Amazon Business, the company’s online business-to-business procurement store, today announced a number of new technology features including the Amazon Business App Center, System for Cross-domain, and Identity Management. There are also a number of updates to Amazon Business features including Budget Management and Guided Buying solutions. These technologies are designed to help large business customers, including multinational enterprises, universities, government agencies, education organisations, and healthcare networks, simplify and modernise the way they shop for business supplies.
But first, why bother selling with Amazon Business as a retailer? We spoke to Shelley Salomon, worldwide vice president of Amazon Business, who shared some amazing growth stats with us:
- Amazon Business has grown to $35 billion annualized gross sales
- 6 million business customers worldwide, including 66 out of the FTSE 100 companies in the UK
- 10 Amazon country sites now support Amazon Business, with the newest being Mexico
- Here in Europe, Amazon Business growth is running at 25%
- Purchases increased by 60% year on year
- Business buying from SMEs in Europe increased by 50% year on year
With Amazon Business growing so fast, it’s no surprise to see Amazon bringing out new features and improvements to existing features. Remember it’s free to sell on Amazon Business, although there are a few things you will need to do to make buying from you attractive for businesses. Support for Business customers includes Business Prime, business-only pricing and selection, single or multi-user business accounts, approvals workflow, purchasing system integrations, payment solutions, tax exemptions, and dedicated customer support.
These new features and updates are being announced today at the UK Amazon Business Exchange (ABX), Amazon Business’s pioneering event for the procurement sector, taking place today in London.
Amazon Business wants to change how companies shop for supplies through our unmatched selection, deep discounts, and smart capabilities. We don’t just react to the biggest challenges our customers have shared with us; we get ahead of them with new technologies so our customers can use their resources to navigate the unexpected and continue expanding their business.
– Shelley Salomon, worldwide vice president,Amazon Business
Recent research conducted by Amazon Business revealed that UK procurement teams are struggling to drive efficiencies within their organisation, with 49% of respondents reporting complexity of systems and multi-step processes as the main contributors to this problem. As a result, 70% of UK procurement leaders acknowledge that there’s a need to optimise their procurement functions. Specifically, respondents feel that business buying is cumbersome, convoluted, and time-consuming. Instead of a convenient, intuitive, and personalised experience, teams are spending too much time performing tasks related to processing orders and leaders see improved procurement tools as the solution for this challenge.
To help address this challenge, Amazon Business has introduced and upgraded several tools available to business buyers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States:
New Amazon Business Features
Amazon Business App Center
Amazon Business App Center is a new one-stop shop where business customers can discover, quickly set-up, and connect their Amazon Business account with more than 25 third-party applications from around the world. Solutions in the App Center include integrated shopping, accounting management, expense management, inventory management, rewards and recognition, and business analytics. The App Center helps save leaders time and money through a single point of discovery as well as eliminating or reducing the need to develop a custom solution for their organisation.
Cross-Domain Identity Management
Possibly my favourite new feature – it’s hard for a business with hundreds or thousand of employees to keep track of who’s left the organisation, who’s on sabbatical or maternity leave or perhaps long term sickness. But still you’ll want to end or suspend their purchasing powers once they’re not active employees, so a system for Cross-domain Identity Management is a new feature that automatically syncs users and group data from their organisation’s identity provider with their Amazon Business account. This feature helps administrators spend less time on maintaining and updating their Amazon Business account.
Upgraded Amazon Business Features
Budget Management
Budget Management streamlines the process of setting and reviewing time-bound budgets across an organisation. Now, business customers can set spend thresholds and make budget amounts visible to buyers to get ahead of overspending. Amazon Business also launched new ways for leaders to actively manage their budgets including real-time tracking and usage reports, notifications when a budget is about to expire, pre-purchase approvals, and an option to create one purchase order (PO) instead of multiple, manual orders. These updates empower procurement buyers to make informed purchasing decisions for their organisation while reducing the amount of time leaders spend auditing their purchases.
Guided Buying
Guided Buying makes it easier for leaders to manage employee spending by steering buyers to purchase decisions that align with their organisation’s preferences and goals. Through a new toolbar, account administrators can now instantly prefer products with sustainability certifications in the Climate Pledge Friendly program with a single click. Leaders can also restrict, block, and require an approval for certain product categories with an eligible Business Prime plan. Through easy-to-follow visuals, Guided Buying helps procurement leaders save time educating their employees on what items they should or should not purchase.
