CIOs often play an integral role in businesses’ digital transformation. Their role goes beyond technical implementations. They are often critical to organizations’ process development and help ensure strategic priorities, like smart business buying, are set up for success with automated workflows.
Systems integrations can connect multiple systems and data streams and unite the cross-functional teams that carry out purchasing. Amazon Business integrates with more than 300 third-party systems, including e-procurement, expense management, intelligent document processing (iDP) systems, and e-sourcing systems. With integrations like Punchout, Punch-in, Integrated Search, Single Sign-on, and more, IT leaders can create smart business buying journeys that help their organizations save time and money, drive compliance and increase spend visibility.
Familiar purchasing experience, unified approach
Punchout is often a business’ first or most commonly used e-procurement integration. It allows customers to start their smart business buying journey in their e-procurement systems — like Coupa, SAP Ariba, Jaggaer — and then punch out to the Amazon Business store for the familiar Amazon shopping experience.
At Emory University, employees were already purchasing supplies through Amazon, but didn’t have an Amazon Business account or integration with their e-procurement system. That created gaps in spend visibility and made it challenging to enforce purchasing policies.
To streamline buying and improve compliance, Emory tapped Amazon Business Punchout.
“With Punchout, our end users can go to our purchasing system and create a cart seamlessly on the Amazon Business website. That cart is transferred back into our purchasing system,” explained Christopher Stokes, procurement system business analyst at Emory University. “The cart can then go through our workflows that we’ve already built out and determine if the cart conforms with our policies.”
After Punchout, Emory moved forward with Integrated Search, allowing buyers to browse Amazon Business alongside other catalog suppliers without leaving their e-procurement system.
“The team has gained greater spend visibility and compliance with spend protocols,” said Stokes.
Jabil, a global manufacturing solutions provider, took a similar approach, deploying both Punchout and Integrated Search. Amazon Business became Jabil’s first supplier integrated through Coupa’s Open Buy functionality, enabling users to search across multiple catalogs in a single interface.
“This simplifies the user experience and creates competitive price transparency,” said Heidi Banks, senior director and engagement partner at Jabil.
“It was a really big efficiency gain,” Banks added. “The end users love it because it takes fewer clicks to get what they need, which is always helpful. The procurement team loves it because the open transparency keeps partners competitive. Since then, we’ve driven more than 40% improvement in our spend to catalog and strategic partners.”
While many organizations start with Punchout, others opt for Punch-in, which begins the buying journey on Amazon Business and routes completed carts back into e-procurement systems for approval. Some businesses choose one; others use both, depending on their workflows.
“Amazon Business has been serving customers for 10 years,” said Satya Mishra, director of software development and product management for Amazon Business. “We’ve continued to build out our suite of integrations based on the evolving needs of our customers, to best suit the buying journeys they want and need.”
Extending the advantage with APIs
This flexibility extends further with Amazon Business’ suite of APIs, which help connect purchasing to a broader range of business systems. Organizations can discover and integrate with various tools through the Amazon Business App Center for seamless data flow.
One example is Reconciliation API, which automates the import of Amazon Business receipts into expense management systems like Concur Expense and Emburse. For Walsh Group, this API helped address recurring challenges. By integrating Amazon Business with Concur Expense, receipts from Amazon Business purchases are automatically pulled into expense reports, saving time and improving visibility.
“Amazon Business is a one-stop shop for our business buying. We were already using it before. Now it’s accessible to us with one enterprise account,” said Walsh Group accountant and travel and expense manager, Jessica Richardson. “With one form of payment, we’re able to expense our business purchases through SAP Concur.”
Other API business customers can include Reporting API, which provides customers’ Amazon Business order history data, tracking, and payment details directly to their reporting tools, and User Management API, which allows for programmatic creation of user accounts within an existing Amazon Business account.
Integration can pay off across the business
When business buying is integrated across systems, the benefits ripple across teams. Procurement, IT, and finance leaders see a measurable impact, from efficiency gains to better decision-making.
Organizations that integrate purchasing workflows see clear benefits:
- Greater spend visibility
When teams use separate systems, it can be challenging to get a clear picture of total spending. Integration brings purchasing data into a single view, enabling smarter department decisions. - Time and cost savings
By reducing manual steps and automating reconciliation, teams spend less time chasing approvals and more time focusing on high-value work. - Stronger compliance and control
Buyers’ orders comply with spend policies and supplier goals while minimizing rogue spend. At Jabil, for example, this visibility led to process improvements:
“If we see something in the spend data from Amazon Business, or spend outside Amazon Business that shouldn’t be happening, we can correct those processes either through change management or Guided Buying, a Business Prime benefit,” explained Banks. “The analytics we receive from Amazon Business help us determine where we should make those plays.”
Smart business buying starts here
As organizations face complexity, CIOs have an opportunity to transform everyday purchasing into connected, strategic, compliant experiences. E-procurement integration paves the way — improving visibility, streamlining workflows, and supporting compliance across teams.
Learn more about creating smart business buying journeys with Amazon Business integrations.
