Organisations reap the benefits of lower total costs, improved spend compliance, and higher end user adoption.

In many organisations, employees are required to buy from specific catalogs maintained by their employer. Due to ever-changing needs, employees may not find what they need in these catalogs. This may cause an employee to buy goods outside of their corporate-approved channels, but doing so can result in non-compliant spending - without proper budget checks or approvals.

Coupa Open Buy with Amazon Business gives Coupa users embedded visibility and instant access to millions of items beyond the catalogs managed by their employer. This helps reduce the rate of ‘item not found’ and decreases the likelihood of employees buying outside their organisation’s approved processes. In addition, one-time purchase needs (sometimes called “spot buys”) can be handled efficiently by an employee without consuming procurement or accounts payables team resources.

"Traditional procurement catalogs rarely keep up with the latest products and services and often do not reflect the best prices and volume discounts available in the market,” said R "Ray" Wang, principal analyst, founder and chairman of Constellation Research, Inc. “The ability to access the buying power of one of the world’s biggest retailers from within your own spend management platform ultimately provides choice, flexibility, and control. This is where B2B and B2C come together."

First announced in December 2015, the Coupa and Amazon Business relationship has grown over the last 18 months with Coupa customers increasingly turning on punch-out link connections to the Amazon Business marketplace. This new Coupa Open Buy capability expands the technology collaboration to streamline the employee buying experience and increase organisational compliance.

“Amazon Business and Coupa are committed to delivering maximum value to customers through constant innovation,” said Prentis Wilson, vice president of Amazon Business. “We are responding to customers’ needs with this perfect blend of full enterprise buying control through Coupa and open marketplace selection through Amazon Business. It’s the best of both worlds.”

Coupa’s flexible configuration capabilities give customers the ability to tailor the Coupa Open Buy solution to meet their organisation's specific needs. For example, customers can turn on Amazon Business items results as part of all product searches for spot buy type needs and item comparisons, or only when catalog searches return no results. Additional configuration of commodity-based workflows prevents restricted items from being purchased without additional approval.

“Turning on Coupa Open Buy to get access to the Amazon Business marketplace as part of a Coupa product search is a no brainer for us,” said Richard Landerholm, global supply manager at Woodward, Inc. “I know our employees will love the improved ease of use and Woodward gets even more Coupa spend control capabilities, so everyone wins.”

Coupa customers benefit from the Amazon Business e-commerce expertise and gain visibility into full product catalogs on an established multi-seller marketplace, which helps eliminate the need to manage individual catalogs.

“Coupa Open Buy with Amazon Business is another way that we are bringing market differentiated value to organisations,” said Roger Goulart, vice president of business development and alliances at Coupa. “Having instant access to the Amazon Business marketplace through Coupa increases our customers’ agility and total value and we’re excited to bring this differentiated solution to the market.”

Coupa Open Buy with Amazon Business is available now in an early access program.