Scanmarket releases insights every year into the performance of e-auctions executed globally on its platform. Since 2006, we have gathered so much data on e-auction usage patterns that we decided to give it a name – The Global eAuction Index or GEI report.
GEI Overview
The 2021 GEI report analyzes global e-auction savings, volume, geographic distribution, category performance, and other insights into sourcing and procurement categories. Procurement professionals who wish to achieve higher savings and efficiencies use this report to better understand e-auction strategy and execution.
2021 Market Conditions
In 2021, extreme market conditions emboldened suppliers to take certain liberties in some categories and e-auction usage dropped. These suppliers had a “take it or leave it” attitude, but the world began to slowly emerge from pandemic lockdowns in Q3 and Q4. People started to return to offices, and global GDP was on the rise again. However, inflation began to rise as well.
World Affairs
More unprecedented circumstances continued to challenge the world economy such as Brexit and the US/China trade war, and many businesses and COGs were negatively impacted. Scanmarket’s 2021 e-auction results show that some categories were auctioned less while others were auctioned more to compensate for price increases in volatile categories. After the 2021 dataset ended, Russia and Ukraine tension escalated which will significantly impact the 2022 business climate and most likely e-auctions and prices too. But, no matter what, digitalization and virtual collaboration is here to stay which will continue to drive more e-auction usage.
Results
Overall, there was a significant increase in overall e-auction volume in 2021 with a record year-over-year growth of almost 75%. It is worth noting, Scanmarket’s client community continues to grow driving growth in the overall numbers, but the gains can also be attributed directly back to existing client communities as well.
