How to maintain spending goals in a decentralized environment

As more employees are working from home, organizations need to adapt to a new, decentralized work environment. Procurement teams and employees will continue to purchase items they need for work, but organizations need to ensure they are purchasing the right items that meet each team’s spending goals, even without direct oversight. By using the preferred lists policy in Guided Buying, it is easier to maintain your team’s spending goals, even if your team is remote or distributed.

Reorder Lists

One of the ways you can keep track of your favorite items or the items you prefer your teams to purchase on Amazon Business’s online store is by using Lists. Reorder lists are a great way to create and share lists of the items that meet your organization’s purchasing goals. Items added to reorder lists stay on the list, which saves you time when you need to find and repurchase these common items. Previously, it was up to the list owner to manually share that list with anyone they thought should be using it. Then, buyers would need to remember to consult the list before making any purchases. Now, you can automatically share items on these lists through Guided Buying, making it easier to surface and encourage your buyers to select items that meet your purchasing goals.

Guided Buying

Guided Buying is available to Business Prime Customers. It enables you to customize the buyer experience and seamlessly steer your buyers towards approved products and away from things they should avoid. By configuring policies based on your purchasing preferences and overall procurement goals, you can achieve great results through the collective action of your buyers, even in a fully decentralized environment. This leads to significant efficiency gains in the procurement process as your buyers are far more likely to choose approved items, and it reduces both the time it takes the buyer to find those items as well as the time needed for purchasing review, approvals, and returns processes. It also has a longer-term impact, enabling organizations to achieve their goals related to purchasing quality, purchasing compliance, supplier consolidation, and corporate policies, such as ensuring a portion of spend goes to local businesses or businesses with specific diversity credentials.

Preferred lists policy in Guided Buying

Combining reorder lists with Guided Buying is a great way to achieve the benefits of both with very little effort. The preferred list policy in Guided Buying enables you to select a reorder list and make it preferred for a given group or groups in your organization. Doing this will mean that all of the items on that list are automatically marked as preferred for all of the buyers in the chosen groups. This process makes it much easier for your buyers to discover items that are clearly marked as preferred by your organization, complete with a custom message that you can set for the product detail page. When your buyers search for items similar to those that are on your lists, your recommendations will get pushed to the top of the search results. What’s more, the list and policy will remain in sync, so any changes you make to the list will be applied to the policy, and the list will automatically be shared with all of the buyers in the groups the policy applies to.

For the many businesses who are adapting to a newly decentralized working environment, this is great news, as it makes it easier to help your employees quickly discover and purchase the best items for their needs. You can create as many lists and policies as you need. You can have a ‘Working from home’ equipment list, a ‘Supply room’ list, an ‘IT equipment’ list, or anything else that makes sense for your team. These lists and products will be prioritized on search without requiring any special behavior from your buyers.

To get started, first review or create reorder lists in the Lists section of Amazon Business. Keep in mind that you’ll need to be logged in to Amazon Business to see your Amazon Business lists. Next, Business Prime admins can link these Lists by creating a new Preferred List policy under the Product Policies section in Buying Policies and Approvals. If you’re not a Business Prime Customer, you can see the full list of benefits on the Business Prime page.