Key benefits: Amazon Business Customers with Prime Business

What is Prime Business?

Prime Business is a paid membership program that delivers business-specific features and benefits beyond the standard Amazon Business account. It includes enhanced access to features like Guided Buying, Spend Visibility, and fast, free delivery on eligible items.

What is the Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ study?

In 2023, Amazon Business commissioned Forrester Consulting to produce a Total Economic Impact™ study that analyzes the potential returns for customers with a Prime Business membership. The study is meant to give current and prospective customers visibility on the potential financial impact Prime Business could have on their business.

Forrester interviewed representatives from six global organizations and surveyed 219 respondents in North America and Europe with experience as Prime Business members. They compiled the results into a single composite organization.

Key research statistics 

• Return on investment: 324%
• Net present value: $311k
• Annual procurement time savings: 1,420 hours
• Accelerated time to receive orders: 41%
• Reduction in suppliers onboarded annually: 12%

Before and after Prime Business

Procurement leaders involved in the study were asked to compare how they worked with vendors before and after implementing Prime Business.  The research suggested after investing in Prime Business, interviewees gained better control over procurement and employee spending thanks to exclusive access to benefits like Guided Buying and Spend Visibility, which relieved managerial budget oversight.

This accelerated access to a wider variety of products which had a positive impact on employee productivity. They also avoided shipping costs and onboarded fewer suppliers after identifying those they could buy a variety of products from and in bulk more often. These tools streamlined the interviewees’ organizational ability to optimize their budgets and time spent on procurement.

Key findings - Quantified benefits 

• Leverages spending insights to save upwards of 20% on product costs
• Saves thousands of dollars in shipping cost savings
• Recovers 15% of total spending generated by rogue buyers.
• Avoids time spent onboarding and managing suppliers totaling 700 hours per year
• Improved procure-to-pay process productivity by 25%

Key findings - Unquantified benefits 

• Accelerated operations from faster shipping
• Better discoverability of preferred products
• Extended invoicing terms
   

The financial analysis found the composite organization experiences benefits of $406,000 over three years versus costs of $96,000, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $311,000 and an ROI of 324%.

Costs for the organization

Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include: 
 

• Prime Business membership costs. The composite organization pays for annual access to Prime Business. 
• Prime Business implementation. The composite organization registers as an Amazon Business customer and adopts Prime Business at the same time. The procurement team works to integrate Amazon Business with their e procurement solution. Implementation efforts take place over the course of a few weeks including time spent creating user profiles, permissions, and if purchases are registering correctly. 
• Training costs. Procurement spends a short amount of time familiarizing themselves with creating and leveraging Guided Buying policies and Spend Visibility dashboards.
   

"There’s so much additional functionality within Prime Business we weren’t aware of. It has a lot of analytics and with our large quantity purchases, it can provide insight for us to build strategies around.”  

— Senior supply chain and business planning advisor, energy

Originally published on Procurement Magazine.