As the old business adage goes, employees are an organization’s greatest asset. That applies to all business functions, but is especially true in the world of procurement. Purchasing teams serve as liaisons between internal and external stakeholders, vendors, and other parties. Procurement is a multi-step process requiring staff to wear many different hats, from managing spend to growing partnership opportunities.
But at many organizations, procurement bottlenecks make it challenging to keep processes moving efficiently and cost-effectively. Navigating these headwinds requires organizations to leverage tools and technologies that help procurement staff improve their workflows. From automating manual efforts by accumulating data to leveraging the right integrations, procurement departments can take steps to improve the employee experience — and, in turn, drive business success.
The procurement industry at a glance
98% of respondents are planning investments in analytics and insights tools, automation, and AI for their procurement operations in the next few years.
95% of
decision-makers say procurement has room for optimization.
30% of respondents say they want their team to invest more time and energy into decentralizing purchasing.
Source: Amazon Business 2024 State of Procurement Data Report
The road to procurement
Check off each step of the procurement journey to compare an employee-enabled procurement process to a manual one.
When employees are engaged and enabled with the right resources:
Budgeting & strategizing
Budgeting & strategizing
Employees enabled with smart analytics and decentralized purchasing processes can make strategic choices with fewer manual processes.
Choosing the right suppliers
Choosing the right suppliers
With AI-enabled tools and technology, employees can screen suppliers effectively. Online purchasing tools, for instance, offer features like search and filter, as well as opportunities for direct communication with suppliers.
When employees are dissatisfied or aren’t enabled with the right technology:
Sourcing (or drafting bids)
Integrated sourcing tools can help employees submit bids quickly to one or more suppliers so they can make any necessary manual adjustments.
Sourcing (or drafting bids)
Drafting & completing supplier contracts
Integrations with contract management tools enable employees to draft contracts easily, saving time and keeping documents organized.
Handling invoices & making payments
APIs can automate receipts, which saves employees time and helps maintain records effectively.
Handling invoices & making payments
Drafting & completing supplier contracts
Budgeting & strategizing
Procurement costs are rising due to inflation and geopolitical conflicts. Without strategic budgeting resources that enable employees to make key decisions, these costs can get out of hand.
Budgeting & strategizing
Choosing the right suppliers
When employees don’t feel empowered to make strategic decisions, like choosing between suppliers, it can create friction in the procurement process.
Choosing the right suppliers
Sourcing (or drafting bids)
Employees need the right technology to avoid becoming mired in the complex sourcing process, which can lead to frustration, mistakes, and a negative employee experience.
Sourcing (or drafting bids)
Drafting & completing supplier contracts
Manually preparing and following up on supplier contracts is a headache that can leave employees overwhelmed.
Drafting & completing supplier contracts
Handling invoices & making payments
The complexities of purchase data reconciliation and account management without smart integrations can cause costly manual mistakes that lead to employee dissatisfaction.
Handling invoices & making payments
How the right integrations can streamline procurement
To better understand how the right integrations can help streamline your procurement process — and improve your employees’ experience — just look at msg group.
With more than 10,000 employees all over the world, msg group offers systems integrations consulting for accounting, finance, regulatory reporting, performance management, customer experience, and IoT technology needs. Headquartered in Germany with clients in industries ranging from automotive manufacturing to banking, msg sought to streamline purchasing for its growing and geographically distributed workforce. The company worked with Amazon Business to integrate with SAP Ariba, creating a direct source of supply for its workforce with spend policies and approvals mapping to a procurement system.
“When employees purchase products, they are looking to quickly fulfill a business need,” Doug Gray, VP of Tech at Amazon Business, said. “If their organization’s procurement systems make it difficult or confusing to complete a purchase, employees will often work outside those systems to move forward with whatever allows them to complete the purchase as quickly as possible.”
“By already having Punchout [integration] in place, setting up Integrated Search was very easy, with the help of the documentation provided by Amazon Business and the specialists on their side.”
Karlheinz Graf
Senior Project Manager,
MSG Group
Anatomy of an employee-enabled procurement process
Analytics
With built-in Spend Visibility dashboards, available with a Business Prime membership, procurement employees can assess spending patterns and learn how their department purchases without needing manual data collection. With the data they need to shape their organization’s procurement strategy, employees save valuable time while becoming strategic advisors to the rest of the business.
Guided Buying, also available with a Business Prime membership, can create buying policies that direct employees to the right products and suppliers. This reduces the number of employee queries, freeing up time for procurement teams to focus on more strategic work.
AI
When used safely and properly, AI can support staff by minimizing time-consuming research, prioritizing a human touchpoint for more complex customer service requests, or automating otherwise-manual processes.
Amazon Business uses AI in analytics to simplify the procurement process and drive smart business buying. Its AI tools can make proactive product recommendations using AI-powered search. Teams can use their AI-powered chatbot functions to minimize time spent on easy-to-process customer requests. Amazon Business tools also leverage AI for more seamless systems integrations, such as its Punchout integration, which gives buyers easy access to Amazon Business while complying with organizational procurement policies and controls.
AI
Anatomy of an employee-enabled procurement process
integrations
AI
integrations
AI
integrations
analytics
To help streamline buying and empower cross-functional teams, many C-level leaders have become digital transformation evangelists. By connecting systems, integrations can help save customers time and money, drive compliance, and improve spend visibility for a range of stakeholders, such as finance, IT, and accounts payable. Amazon Business’ integrations can help bridge the gap for employees at almost every step of the procurement journey. In 2023, the number of new customers adopting Punchout increased by 50%, while e-invoicing adoption grew by more than 40% globally. These figures illustrate significant strides toward refining the purchasing process and creating a more seamless experience.
Employees can also leverage Pay by Invoice (subject to credit approval) to minimize the time needed for expense reporting and simplify reconciliation with on-demand digital itemized invoices. With Business Lists, employees can quickly reorder commonly purchased items from customized lists, reducing the number of repetitive tasks within the buying process.
Integrations
Anatomy of an employee-enabled procurement process
No matter your business’ specific needs, leveraging the right integrations can empower employees and improve the overall efficiency of your procurement process.
Learn how Amazon Business and its integrations can streamline your procurement process and elevate the employee experience.
Learn More
Unblocking
the Procurement
How empowering your procurement staff builds efficiency and cost-effectiveness
sponsored by
Bottleneck
39% of business
leaders say they believe procurement is “highly coordinated” with groups like finance, compliance, legal, and technology.
46% of procurement decision-makers completely agree that employees outside procurement follow their policies and procedures.
78% say it’s very important to streamline purchasing for those outside of procurement.
AI
integrations
analytics
analytics
AI
integrations
Learn More
analytics
analytics
The road to procurement
Check off each step of the procurement journey to compare an employee-enabled procurement process to a manual one.
When employees are dissatisfied or aren’t enabled with the right technology:
Budgeting &
strategizing
Procurement costs are rising due to inflation and geopolitical conflicts. Without strategic budgeting resources that enable employees to make key decisions, these costs can get out of hand.
Choosing the
right suppliers
When employees don’t feel empowered to make strategic decisions, like choosing between suppliers, it can create friction in the procurement process.
Sourcing
(or drafting bids)
Employees need the right technology to avoid becoming mired in the complex sourcing process, which can lead to frustration, mistakes, and a negative employee experience.
Drafting and completing supplier contracts
Manually preparing and following up on supplier contracts is a headache that can leave employees overwhelmed.
Handling invoices and making payments
The complexities of purchase data reconciliation and account management without smart integrations can cause costly manual mistakes that lead to employee dissatisfaction.
When employees are engaged and enabled with the right resources:
Budgeting &
strategizing
Employees enabled with smart analytics and decentralized purchasing processes can make strategic choices with fewer manual processes.
Choosing the
right suppliers
With AI-enabled tools and technology, employees can screen suppliers effectively. Online purchasing tools, for instance, offer features like search and filter, as well as opportunities for direct communication with suppliers.
Sourcing
(or drafting bids)
Integrated sourcing tools can help employees submit bids quickly to one or more suppliers so they can make any necessary manual adjustments.
Drafting and completing supplier contracts
Integrations with contract management tools enable employees to draft contracts easily, saving time and keeping documents organized.
Handling invoices and making payments
APIs can automate receipts, which saves employees time and helps maintain records effectively.
analytics
AI
integrations
When used safely and properly, AI can support staff by minimizing time-consuming research, prioritizing a human touchpoint for more complex customer service requests, or automating otherwise-manual processes.
Amazon Business uses AI in analytics to simplify the procurement process and drive smart business buying. Its AI tools can make proactive product recommendations using AI-powered search. Teams can use their AI-powered chatbot functions to minimize time spent on easy-to-process customer requests. Amazon Business tools also leverage AI for more seamless systems integrations, such as its Punchout integration, which gives buyers easy access to Amazon Business while complying with organizational procurement policies and controls.
AI
Anatomy of an employee-enabled procurement process
analytics
AI
integrations
To help streamline buying and empower cross-functional teams, many C-level leaders have become digital transformation evangelists. By connecting systems, integrations can help save customers time and money, drive compliance, and improve spend visibility for a range of stakeholders, such as finance, IT, and accounts payable. Amazon Business’ integrations can help bridge the gap for employees at almost every step of the procurement journey. In 2023, the number of new customers adopting Punchout increased by 50%, while e-invoicing adoption grew by more than 40% globally. These figures illustrate significant strides toward refining the purchasing process and creating a more seamless experience.
Employees can also leverage Pay by Invoice (subject to credit approval) to minimize the time needed for expense reporting and simplify reconciliation with on-demand digital itemized invoices. With Business Lists, employees can quickly reorder commonly purchased items from customized lists, reducing the number of repetitive tasks within the buying process.
Integrations
Anatomy of an employee-enabled procurement process
AI
Integrations
Analytics
Integrations
Analytics
AI
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