New Amazon Business technology aims to help organizations meet their responsible purchasing goals

Centralizing purchasing data and measuring the success of environmental or social governance (ESG) business goals can be a challenge for procurement teams. In the Amazon Business 2024 State of Procurement Report, 33% of procurement decision maker respondents reported they would like to invest in setting or meeting goals for ESG and buying from certain types of suppliers. Further, 81% of respondents reported having internal or external mandates to purchase from different types of certified sellers. Depending on the country, this could include sustainable, local, or small businesses, or sellers that are owned by historically disadvantaged groups. Many of those respondents—four in 10—who don’t have required purchasing goals still take supplier ESG factors into consideration.

• Amazon Business’ Reporting API helps facilitate efficiency improvement with automated reporting. Customers can pull details like their order history data, seller names, and ESG certifying agencies for Amazon Business purchases into third-party reporting tools. This allows customers to report on their consolidated spend with all their diverse suppliers, including their spend with certified small, local, and/or diverse sellers through Amazon Business. Supplier.io and Supplier Gateway, third-party supplier information management systems that help customers measure and report on their spend with diverse sellers, offer integrated apps in the Amazon Business App Center. Both systems tap Amazon Business’ Reporting API to help shared customers automate two aspects of customers’ ESG diversity programs: 1) measuring the economic impact of existing or historical Amazon Business spend with small, local and diverse sellers; and 2) providing a means to increase the spend with small, local and diverse sellers available in the Amazon Business store. To explore these systems and their capabilities, learn more by visiting the Amazon Business App Center.
  
  
• Amazon Business Integrated Search allows buyers to search and shop from their organization's procurement systems, reducing clicks and helping to support purchasing policy compliance. Customers that have set up Amazon Business' Guided Buying policies to support Socially Responsible Purchasing (SRP) goals can now see their SRP-preferred items highlighted within their Integrated Search results. To support this capability, new fields have been added to the Amazon Business Product Search API, including Product Badges to display the Sustainability Climate Pledge Friendly (CPF) badge, Certificates to show the merchant's sustainability certifications, and Buying Guidance to provide details on the Guided Buying policies influencing the recommendations. Customers can now see SRP badging and filter their Integrated Search results by SRP criteria like sustainability and certifications, based on the configurations in their procurement systems.
  
  
• Amazon Business’ Classified Small Business initiative aims to proactively identify small business sellers, to support business customers looking to achieve their ESG goals in supporting small businesses. Previously sellers were required to regularly submit certification to qualify as a small business seller on Amazon, which excluded many small business sellers who did not go through the certification process. The Classified Small Business solution seeks to proactively identify these sellers based on certain eligibility criteria, like annual revenue and number of employees, using high fidelity data. Since launch, Amazon Business has identified 185,000 new small business sellers, providing more options for those looking to support these businesses. Customers can now create a Guided Buying policy to prefer items from these sellers by adding the “Prefer small and diverse sellers” policy and including “Classified Small Business” credentials.
   

Learn more about how Amazon Business can support your procurement initiatives by making it easier to buy from small, diverse, or local businesses, and discover products with sustainability certifications.