IRIS & Amazon Business ease Procurement Process for Schools

IRIS, a global provider of mission-critical software, has made Amazon Business e-Procurement available via its IRIS Financials system.

The integration will enable more than 5,000 schools in the UK to buy supplies directly from Amazon Business through the financial system, eliminating several time-consuming manual steps.

Schools often buy items in bulk from Amazon Business, including textbooks, stationery, computers, whiteboards, sports equipment, music items and materials for art and science, as well as cleaning supplies, furniture, catering equipment and Special Educational Needs (SEN) resources.

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"This is a fantastic collaboration, underlining IRIS Education's commitment to the education sector and showing how we continue to innovate to help schools and trusts," comments Simon Freeman, Managing Director for Education at IRIS.

"Being able to handle Amazon e-Procurement within IRIS Financials transforms the time-intensive manual processes that are performed daily.

“It removes the need to re-key information from Amazon into a purchase order, alleviates the usual juggling between applications to copy over information from Amazon to a purchasing system, and dramatically reduces the steps needed in gaining approval for purchases."

The partnership will allow the teams purchasing items to launch Amazon Business' digital catalogue within their IRIS Financials purchasing system.

More time to focus on students

Offering full integration with an existing Amazon Business account, purchasing teams are set to benefit from a familiar Amazon checkout process, prefilled purchase order lines, automatic generation of purchase orders and approvals, and purchase reconciliation.

"We're thrilled to be collaborating with IRIS to bring streamlined procurement for thousands of schools around the UK," adds Fabricio Pedroza, Country Manager, UK&I at Amazon Business.

"This collaboration means we're able to offer UK schools and multi-academy trusts a wide range of products through their existing IRIS Financials purchasing systems, providing easy access to Amazon Business' digital catalogue.

"Through automating admin tasks and offering increased visibility and easier and improved purchase reconciliation, this partnership will enable schools to focus on what's important: the education and success of its students."

IRIS is focused on developing software solutions that consolidate data across multiple systems, automate processes and alleviate the unnecessary time drain that educational staff currently face.

With 30 years' experience in education management solutions and a presence in 90 countries, IRIS has the broadest education software suite in the UK, with 75% of MATs and 12,000 UK schools and academies – including half of the schools in England – now using its solutions.

Four million parents and guardians use the IRIS apps to connect with their children's school. Around 300 million messages are delivered between schools and parents each year, and more than £15m (US$18.8m) worth of transactional payments are processed every month.

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