The Assessment Of Foreign Purchase Practices – The Case Study Of Ethio Telecom
Creators: name: Badarga, Teklil
Publisher: name: National Academic Digital Repository of Ethiopia
Year: 2017

description: The purpose of this study was to evaluate and assess the foreign procurement practices of ethio telecom and to identify the gap and challenges observed currently while implementing foreign procurement activities and to recommend improvement areas . In this study both primary and secondary sourcing of data were employed. Primary data was collected through questionnaire (structured and semi-structured) and interviews. Questionnaires were distributed to 110 participants from ethio telecom"s Sourcing department managers, supervisors and specialists and user units. Interviews were conducted with 4 Sourcing committee members including ethio telecom Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Secondary data were also extracted from related literature from studies conducted in area, company manuals and reports in the area of the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (percentage &amp; mean, standard deviation, variance correlation and regression). The descriptive statistical analysis including opinions and 13 suggestions obtained from open ended and interview questions of the study demonstrated that the seven steps strategic sourcing processes were not been properly implemented. Based on the findings indicated that delay in transit, currency shortage and fluctuation, delay of letter of credit, standardization difference among countries ,were the main bottlenecks that seriously threaten the foreign procurement activities ,other variables were also identified a challenge, like cost, poor supplier relationship management, lack of getting the right suppliers were some of them, based on the findings sourcing of the same product from a number of suppliers were one of the advantages that ethio telecom gained during foreign procurement processes. The result about Suppliers Relation Management showed disagreed and strongly disagreed. This tells us that the one and the major part of foreign procurement process was "Suppliers Relation Management" in ethio telecom have been poorly managed. The other constraint of this study was interdepartmental integration in implementing foreign procurement processes. The results of this variable were also negative which was somewhat disagreeing. The last but not the least constraint of this study was challenges that hinder ethio telecom to implement the seven steps strategic procurement processes. The findings of the research were: procurement function has not been the focus area of the company and not seen as a strategic function., ethio telecom has not been providing competency and skill developing trainings, benchmarking and experience sharing programs in house or from external sources. Finally, from the above findings the research concluded that the seven steps strategic procurement processes have not been implemented in ethio telecom. Thus, to achieve the objectives and to become a world-class company ET has to implement the strategic procurement processes properly and has to find immediate solutions for the above mentioned bottlenecks in cooperation with different stack holders specially bank