The business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce market is on track to reach $3 trillion by 2027, according to Forrester research. To capture some of that spend, Amazon Business, the company’s B2B online procurement store, is launching several new features designed to simplify the buying process and capitalize on this growth potential.
Amazon Business currently drives approximately $35 billion in annual gross sales and has more than 6 million customers worldwide, including 96 of the Fortune 100, according to Amazon. During its Amazon Business Exchange event in Europe, the division revealed new and upgraded tools available to support business buyers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, France, the UK and U.S., including:
- The Amazon Business App Center: A new destination for business customers to discover, quickly set up and connect their Amazon Business account with more than 25 third-party applications, including integrated shopping, accounting management, expense management, inventory management, rewards and recognition and business analytics;
- A system for cross-domain identity management: This new feature automatically syncs user and group data from an organization’s identity provider with their Amazon Business account. As a result, administrators can spend less time on maintaining and updating their Amazon Business account;
- Budget management tools: Users can streamline how they set and review time-bound budgets across an organization by setting spend thresholds and making budget amounts visible to buyers to get ahead of overspending. Additionally, Amazon Business customers can actively manage their budgets with 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 instead of multiple manual orders;
- Guided buying features: Leaders can manage employee spending by identifying “preferred products” based on their organization’s preferences and goals. Leaders can restrict, block and require approval for certain product categories with an eligible Business Prime plan; and
- Integrated quoting: Business customers can generate custom quotes for Amazon Business bulk orders as well as other suppliers via third-party e-sourcing and e-procurement platforms. The feature then centralizes an organization’s Request for Quote (RFQ) activity to make it easier for leaders to select the best bid.
Tackling Procurement Complexity
In a survey of U.S. procurement teams, Amazon Business found that 49% of procurement executives believe that complex systems and multi-step processes make the buying process inefficient. As a result, 95% of procurement leaders believe there’s a need to optimize their procurement functions. The new features within the Amazon Business experience are designed to tackle this challenge by making business buying less cumbersome and convoluted for large customers, such as multinational enterprises, universities, government agencies, education organizations and health care networks.
“Amazon Business wants to change how companies shop for supplies through our unmatched selection, deep discounts and smart capabilities,” said Shelley Salomon, Worldwide VP of Amazon Business in a statement. “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.”
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