Amazon Business announces new features to better serve businesses of all sizes

New features tailored to businesses include payment by invoice, VAT exclusive pricing and invoicing, and opening to Coupa Open Buy users

Since launching in April 2017, Amazon Business now serves more than 90,000 business customers of all sizes in the UK, helping them to save time and money as well as increase their productivity

Amazon Business now serves five countries including Germany, India, Japan, the UK and US, enabling businesses with international operations to streamline their purchasing, while enabling small business sellers to boost their B2B exports sales

LONDON - 5th December – Amazon today announced that Amazon Business (www.amazon.co.uk/business) has launched a new set of features designed to better serve the procurement needs of businesses of all sizes.
Amazon Business combines more than one hundred million business-relevant products with a set of unique features, such as VAT-exclusive pricing, Amazon Business Analytics and Free One-Day Delivery. It’s everything that customers know and love about Amazon, but for business.

After launching in the UK in April 2017, Amazon Business now serves more than 90,000 business customers – from sole traders and small businesses to large multi-national organisations and FTSE 100 companies, as well as institutional buyers like universities, hospitals and non-profits. 
The new features announced today include:

• Pay by invoice - pay on net 30 day terms to help improve cash flow.
• Business Invoice - Improved search and filter features now allow business customers to quickly find products from Amazon and Marketplace sellers who display net prices and offer VAT-inclusive invoicing for download.
• Catalogue Curation - Enabling businesses to configure the Amazon Business catalogue according to their procurement policies. Administrators can define approval criteria and set certain or restricted categories and products.
• Coupa Open Buy - Coupa Customers now have direct access to millions of Amazon Business products simply by using the search bar within the Coupa interface.

“We’re working hard to continually introduce improvements that provide even greater selection, value and convenience to business customers looking to streamline their procurement, enabling them to save time and money, and increase their productivity,” said Bill Burkland, Head of Amazon Business, Amazon.co.uk. “The latest suite of Amazon Business features has been driven by the feedback we’ve received from our customers and are designed to enhance the efficiency, visibility and controls our business customers want in their procurement process.”

Amazon Business has enabled us to take the hassle out of purchasing the items we need to run our operations,” said Louisa Collins, Head of IT and Purchasing at International Institute for Anti-Ageing, an international distribution company. “Working with Amazon Business has helped us become more efficient with our purchasing for multiple stakeholders, which in turn means we are even more effective in how we service our own customers and end users.”

We use Amazon Business for everything from cameras, lighting and tech equipment for our events, through to the tea bags for our kitchen,” said Victoria Benton, Finance Director, The Flash Pack, a digital creative content agency. “The approval process allows me to set spending limits for individual staff, which provides visibility and control to help manage our expenditure more effectively.”

As well as the new features announced today, Amazon Business offers the following features to help change the way businesses purchase products, such as:

• Free One-Day Delivery - Businesses can get the products fast and free on qualified orders of £30 or more.
• Visibility and control - Add a Purchase Order (PO) number to orders, add multiple users to business accounts, set spending limits, enable purchasing approval workflows and gain visibility of expenditure with Amazon Business Analytics.
• Integrated into procurement systems - Enabled on leading e-procurement platforms including Coupa, JAGGAER and SAP Ariba.
• Detailed transaction data on commercial card purchases - Track and reconcile business purchases with line-item detail on every Amazon Business purchase made with a Visa Commercial Card issued by Barclaycard, Citi, HSBC or Lloyds Bank.

Amazon Business is continuing to expand globally, meaning that multi-national companies can now manage their procurement needs in the UK, Germany India, Japan and the US. Small and medium sized businesses selling on the Amazon Business Marketplace are growing their sales by reaching new B2B customers around the world, helping to boost their export sales whilst offering features such as business-only pricing, quantity discounts and exclusive business offers.

Half of all units sold on Amazon Business are from third party businesses, with more than 30,000 sellers in the UK having accessed the Amazon Business Seller feature set. This includes sellers who have adopted the VAT Calculation Service which on average helped increase their B2B sales on Amazon Business by more than 50 per cent within the first month.

Business customers can register for a free Amazon Business account via www.amazon.co.uk/business. Sellers that would like to add products to Amazon’s growing Amazon Business selection can learn more at www.amazon.co.uk/business-seller.
ENDS

About Amazon 
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfilment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.co.uk/about.

For further information, please contact:
Amazon UK Press Office
Email: pressoffice@amazon.co.uk  
Tel: 0203 680 0888