internet. "

Business activities conducted at Tejari range from buying, to supply chain planning, collaborative product design and development. With Tejari, buyers and suppliers come together on a platform which provides the sourcing, negotiation and transaction environment regionally and internationally with services that include catalogue management, project collaboration, online procurement training, procurement consulting and member services and support.

Makarem emphasized, "We don't seek memberships with organizations, we seek partnerships. Our value proposition to our partners highlights 'savings'. Savings on effort in automating the supply chain, savings on cycle time and communications costs through process and administration and savings on process time and response on each tender or purchase, just to mention a few."

With Tejari, organizations are also entitled to a cataloguing service that gives quicker and easier access to all items procured or required by buyers. Payment processing are also quicker while further sales opportunities through greater market reach, regionally and internationally allows Tejari members access to new markets and customers by eliminating regional barriers. By streamlining the sales process Tejari partner organizations also reduce sales costs and improve cost savings through dynamic pricing. Streamlining the procurements process also increases operational efficiency and eliminates paper work.

Earlier traditional means of communications served as a barrier to organizations, preventing them from being more agile in responding to the rapidly changing market conditions as well as benefiting from new opportunities as they arise. The only way to enable this was point-to-point legacy system integration between their limited number of trading partners, requiring them to integrate their different ERP systems together, a very costly and time consuming process.

Suppliers at the seminar were also familiarized by a live demonstration of trading on the Tejari website from the supplier as well as the buyer perspective and other features such as cataloguing services through presentations by Mounira Al Sabah, e-Business Development Manager for Tejari Kuwait. Issam Al Hajjaj, territory Sales Manager for Tejari Kuwait explained the cost saving process on Tejari and introduced special offers and membership packages available.

Kharafi National also gave an introduction highlighting the benefits of e-Procurement to the Suppliers.