Six order management best practices for large organizations

Organizations sometimes treat order management like a back-office chore, but in large companies, it can make or break purchasing performance—and even trickle down to impact customer experience. When you handle it strategically, order management becomes a powerful lever for increasing profitability, removing inefficiencies, and complying with business needs.

Too often, teams struggle with limited visibility, disconnected workflows, and policy violations that slip through the cracks. But there are practical solutions you can use to combat the realities of enterprise purchasing and help streamline business processes, reinforce guardrails, and scale with confidence. Read on to learn more.

What is enterprise order management?

In large organizations, enterprise order management orchestrates the entire internal purchasing lifecycle, from an employee’s request through approvals, fulfillment, payment, purchasing compliance, and post‑purchase analytics. Unlike retail order management software for ecommerce businesses, enterprise-grade solutions must account for complex approval chains, procurement integrations, and policy enforcement.

Why does this distinction matter? While traditional systems focus on customer orders and order fulfillment from warehouses, enterprise procurement teams must handle everything from undergoing manual processes in inventory management to meeting customer expectations across multichannel or omnichannel purchasing strategies.

Effective order management saves time by automating routine purchase routing, reducing manual data entry, ensuring every order follows policy, and surfacing spend data supporting planning. It also helps large enterprises do the following:

• Coordinate requests and approvals across departments to eliminate maverick spending.

• Optimize internal purchasing workflows across teams.

• Reduce manual tasks and bottlenecks through automation and digital workflows to free procurement staff to focus on strategic sourcing.

• Enforce budget and policy compliance with built‑in purchase controls to catch unauthorized spending early.

• Support scalable growth and budgeting goals by providing real‑time visibility into spending patterns across categories and teams.

A cohesive order management program is a prerequisite for a future‑proof supply chain, which you can achieve by understanding what roadblocks lie in front of you.

4 challenges in enterprise order management

Enterprises face a host of enterprise procurement challenges. For instance, a 2023 KPMG global procurement survey (which NetSuite summarized) found that 84 percent of respondents cited “inflationary pressure” and commodity price increases as one of their top external challenges, while more than half of respondents (54 percent) pointed to “limited data and insights” as one of their top internal challenges.

In many organizations, order management struggles stem from the following factors:

1. Siloed purchasing: When teams operate independently without shared systems or policies, it leads to inconsistent processes and “shadow buying.”

2. Lack of visibility: Procurement and finance teams can’t see what employees have ordered, approved, or received, which makes it hard for them to forecast cash flow and negotiate better terms.

3. Disconnected, manual processes: Manual data entry and offline approvals slow down purchasing, create errors, and leave little to no audit trail.

4. Out-of-policy purchases: Without clear approval structures and automated purchase controls, employees may order from non‑preferred suppliers or exceed budgets, undermining contracts and negotiating power.

Economic volatility compounds these challenges—rising costs, geopolitical risk, and evolving trade policies often force companies to scrutinize their spending. In fact, PwC’s 2025 Digital Trends in Operations survey found that about 90 percent of operations and supply chain leaders expect to see a large increase in supplier and material costs this year, yet 82 percent still struggle to balance short‑term issues with longer‑term changes.

Enterprise order management solution features

Ready to take on the challenge of implementing or improving your organization’s order management solution? Keep an eye out for these key criteria:

Integrations with procurement and finance systems

Order management doesn’t stand alone. An enterprise‑ready solution should integrate with existing procurement suites and financial systems, such as Coupa, SAP Ariba, Oracle, Workday, and other cloud-based enterprise resource planning platforms. 

Seamless integration ensures that purchase requisitions flow into approval workflows and back to accounts payable, eliminates duplicate data entry, and helps teams enforce policies across systems.

Customizable roles, permissions, and controls

Large organizations are complex. For instance, a regional buyer may initiate a single purchase request, which then goes to a department head for approval, the finance team for an audit, and the executive committee for transparent reporting.

Because of this, enterprise order management solutions need to provide flexible access controls that accommodate this involved structure. Tiered permissions allow administrators to define who can initiate orders, who must approve them at different spending thresholds, and who can view reports. Additionally, role‑based dashboards ensure that employees see only what’s relevant to them. 

For global firms purchasing for multiple locations, configurable approval workflows provide consistent controls while allowing the regional variations that local regulations or budgets require.

Real‑time reporting and spend analytics

Real-time visibility into purchasing activity empowers procurement teams to make faster, more strategic decisions. 

With tools like Amazon Business’ Spend Insights, organizations can drill down into spend patterns by group, category, or buyer. When you pair this with Business Order Information, a Business Prime paid feature that centralizes order-level data, your administrators can track activity across teams and locations, flag outliers, and stay audit-ready without relying on manual reporting.

6 enterprise order management best practices

The right software will only get you so far—your tools need to work hand in hand with your organization’s processes and expectations for employees too. Here’s where to start:

1. Define clear procurement roles and policies

A procurement strategy is at the heart of effective order management. Your documented policies should describe who can make which types of purchases, under what conditions, and with which suppliers. Without this kind of clarity, approvals will stall and rogue spending will proliferate. 

Leaders can map clear approval thresholds and escalation paths by designating roles such as requesters, approvers, auditors, and category managers. 

Many organizations use Amazon Business’ team management feature to configure custom buying policies and approval workflows. That way, their departments will automatically follow the guidelines they design.

2. Automate routine purchases and approvals

Routine purchases like office supplies, maintenance materials, and low‑value items don’t require negotiation each time you purchase them. By automating these orders and approvals, you can save time and reduce the risk of errors. 

Automation features often include the following:

• Recurring deliveries for consumables

• Pre-set approval rules for purchases below a certain value

• Guided buying experiences that steer employees toward preferred suppliers

   

With Amazon Business Prime, tools like Recurring Delivery and Guided Buying enable administrators to implement these automations. 

3. Use data to track orders, team compliance, and trends

Data is a critical asset for procurement leaders. It informs the following key performance indicators, which allow you to monitor purchasing compliance and efficiency:

• Percentage of orders you place with preferred vendors

• Average time from request to approval per department

• The share of orders that require exception approval versus those that you approve automatically

• Spend concentration in the top 10 suppliers

   

You can also look at these basic, order-specific benchmarks to check that your operations are running smoothly and your teams are within budget:

• Order status

• Product availability

• Shipping costs

• Inventory levels and backorders

   

Tracking these metrics over time highlights trends and identifies the departments that need additional training or contract renegotiation. You can do this with Amazon Business Analytics, which surfaces these metrics and allows decision‑makers to drill down by team, region, or category. 

4. Train stakeholders on tools and policies

Order management is only as strong as its adoption. So to ensure strong adoption, you should provide tailored, ongoing training for each role.

For instance, requesters need to know how to correctly find approved suppliers and submit requisitions. Approvers must understand when to approve and when to question purchases. And finance teams need to correctly and efficiently interpret reports. 

As such, training shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Instead, generate short video tutorials, create role‑based guides, and host regular Q&A sessions to reinforce policies. As tools evolve, you should also update training to reflect new features and policy changes to reduce errors and confusion.

5. Conduct quarterly audits and process reviews

Procurement leaders can review order volume, spend by category, approval cycle times, and policy compliance by conducting quarterly audits. This keeps order management processes healthy. 

You can also solicit feedback from frequent users to identify friction points in your workflow, such as confusing approval notifications or missing supplier options. 

Digital tools that provide real‑time reporting make these reviews easier. For example, Amazon Business’ whitepaper on shifting procurement culture with data analytics outlines how centralized reporting and audit‑ready documentation simplify quarterly assessments and support purchasing compliance efforts. 

6. Standardize vendor selection and contract renewal

Consolidating purchases with a curated set of suppliers can improve pricing, quality, and purchasing compliance. By standardizing vendor selection processes and contract renewal cycles, organizations can then gain leverage in negotiations and reduce administrative overhead. 

Centralized vendor management also prevents duplicate contracts and ensures that purchasing aligns with sustainability or diversity goals. Tools like Amazon Business support centralized vendor and spend management and offer features like bulk‑buying discounts and consolidated invoicing through Business Prime. This makes it easier for organizations to manage supplier relationships at scale.

Transform your order management strategy

Fragmented processes and manual approvals keep organizations in perpetual firefighting mode. To move from reactive to strategic, enterprise leaders should adopt order management systems that integrate with existing procurement and finance platforms, provide flexible approval workflows, and deliver real‑time analytics. 

Whether you’re managing purchases across departments or scaling operations globally, Amazon Business offers the tools you need to lead with clarity and control. Its smart buying, integration capabilities, customizable approval workflows, real-time inventory data tracking, and analytics support allow administrators to manage complex spend at scale. That way, you can focus on meeting rising customer expectations instead of menial tasks.

Ready to get started? Contact Amazon Business today to learn more.