SAP SE is partnering with Amazon Business to enable employees to tap into hundreds of millions of items on Amazon Business directly from within SAP Ariba solutions and assist with compliance with corporate purchasing policies.
With this partnership and technology integration, Amazon Business becomes a source of supply for Spot Buy, a capability within SAP Ariba solutions for users to purchase items from trusted suppliers. Integrating Amazon Business into the guided buying capability within the SAP Ariba solution experience helps simplify the purchase of general business goods while providing users with hundreds of millions of new items.
“Partnering with Amazon Business is a bold step aligned with our strategy to make SAP Business Network more open so that users can more easily and compliantly buy the goods required to do their work and keep their businesses running,” said Tony Harris, global vice president, Business Network solutions, SAP. “Customers want choices, and SAP is continually evaluating and onboarding new content sources for our Spot Buy capability to provide the most value to them.”
This new integration will utilize a real-time search API so users of guided buying can search for items and receive results from Amazon Business, along with other online stores, e-commerce providers and direct sellers, directly within the SAP Ariba solution. Amazon Business items selected for checkout will be transferred to the shopping cart for automatic processing within the SAP Ariba solution.
“We’re excited to be working with SAP,” said Alexandre Gagnon, vice president worldwide at Amazon Business. “Making online procurement easier for customers of all sizes and industries is among our top priorities and one we share with SAP.”
SAP is focused on delivering solutions that help customers align spend decisions to business strategies in the networked economy. SAP plans to roll out the integration to customers globally, starting with early adopters in the United States later this year.
“Employees continue to expect the convenience of online shopping to spill over into their work lives,” said Nick Heinzmann, analyst team lead, Spend Matters. “And they want more than just a familiar interface: end buyers also want the experience of being able to find ‘everything’ in one place. The Spot Buy capability within SAP Ariba solutions is moving toward exactly this kind of experience in B2B, building on top of its current global integrations for external content to now include Amazon Business. Allowing end buyers to find and select Amazon Business content in the same native shopping experience they use for their internal catalogs is a logical step toward delivering the needed balance between the consumer-like experience today’s employees expect and helping improve the compliance and financial results that procurement can deliver.”
