Get Back to School Ready With Amazon Business
Starting the new school year is an exciting time for both students, faculty, and staff but it can also come with a long list of to dos leading up to that first day. Teachers are tasked with creating a positive learning environment, stocking the classroom, and preparing lessons. At the same time, institutions and procurement teams are challenged to manage budgets and approve faculty and staff purchases. There’s a lot that goes into ensuring it’s a smooth first day for students.
From early childhood to K-12 to higher education, Amazon Business simplifies the buying process for both educators and administrators. Serving 80% of the 100 largest education organizations in the U.S., we’ve created unique savings opportunities and software solutions with you in mind. Here’s how you can drive value, boost buyer compliance, and allow your educators to get what they need just in time for the new school year.
Empower educators to get what they need while ensuring purchases are compliant
Amazon Business account administrators can define different types of buying policies. Meaning, you can identify preferred products or sellers and support businesses in your local community, buy from minority-owned entities, and champion sustainability initiatives. Even more, account administrators can block restricted sellers or categories, and define spending limits for teachers, faculty, and staff using Buying Policies and Approvals.
With Buying Policies and Approvals, you can assign approvers for each policy created. So when it comes time for an educator to purchase items that require approvals, the process automatically kicks in—saving time for both procurement teams and buyers. Not to mention, only necessary purchases identified in the policy are escalated, which frees up time for you and approvers to focus on high-value activities.
“With Amazon Business, teachers create a list on their classroom computer and submit. Workflows immediately take over, streamlining approvals. Teachers get exactly what they need, and they get it in two days.”
— Bradley Sponaugle, Assistant Treasurer, Berkeley County School
Create pre-approved budgets and avoid overspending
School funding is often spent on a first-come-first-serve funding basis, which results in educators frontloading requests at the beginning of school year due to the fear of losing funds entirely. With Amazon Business’ Budget Management tool, we are helping account administrators allocate time-bound funds to educators. Helping educators know their balance and when they need to spend it.
“Before Amazon Business had Budget Management, we asked our end users to put everything they want to buy on a spreadsheet to track budgets and balances and we would compare the spreadsheet with their orders before approving them. Now, we can rely on Amazon Business’ Blanket Purchase Orders to track the budgets and run reports for each school. It’s simple, easy, and fast to use, and it helps us hold our end users accountable and responsible for their budgets.”
— Lou Anne Castillo, Purchasing and Capital Projects Supervisor, Franklin-McKinley School District (CA)
Stock the classroom with low prices, volume discounts, and wholesale savings on educator essentials
It’s no secret that the key to any successful classroom is building a positive learning environment where all students thrive. It’s never too early to start buying materials for specific lesson plans, but at the very least, you should restock basic supplies that educators and students will need on a daily basis.
To make buying from Amazon Business even more convenient, we’ve created a dedicated Back to School storefront offering staff and teachers Educator Pricing across a comprehensive selection of products educators need to kick-off the year. Discover low prices and curated supplies by age group and view popular products that have been purchased by other educators. Educators can easily shop for books, everyday school supplies, electronics, classroom and furniture organization, educational activities and STEM, sanitation and wellness, and more all on Amazon Business.
Need to buy in higher quantities? Educators can take savings a step further with Quantity Discounts, offering a selection of over 60 million eligible items. These discounts apply when they buy at least two of the same item at the same time. Even more, using Custom Quote buyers can request a discounted price on high volume purchases that are either more than $10,000 or over 999 units. Once the request has been submitted, sellers can reply with an offer and buyers can then decide to place their order for purchase.
To keep your classroom stocked year-round, we recommend using Business Lists to replenish commonly purchased items such as paper, pens, post-it notes, dry-erase markers, and more. Educators can use Business Lists to create a catalog of their repeat items helping to streamline buying and save time searching and shopping. Once a buyer creates a list, they can reorder from the entire list or order individual items from that list at any time and in different quantities. Each buyer can make their own unique list that suits their needs and even share their lists among other buyers.
Do more and save more with Business Prime
Considering the potential large volume of purchases your districts and institutions may make, you can further save by enrolling in our paid annual membership, Business Prime. With Business Prime, you can save on shipping costs and educators can get free same-day delivery on eligible orders, free one-day shipping on millions of items, and unlimited free two-day shipping on over 100 million more items. Plus, you can get exclusive access to member only benefits such as Spend Visibility and Guided Buying to visually analyze spending patterns and monitor compliance.
Start leveraging Amazon Business software solutions to simplify procurement and stock up on everything you need for a successful first day back at school.
