Meeting the demands of procurement: The Amazon Business Partner Network

If you’re a procurement leader, you face a variety of challenges. Controlling rogue spend, increasing spend visibility, and achieving better spend management, are only a few. Working with a partner can help, but you have to find one that can mesh with your systems and processes to keep you moving. So, how do you integrate with other procurement solutions and maximize value without starting from scratch? We created the Amazon Business Partner Network to do just that.

Creating a solution to meet customers where they are

Procurement leaders like you told us you wanted integration with existing procurement tools and processes. That means incorporating our services within your existing systems in a seamless way. Starting over and a long ramp-up, won’t work.

Based on this customer need, we took a methodical approach to what it means to be a partner. We’ve created a variety of different programs with dynamic business opportunities to meet our customers’ varying needs. Since our launch in 2015, we’ve collaborated with industry-leading, B2B organizations to build integrated solutions that increase ease of use, facilitate end-user adoption, and help with compliance to procurement policies. Rather than taking my word for it, let’s look at one of our customers. 

How the USO found success 

One recent customer success story is with the United Service Organizations (USO). Together with Coupa, we worked to enable a punchout catalog. This solution allows the USO to source supplies from Amazon Business through Coupa. They launched the punchout catalog in 2017, first to the headquarters, and then to the entire global organization in five months. Today, nearly 80 percent of all USO spending goes through this e-procurement integration. What’s more, between 80-90 percent of all spend is confirmed best pricing available, according to the team at USO.

Rick Quaintance, who together with Tina Stockov leads procurement for the USO, states, “While the introduction of this new process is a big, structural change for the organization, most everyone has now embraced it…” “Things like approving invoices and reconciling receipts for expenses used to take five to seven days, and now it takes two. What used to be a manual process that took up much of our time is now almost entirely automated.”

Quaintance goes onto explain, “Further, this new integrated solution is also providing us greater visibility into spending across the USO, a key benefit for a global nonprofit organization that has to regularly report on how we’re using donor dollars across multiple time zones.”

This story is one example of how we help customers succeed with procurement organizations. Find out how ExxonMobil integrated its global procurement system with our solutions.

Continuing to innovate

As the Partner Network evolves, we’re continually adding new ways to help meet the challenges of procurement. For example, we recently launched several integrated solutions. These solutions help organizations of all sizes, locations, and industries, streamline purchasing. For example, you can:

• Purchase on Amazon Business through your purchasing system
• Enable employees to access Amazon Business via your existing Identity Provider
• Order products from Amazon Business using your SaaS platform of choice
• Gain access to enhanced credit card transaction details delivered to your reconciliation system
• Leverage contracts with purchasing cooperatives to buy in Amazon Business
• Access member-only deals and offers, designed for Business Prime members
  

I’ve outlined just some of how the Amazon Business Partner Network is a custom solution that can fold into your current infrastructure. If you want to see a list of featured Amazon Business Partners or if you’re looking to learn more about our integrated solutions, go here.

If you’re looking to join the partner network and offer your integrated solution to our customers, visit our homepage.