Amazon Business: Familiarity Leads to Smart Business Buying

Individual customers often choose Amazon for its convenience, familiarity, wide selection, and competitive pricing. However, business buyers must navigate more complex procurement decisions. To support organisations of all sizes in reshaping their procurement operations, Amazon launched Amazon Business. 

Amazon Business plays an integral role in the sourcing strategy of companies across nine countries: the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and India. It offers cost savings, time efficiencies, increased productivity, and intelligent spend analytics, among additional features. These benefits are provided in a familiar shopping interface for customers wherever they sit in the procurement process, whether for a small business or a global enterprise.  

Business Prime, a paid service, is an additional layer of functionality and convenience, offering a range of features, including business-only pricing and selection, single or multi-user business accounts, approval workflows, purchasing system integrations, payment solutions, tax exemptions, and dedicated customer support.

How Amazon Business transformed procurement at The Prince’s Trust 

The UK-based charity The Prince’s Trust was founded by King Charles when he was the Prince of Wales in 1976. It helps young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.  

The Prince’s Trust faced a challenge with its procurement process: it was acquiring a wide range of items for initiatives through spot purchases. This approach needed more visibility to make tracking and reporting expenditures easier. As its team expanded, they recognised this issue and sought methods to enhance its procurement practices.

A primary concern was the effective management and monitoring of tail spend, alongside establishing an authorisation process to ensure unauthorised spending aligned with its objectives. Given the diverse array of products acquired in the tail they aimed for a consolidated solution, a 'one-stop shop' that could supply as many of its required items as possible.

“Amazon is synonymous with being able to get more or less anything you need,” says Verity White, the Senior Head of Procurement, The Prince’s Trust, at the time of project.   

“Because what we buy is so varied, it’s about having that platform where we can get anything from a bike to a suit to a nail kit and so on. Being able to see what we’re buying for the first time ever, means we can sit down and make positive decisions about what we want to do moving forward,” adds White.

The charity has found that familiarity with the consumer platform, combined with Amazon Business supporting its B2B needs, has made an intelligent choice, as the system is guiding spending, clearly demonstrating expenditure and frees up time to commit to other projects.  

Amazon Business and Kuwait Petroleum’s innovative loyalty programme

Kuwait Petroleum Italia (Q8) operates as a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum International, focusing on refining and distributing petroleum products beyond Kuwait's borders.

Q8 first established a presence in Italy in 1984 and now boasts an extensive network of over 2,800 service stations across the country. The company collaborates with Amazon Business for its ClubQ8 customer loyalty programme, which allows customers access to dozens of exclusive offers and items from various brands gathered in a single catalogue from Amazon Business. All delivered fast and free through Amazon shipping directly to their homes.

“Understanding the daily consumption behaviour of our customers was the premise that prompted us to rethink the traditional way in whichQ8 managed loyalty-related matters,” says Gherardo Bisi, Marketing Director, Q8.

“The guaranteed expertise and success of a partner such as Amazon made the decision to streamline processes for the delivery of rewards from our catalogue to ClubQ8 members clear and simple. Speed, user involvement and control are the aspects that have driven our decision to reinvent the way we deliver loyalty.”

The partnership goes beyond a traditional loyalty programme, as Amazon Business acts as a full B2B2C partner as well as an end-to-end procurement and logistics partner.

“We are certain that this is just the beginning of a long-lasting business relationship; we are industry pioneers in Italy, and this has only been made possible by the trust we place in this new partnership,” adds Bisi.  

Amazon Business is revolutionising procurement for organisations worldwide. Through free and paid features, like Business Prime, and innovative partnerships, Amazon Business offers efficiency, cost savings, and strategic insights. From streamlining spend management to enhancing customer loyalty, Amazon Business is not just your average e-procurement system but a strategic ally driving organisational growth and innovation. Its impact on smart business buying is poised to continue transforming the procurement landscape globally.