Your purchase channels should complement your remote working setup

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing businesses and their employees to adapt to remote working, there are many issues that companies need to address to ensure their remote working staff stays productive and efficient.

One of the key areas that is sure to witness significant adjustments is the procurement process. Businesses have to ensure that their remote working setup has access to the right amount of stock, so that business runs smoothly. They need to make sure that the procurement supply chain operates smoothly so that all products can be made available to the employees in a time bound manner.

Challenges in the procurement process

Absence of a workflow system can create delays in purchase orders. With multiple teams working remotely, they may set up their own method of ordering and tracking purchase orders. Since there is a lack of visibility among teams, there can be issues of duplication of orders or accidental orders. The lack of communication in a remote working setup can make relationship management harder resulting in uncertainty in the procurement process.

The goal should be to streamline the procurement process to reduce risks of potential overspending, minimise errors and deter fraud.

De-risk and Decentralise Your Procurement

Procurement teams need to implement a strategy for their supply chain to manage the risk of supply chain collapse and ensure smooth day-to-day operations across all departments. Every purchase that a company makes for its remote working setup carries a set of variables exposed to risk. These risks include product quality, vendor reliability, financial and legal compliance and company reputation. Without understanding what you need, when you need it and who will deliver it on time at the best price, your supply chain will look fragile.

Here Amazon Business plays a critical role through its fast and reliable shipping. Amazon Business’s world-class logistics network helps with choosing how and when you want your order delivered to your remote working setup in a single click. Amazon Business’s hassle-free purchase policy gives you timely delivery on every purchase you make with easy return and refund policies. With Amazon Business, your company spends less time negotiating and finding suppliers, as you can find all supplies in one destination.

Amazon Business makes your procurement process easier through its salient features by helping companies outline their purchasing policies, put in place approval workflows and ensure that the end-users can smoothly find what they want within the allocated budget.

Amazon Business focuses on expanding selection and on offering good quality products at reasonable prices to help procurement professionals and their teams work smarter and more efficiently.

Decentralise with Amazon Business

Amazon Business has two platforms at its core - the e-commerce platform and the physical logistics platforms. Amazon Business provides procurement teams with access to the logistics platform and empowers sellers to provide a decentralised experience with recommendations powered by AI (artificial intelligence). Amazon Business provides decentralised shipping by utilizing multiple warehouses to store goods closer to the end buyers so that orders can be fulfilled faster. Amazon Business’ last-mile decentralised delivery is the solution to affordably decreasing shipping time while providing quality items at reasonable costs. 

Set up Compliance Guidelines through Budget Restrictions

Setting up a budget limit is essential because it informs your purchasing strategy and determines what you can afford and what you cannot. Budgeting also helps check over-spending, identify efficient purchase channels and isolate spending trends to help you make better decisions.

To guide you through budgeting and compliance, Amazon Business offers its business customers a handy tool that provides informative data capable of giving them valuable insights – The Amazon Business Analytics tool. This tool provides a consolidated view on all your transactions helping you analyse your spend patterns effectively. It brings visibility and security to your purchasing because you can control and see who is purchasing what and under which area. The Amazon Business analytics dashboard saves your administrative time by providing  simplied view of spend reports comprising of over 100 attributes. You can track your spends against available budgets and discover new ways to reduce costs. You can also analyse your purchasing across various categories and compare your spending on preferred and restricted items.

Budgeting and Savings Re-imagined

With Amazon Business, all your business purchases receive a GST invoice that would list your company name, your purchase order number and the QR code with IRN if eligible for E-invoicing.  It allows you to create, edit, manage and refine your budget as per your needs. As an Amazon Business customer, you are also privy to business prices on a select set of items, as well as quantity discounts on bulk purchases which overall unlocks immense saving potential for your business.

To Conclude

Having a robust and dependable procurement channel is one of key ways that businesses can navigate these uncertain times. Choose Amazon Business as your trusted partner to create a risk free procurement solution that helps your business stay its course of growth.