Shelley Salomon, worldwide vice president, Amazon Business

“Amazon Business wants to change how companies shop for supplies through our unmatched selection, deep discounts, and smart capabilities,” says Shelley Salomon, worldwide vice president of Amazon Business.

The new toolset includes:

• Amazon Business App Center, a global “one-stop shop” where companies can connect their Amazon Business account with more than 25 third-party applications for such purposes as integrated shopping, financial accounting management, inventory management, business analytics, and loyalty program management.
• Guided Buying for managing employee spending and steering buyers to an organization’s preferred purchasing. For example, a toolbar lets account administrators highlight preferred products with sustainability certifications.
• Integrated Quoting is designed to help businesses generate custom quotes for bulk orders placed through Amazon Business as well as other suppliers via third-party e-sourcing and e-procurement platforms. Amazon says the Integrated Quoting feature is “ideal for business customers purchasing more than 1,000 items or more than $10,000 in total value.”
• Budget Management helps companies manage how they set and review time-bound budgets across their organization, Amazon says. “Business customers can set spend thresholds and make budget amounts visible to buyers to get ahead of overspending,” Amazon says.
• Cross-domain Identity Management is a new feature that Amazon says saves companies time maintaining their Amazon Business accounts by automatically syncing users’ and group data from their organization’s identity provider.

The new Guided Buying tool available through Amazon Business.

Amazon Business says it “drives roughly $35 billion in annualized gross sales and has more than 6 million customers worldwide, including 96 of the Fortune 100.”

Greg Long, purchasing manager at Seminole County Public Schools in Sanford, Florida, says in an Amazon Business press release: “One of our favorite Amazon Business features is Budget Management. It gives teachers visibility into our budget, so they know how much they have to spend, making it easier to stay within our annual budget.”

Amazon Business adds that it is focused on companies of all sizes.

“Amazon Business wants to transform how companies — whether a local hair salon, global corporation, school, non-profit, hospital, or government agency — shop for supplies through an unmatched selection, deep discounts, and smart capabilities,” a spokesperson says. “Using innovative technology, Amazon Business saves organizations time and money so they can focus their resources on what matters.”

Salomon adds, “We don’t just react to the biggest challenges our customers have shared with us; we get ahead of them with new technologies so our customers can use their resources to navigate the unexpected and continue expanding their business.”

Salomon, an Amazon veteran of more than 20 years, was appointed worldwide vice president of Amazon Business in March after Alexandre Gagnon left that position for a leave of absence. Amazon did not comment on the future plans of Gagnon, who still lists his Amazon Business position on his LinkedIn page.

Salomon’s most recent position at Amazon was vice president of sales, marketing and business development, Amazon Devices. Her other Amazon positions have included vice president of global logistics and delivery technology, and president of Endless.com. She joined Amazon in December 2023 as a senior finance manager following a finance manager position at Intel, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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93% of small businesses in the United States are “hopeful” about the state of economy this year, despite lingering concerns among many regarding inflation (50%), high operations and labor costs (42%) and supply chain distribution challenges (41%), Amazon Business found in the Small Business Survey of “450-500” small-business decision-makers.

The survey found that, to grow their business, these decision-makers are focusing on increasing their procurement budgets (65%) and investing in procurement tools (49%); 68% said there “is room for optimization in their procurement operations,” Amazon says.

AI also factors in their concerns: 50% of survey respondents said they’re worried about falling behind in their market if they don’t invest this year in artificial intelligence technologies. The survey didn’t get into more specifics about the kind of AI technology projects companies were considering. Research firm Morning Consult conducted the survey this year between March 20 and April 12; respondents were from businesses doing $25 million or less in annual revenue with workforces ranging from 20 to 100 employees.

Advice and monetary grants for small online businesses

Amazon Business, as part of its third annual Small Business Month initiative this month, is calling attention to the challenges and opportunities small companies face. In addition to the results of the Small Business Survey, Amazon Business launched this month the Small Business Success Studio and the 2024 edition of its annual Small Business Grants program.

Amazon Business — which launched as a business in 2015 and has already surpassed $35 billion in annual gross merchandise sales — is offering the Small Business Success Studio is a free “on-demand, immersive online educational resource to help entrepreneurs “start, grow, and/or scale their businesses” with essential know-how across finance, marketing, procurement, and operations.”

“Aimed at being a strategic partner for growth, the studio supports small business owners at every step of their journey, fueling inspiration, education, and community,” Amazon says.

The Small Business Success Studio also features online videos featuring the growth stories of business operators that work with Amazon Business, including Allison Ellsworth, co-founder and chief brand officer of soft drink company poppi, and Rodney Marshall, owner and founder of Aldevra, a distributor of equipment and services for the foodservice and health care industries.

Amazon Business is offering a total of $250,000 in funding through its 2024 Small Business Grants program, which it says is “designed to spur innovation and support the growth of small businesses that are driving an impact in their local communities.”

The grants program is open to existing Amazon Business customers with annual revenue of $1 million or less. Amazon will divide the grant funds among a grand prize winner, four finalists and 10 semi-finalists.

Independent sellers average over $250,000 in annual sales

Amazon also released this week the 2023 edition of its annual Small Business Empowerment Report, which covers ecommerce activity of both B2B and B2C sellers on Amazon.

In 2023, independent sellers on the Amazon.com’s U.S. marketplace, including B2B and B2C merchants, employed more than 1.8 million people and sold over 4.5 billion items in aggregate, averaging more than $250,000 in annual sales, Amazon says in the 2023 Small Business Empowerment Report.

Amazon adds that more than 60% of Amazon’s marketplace sales come from independent sellers, most of whom are small and midsized businesses.

The company also noted in the report:

• U.S.-based sellers exported more than 300 million items to customers in over 130 countries.
• More than 100,000 independent sellers have used one or more of Amazon’s generative AI product listing tools to develop product detail pages with product descriptions and images.
• More than 100,000 new brands launched on Amazon’s marketplace, and all brand owners grew sales by more than 22% over 2022.
• In rural areas last year, including parts of Alaska, Kansas, North Dakota and Utah, independent sellers n Amazon collectively achieved over 60% year-over-year sales growth. The five states with the fastest-growing number of independent seller on Amazon were in Maine, Nevada, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
• The five most-shipped product categories from U.S. sellers on Amazon last year were Health & Personal Care, Beauty, Home, Grocery and Apparel.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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66% of CPOs surveyed by McKinsey & Co. believe generative AI is still years from producing substantive business results. But there are pockets of success.

“Many CPOs question the transformative impact that generative AI (GenAI) can deliver,” McKinsey says. “The arguments range from overly niche functionality to concerns about the accuracy and security of using the large language models (LLMs) that underpin it.”

Despite a lack of buy-in from some organizations, there are distinct AI applications that can facilitate more efficient procurement procedures, McKinsey says.

Insights and trends from the external market and internal priorities

“It includes supplier performance attributes, demand specifications, and risk management,” McKinsey says. “A multilayered generative AI tool can generate a robust end-to-end category strategy in far less time than was previously possible, coordinating input from many sources and contributors. Over the past year, we saw GenAI models formulate strong strategies in categories ranging from highly specialized precision-machined parts to more mundane temporary labor.”

Interactive engagement

Generative AI enhances internal and external relationships by eliminating friction due to different time zones, busy schedules, and overwhelming data,” McKinsey says. “Instead, it aids conversations with talking points that better reflect the counterparty’s priorities.”

Examples include negotiator pilots who craft scripts based on multiple scenarios.

“Gen AI can play different roles in mock negotiations to pressure test a strategy by examining arguments and counterarguments,” according to the research and consulting firm.

Faster software programming

Generative AI models can take script code from one system and bridge it into others. That greatly accelerates digital sourcing transformations and tool adoption, McKinsey says.

“For some CPOs, this has taken years off their technology road maps and shifted the return on investment (ROI) in favor of greater automation and analytic horsepower,” according to McKinsey. “It is a terrific illustration of GenAI and traditional AI working together to create leapfrog progression in procurement capabilities.”

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Elizabeth Segovia, CEO, TradeCentric

Segovia is a former executive at information technology companies Lenovo and IBM. She also served at ecommerce services provider ChannelAdvisor (now owned by CommerceHub). Her path eventually led to TradeCentric in 2023 when she joined as its senior-most executive.

TradeCentric specializes in providing connected commerce technology. It seeks to enable buyers to access their suppliers’ ecommerce sites from within their e-procurement software. That’s done by letting customers shop for products with real-time inventory and pricing information. However, it can simultaneously be necessary to abide by companies’ individual spend management policies.

To operate, connected commerce involves such related systems as purchase order automation and invoice automation. In doing so, the technology provides companies with visibility into the entire “procure-to-pay” process.

Speaking with Digital Commerce 360, Segovia shared her insights on trends in connected commerce. She also addressed TradeCentric’s future course in supporting it. In her eyes, businesses should benefit from accessing and using real-time data on commerce transactions and customer behavior. Her comments were lightly edited and condensed from the recent interview.

Interview with Elizabeth Segovia

Digital Commerce 360: Beth, with your executive background in technology, manufacturing and ecommerce from your prior roles at Lenovo, IBM and ecommerce marketplace facilitator ChannelAdvisor, what excited you about joining TradeCentric as CEO?

Elizabeth Segovia: It’s interesting that you asked that question because TradeCentric is honestly like the perfect pull-together of my background. I grew my career in manufacturing hardware and engineering roles, so I did a lot of work around manufacturing procurement and the procure-to-pay process. And I spent a good chunk of my career really building buyer experiences for large customers, so I have a lot of understanding of what it means to serve buyers, and how they buy from you, and making that efficient and better.

At ChannelAdvisor, I learned all the things about how ecommerce businesses grow, how they transact, digitizing and transforming their commerce programs. We spent most of our time on B2C — but there were emerging B2B marketplaces — and really started to think about B2B.

This TradeCentric role really pulls all of that together and is exciting because it pulls together all of that manufacturing and procurement background and gives me an opportunity to focus on B2B. That’s super exciting.

DC360: How well are companies in general grasping the value of B2B connected commerce, with integrated ecommerce and procurement systems backed by in-depth operational data and performance analytics?

Segovia: It’s a really interesting time. It’s a nascent space. We see some real trailblazers making a lot of headway, and then we see a lot of other companies that need help and guidance and expertise to get them started or get them moving faster in the right direction.

We’re certainly seeing some faster adoption right now, and more prospects are engaging us to ask questions. And we’re seeing people with really large commerce programs who want to turn those programs over to an integrated, dedicated connected commerce program. Those are great companies to work with because their programs are already significant and they’re expanding.

But we probably see more companies on the other side, where they have been reacting to buyers’ requests. They may have 10 or 15 buyers they’re working with in a connected commerce way, and they’re starting to see results.

They’re starting to say, “Hey, these buyers are stickier. We’re seeing revenue growth. We’re seeing efficiencies on our side, and our buyers are happy we’re offering the connected service.” So they’re starting to understand there’s an opportunity here to differentiate.

DC360: There are companies seeing good results from connected commerce. Do they tend to be particular types of businesses or in particular industries?

Segovia: That was one of the questions I asked early on here. There’s not really a concentration. But there are some areas of industry where we see higher adoption rates. The life sciences industry has a pretty interesting adoption rate, and a lot of university systems procure in this way, doing more connected commerce.

In a recent survey of B2B companies, however, 61% of respondents said that more of their buyers were asking for connected commerce integration to be connected directly into their procurement system. But only about 35% of companies are doing something to meet that demand.

Yet I think everybody really wants an improved purchase experience and everybody is facing macroeconomic pressure and looking for ways to cut costs and get more efficient, so I think these solutions are industry-agnostic.

DC360: How does TradeCentric’s Business Intelligence Portal help buyers and sellers better manage procurement operations and operate more efficiently?

Segovia: The Business Intelligence Portal enables companies to see their real-time transactions and troubleshoot the transactions to make sure document transfers don’t fail. The portal also allows them to see insights they need to manage trading partner relationships, such as that a buyer tends to buy on Tuesdays or that a buyer’s purchasing volume has changed significantly.

Companies are using this data on a daily basis to manage their business. They want actionable insights and proactive alerts and monitoring.

They say, “Don’t just tell me there’s an issue; tell me what I can do about it.”

We’ll be delivering more capability through our intelligence portal as we go through 2024.

DC360: What are some of the performance metrics companies are realizing from connected commerce?

Segovia: We did a study last year with research firm Hobson & Co. and found an 80% reduction in time spent on purchase order management and a 75% reduction in time on automating invoices and doing invoice error resolution, and a 20% increase in revenue. There was also a 30% improvement in accounts receivable outstanding, collecting faster because purchase orders and invoices are matching.

DC360: How does AI fit into connected commerce trends?

Segovia: We can’t really talk about technology transformation now without talking about AI. We’ve got a lot of projects underway in our 2024 roadmap. Regarding some of the insights we talked about regarding detecting trends and behaviors in your customer data — we want to give access to more of those insights and help customers analyze their data quicker, leveraging things like natural language queries. And using ChatGPT and other ways to interact with customers, we can get to and resolve their issues faster.

Those are the sort of low-hanging fruit opportunities that we’ll be pursuing this year. But there’s more to come.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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The marketplace company introduced this week enhanced enterprise management and procurement software and services, including a revamped way for retail chains to manage corporate approval of purchasing and expanded capabilities to punch out from procurement software to order from distributors’ online catalogs.

To better accommodate retail chains placing orders through electronic data interchange, Provi said it launched EDI support “tailored specifically for distributors operating at scale.”

To improve how retail chains manage orders for all their locations, Provi introduced an upgraded approval queue designed to let chains’ regional procurement managers use a single computer interface to view and act on product requests from multiple retail store locations. At the same time, the approval queue provides corporate executives with a centralized view of their national beverage purchasing program as sourced from various distributors, Provi says.

P.F. Chang’s sees ‘enhanced efficiency’

Taylor Frendahl, director of strategic sourcing at restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s, says in a Provi press release that his company has already seen value in the order approval feature.

“The consolidated approval feature has proven to be a true game-changer for us,” he said. He added that the capability to approve, reject and monitor all orders across multiple locations in one comprehensive view has “enhanced efficiency and streamlined decision-making processes.”

Provi says it designed its upgraded procurement punchout capabilities to improve procurement management and order transparency for multiple store locations while also providing consolidated reporting at the corporate level.

Provi adds that its new EDI support “facilitates the direct flow of order data to distributors’ enterprise resource planning systems, offering enhanced visibility into post-order changes, delivery dates and critical information between chains and their distributors.”

Going forward, Provi says it plans to support “split mandates,” which will let chains establish corporate beverage purchasing programs while also granting each store location autonomy in their beer and wine selections to address local demand.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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The world’s largest retailer by revenue announced Walmart Business in January as a new ecommerce channel primarily for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. With more than 100,000 items available across more than a dozen categories ranging from office furniture and laptops to health care and automotive products, Walmart Business is encroaching on a market dominated by such rivals as Staples Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. It also provides such B2B purchasing features as letting up to five buyers share the same account.

Amazon, Costco, Staples and Walmart each rank in the Top 500. Furthermore, they’re all among the Top 20.

Ashley Hubka, senior vice president and general manager, Walmart Business

Walmart recently upped its B2B foray with a mobile app and new tools and services designed to help small businesses and nonprofit organizations improve their procurement operations, according to Ashley Hubka, senior vice president and general manager, Walmart Business. The changes followed a May 2023 survey of 501 small business owners. They identified ordering supplies and managing customers as among their biggest challenges. Research firm Morning Consult conducted the Walmart-commissioned poll.

The Walmart Business upgrades include:

• Walmart Business App. It lets buyers access and purchase items among all product categories. And it lets them choose how to receive orders, including via scheduled delivery service or curbside pickup at more than 4,700 U.S. locations. Up to five purchasing team members can share a single account from the app.
• An upgraded add-to-cart feature, which is designed to quicken high-volume orders.
• Hire Angi. It lets customers click from the Walmart Business website or app to connect with the Angi contractor-hiring service.
• Spend Analytics. This enables Walmart Business+ members to track their organization’s spend by user and by product categories. It also allows them to identify spending patterns. Walmart Business+ is a membership program that, for a $98 annual fee, offers perks like free shipping on all orders.

More on Walmart’s online sales

Walmart doesn’t break out ecommerce sales. But for the company’s most recently reported financial period, the fiscal first quarter ended April 30, it said ecommerce sales grew 27% over the prior-year quarter. Total sales grew 7.6% to $151.0 billion.

Walmart ranks No. 2 in the Top 1000 database for online sales, behind only Amazon. We cover Walmart ecommerce sales quarterly with year-to-date earnings summaries. Check back in for updates on the page below.

Paul Demery is a freelance writer specializing in ecommerce trends. He is based in Savannah, Georgia. Follow him on Twitter @pdemery.

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Costas Xyloyiannis

In recent years, ESG (environmental, social, governance) was hoisted to the top of the board agenda. To manage it, business leaders had to ensure that compliance and readiness across multiple areas were captured, analyzed and reported.

This job needed an owner. When it came time to delegate, leaders assessed whether a single department with a clear responsibility across all suppliers for all these areas existed. Unluckily, in most cases it did not. So, management turned to the next best option: procurement.

The function’s leaders, chief procurement officers (CPOs), now had new mandates to meet and quickly sought to apply technology. “Point” solutions, software dedicated to tackling individual use cases, were implemented. Often these tools were standalones. Integrating them with established P2P (purchase-to-pay) and S2P (source-to-pay) software suites, used to manage sourcing and supplier relationships, emerged as a challenge.

Today, swapping between these old and new tools is a slow and painful experience for procurement teams — and all their suppliers. The impact of this digital struggle extends even further, to the greater business. So, how does this stack up, and what can business leaders do about it?

Get to the heart of the problem

The digital environment which plagues procurement teams must also be navigated by suppliers. According to recent research, if a supplier wants to serve a single customer, they have to navigate around eight different tools, each with a unique login. The time loss to these, often smaller, businesses is a concern. Another is that behind each password, many of these solutions produce and then store data from suppliers using it.

So, the way in which each supplier works with the business results in their data being stored in an average of eight databases. Viewed as a whole, the supplier’s data is unreliable. It will be riddled with duplicates, gaps, errors and inconsistencies.

Now take this data pool scenario and multiply it by hundreds of thousands of suppliers. The millions or billions of entries that result in a murky view of supply chain activity. A consequence is that ESG reporting suffers. And so does the supplier relationship. Apart from the disjointed tech landscape, the experience suppliers have in communicating with procurement is also unsatisfactory, which for the most part stems from bad data.

All considered, can procurement teams really expect to receive the best work from suppliers? What about trustworthy data? If “no,” then how will the function progress? It has reached an evolutionary sticking point, and CPOs have a choice; they can accept things the way they are or find a way forward. Business executives can give their counterparts in procurement a hand, but first they should know the risks and rewards of progressing the function.

Resolve whether the reward is worth the risk

It’s one thing for management to see the problem for what it is, but deciding to address it cannot be taken lightly. Let’s start by envisioning what could be.

Encouragingly, a reality exists in which suppliers and procurement teams work together seamlessly, like partners in the same ecosystem. Suppliers are happy, their work is good, their data is pure. In this environment, procurement can thrive. Not only can the team deliver on traditional cost-saving metrics, but they can also generate accurate ESG reports. Further, the function is set up to contribute opportunities in areas that span the business — such as diversity and inclusion, sustainability and product innovation.

Behind this utopia, there is a movement which I like to think of as “supplier experience management.” As the name suggests, the idea is to manage an experience for suppliers, in which everyone is empowered to succeed — from the supplier base right through to the board.

As attractive as this environment is, the journey to reaching it is not easy or risk-free. The first challenge lies in people management: the entire business, from management to every employee, will have to reform how it views suppliers. Next, procurement will need to transform its digital setup. This transformation will require the CPO to radically rethink the architecture of the digital landscape, and then to embark on a rebuild. Expensive tools and teams will be needed to progress this plan, which raises the stakes. No doubt this is a momentous task.

But business leaders who refuse to stagnate won’t be alone. Many enterprises have transformed the status quo and are enjoying the fruits. For example, in 2013 an early adopter, BAE Systems, started to manage supplier experience. This led their procurement team to remove process friction for suppliers and enabled them to consolidate data from 50,000 suppliers across North American. The resulting “single source of truth” was incredibly valuable to the broader business in 2020 when COVID-19 hit. When leaders needed it most, they could access a clear and accurate view of the supply chain. This visibility, coupled with the zero-friction supplier environment they had established, meant that every department could respond to the crisis with agility.

The benefits of the agility gained through supplier experience are being enjoyed by many other companies, including the likes of Mondelēz International, Baker Hughes, Lenovo, and more. A wave of globally recognized CPG brands such as Unilever, Mars and Heineken have also joined the supplier-centric movement in the last 18 months.

Take inspiration from the pioneers and drive change

Trailblazers of the supplier experience principle follow a proven method. Four steps stand out, by which the broader business, procurement and all suppliers can achieve mutual success. For business leaders to reach this point, here’s a plan of action:

• First, work with the CPO to assemble a legion of loyal leaders. Their support will be invaluable. Attaining it, however, might push your persuasion skills. Some executives, particularly those who still view procurement a transaction center, will resist working with suppliers beyond the boundaries of cost savings. So, show them the value. Look at the virtues of “experience” management in other areas, such as with employees and customers. Can parallels be drawn to suppliers? Showcase the woes of a fractious supplier environment. What risks arise? Were major opportunities missed? Explore what a more harmonious setting will yield.
• Next, with the c-suite on board, it’s time to gain ground. The key move is to abolish 100% of the barrier to supplier success: friction. Before that, you need to know what all the process pain points are. Unearthing these insights will require curiosity. What do these obstacles look like to suppliers? How are they removed? Getting immersed in their world — caring, stepping into their shoes, doing surveys — is key.
• Now from this vantage point, work with procurement to craft a friction-free digital environment. Other pioneers follow a data-first approach, in which a central platform is used to consolidate, host and govern all supplier data. Once the landscape is engineered to prioritise master data, procurement can automate. Apply routines for transactional jobs and then use the saved time to introduce digital workflows that make the supplier experience even better

Finish strong

At this stage, the business has helped procurement to digitally transform. In doing so, the function — and the business — have gained two assets: a single source of truth in supplier data and a supplier network whose needs are better met.

It would be easy to stop at this point, but a crucial step remains. The supplier experience which has taken so much to improve, must be maintained. For this maintenance, we need human collaboration. Everyone who engages suppliers (most of the company) must view them as equal, valued partners in a shared ecosystem — and treat them as such.

With both interpersonal and operational barriers removed, the business can partner with all its suppliers. In this scenario suppliers are happier, and procurement can deliver its mandates, the benefits of which extend well into the business.

About the author

Costas Xyloyiannis is co-founder and CEO of HICX, a supplier experience management platform.

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“B2B buying is in danger of becoming a numbers game dominated by procurement professionals, vendor selection checklists, and lowest-price mentality,” writes Forrester. “2022 data indicates that, on average, buyers consider three vendors, only one of which succeeds in winning the deal.”

Business buyers are more restless than ever, and their buying behaviors keep changing, says Forrester.

“77% of B2B marketing decision-makers agree that buyers and customers expect an immediate response to their questions, and 74% agree that buyers expect an experience personalized to their needs and preferences across sales and marketing interactions. Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2022, reveals that 83% of buyers were dissatisfied in one or more areas with the winning vendor. “Organizations that lack a digital sales strategy may fail to meet the needs of their customers. The longer they hold off on creating such a strategy, the more likely they are to lose customers to the competition,” Forrester says.

Forrester is also charting other B2B buyer demands, including:

74% agree that buyers expect an experience personalized to their needs and preferences across sales and marketing interactions.

More than half of buyers responding to Forrester’s Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2022, reported that they used a digital transaction for their purchase.

“Organizations that lack a digital sales strategy may fail to meet the needs of their customers. The longer they hold off on creating such a strategy, the more likely they are to lose customers to the competition,” Forrester says.

Although 59% of employees in B2B organizations say their companies encourage alignment and collaboration between different parts of the business, major challenges persist, according to Forrester’s 2022 data.

“Improving marketing alignment and collaboration with other departments, including sales and product,” was frequently cited by B2B marketing decision-makers as needed to support marketing priorities over the next 12 months,” Forrester says.

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Doug Gray, vice president of technology, Amazon Business

The 3-Way Match feature lets purchasing account administrators and approved buyers use the Amazon Business mobile app on a mobile device to reconcile a purchase order within seconds, says Doug Gray, vice president of technology at Amazon Business.

Buyers use the app to scan and verify a purchase order and check it against the invoice and the receipt before a payment is completed. The feature also works with the Amazon Business Punch-In procurement tool, which lets buyers make a purchase on Amazon Business and have the transaction automatically sent to their company’s procurement spend management application.

The 3-Way Match feature on the Amazon Business app.

The 3-Way Match tool was previously available only via a desktop computer or handheld scanner. It is now available to the nearly 1 million U.S. active account users of the Amazon Business mobile app.

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Alexis Normand, CEO, Greenly

Given mounting climate issues, and increased public interest in supporting sustainable brands, the ecommerce world is experiencing a huge shift in how it approaches its operations. Companies are well aware of the massive impact that environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies have on consumer behavior and stakeholders, and as such more than 88 of them have introduced ESG initiatives in the workplace.

Part of a successful ESG strategy involves monitoring a company’s carbon footprint. And such a mammoth task faces plenty of challenges along the way.

An ecommerce company’s supply chain – anything from raw material sourcing to distribution – can make up a huge bulk of its operations and thus account for an enormous portion of its carbon impact. However, this is seldom the biggest priority embedded within business goals, so the supply chain often goes largely unchecked.

As a result, ecommerce businesses can easily overlook the carbon footprint of their supply chains, which can be 11.4 times larger than operational emissions. What’s even more troubling is that online purchasing is set to balloon in coming years, which should make the problem even worse.

Increasing public scrutiny and calls for greater sustainability are becoming impossible to ignore. Ecommerce companies must therefore look at their supply chain emissions as part of any net-zero strategy. While the carbon footprint from a company’s supply chain can be difficult to monitor, the good news is that it’s often considerably easier for companies to take action against these emissions.

Monitoring Scope 3 emissions

Carbon emissions are so complex that they’re separated into three different sections that form part of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol: Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Scope 1 refers to a business’s direct emissions, while Scope 2 deals with indirect emissions from purchased energy, such as electricity.

Scope 3 emissions are those indirectly produced by other businesses and functions in a company’s supply chain. Scope 3 can account for up to 80% of a company’s carbon footprint. However, since these emissions are often the province of other organizations, they are notoriously hard to monitor. Although Scope 3 emissions are considered a big risk indicator in GHG monitoring, few effective frameworks have emerged to help companies monitor Scope 3 emissions effectively.

In the ecommerce supply chain alone, there are many moving parts that make up business processes. For example, a clothing ecommerce company will need to design garments, source materials, ship them to a factory for manufacturing, package items, ship purchases to customers, and so on. If a customer then decides to return a purchase, a similar reverse process comes into effect. It’s not unheard of for some fast fashion companies to send returned garments straight to the landfill rather than engage in the costly process of shipping, checking, and repackaging garments.

Some of these steps also tend to be outsourced to other companies. For example, an ecommerce business may work with suppliers and subcontractors to manage logistics, transport and shipping, or oversee warehouse spaces. With so many other parties involved, monitoring indirect emissions can be tricky, to say the least.

Much of these indirect emissions aren’t currently being accounted for. According to McKinsey, only 25 percent of ​​reporting companies engage with suppliers to try to reduce emissions. Failing to monitor Scope 3 emissions, or even communicate about this with partners. This means that companies simply aren’t able to measure, manage, and reduce their overall emissions.

Taking control

It doesn’t have to be this way. The first step to overcoming the profound challenges of Scope 3 emissions is to recognize the sheer scale of the problem. To do this, companies should develop an overview of every step of their supply chain processes. Luckily, the EPA has created a Scope 3 tool to help companies gain an initial understanding of their supply chain emissions. With this, business leaders can begin mapping supply chain emissions.

We also need to face the challenge of previous monitoring processes becoming outdated. Most carbon reporting processes used in the past are not up to current standards. Plus, they’re overly labor intensive and require business leaders to complete multiple spreadsheets and crunch many numbers in the process.

A new generation of carbon reporting tools is finally changing this, and they can help with Scope 3 reporting, too. For example, the GHG Protocol offers guidance to businesses on how to measure Scope 3 emissions. Also, the Sustainability Consortium has created multiple tools to help businesses develop and track key performance indicators related to supply chains.

Increasing supply chain efficiency

After you’ve mapped and gained a better understanding of supply chain emissions, you can then take steps to reduce them.

According to McKinsey, businesses could instantly cut a whopping 30% of supply chain emissions  through simple operational changes like the procurement of low-carbon energy. Other minor adjustments such as rearranging the way items are packaged in order to fit more into delivery trucks can go a long way. Taking each of these steps – one by one – is the most impactful way to build a sustainable, scalable strategy moving forward.

There are now plenty of supply chain management tools available that can also help provide better oversight and accountability, albeit through a lens of sustainability. These tools are often integrated with smart devices that can monitor, for example, the temperature of warehouses and turn off lighting when no-one is around.

Working with third-party suppliers always takes a great deal of collaboration, and this is also the case with reducing emissions. Ecommerce partners can leverage their influence and open a dialogue with suppliers to shift toward an emission-friendly strategy. You might even share your reporting tools with suppliers and offer support.

At the very least, the above pointers might inspire ecommerce businesses to start thinking about the supply chain impacts and how to reduce emissions. However, it’s not their mission alone to drive down GHG emission levels.

A dual approach to Scope 3 reporting is necessary in order to encourage the much-needed change. In this dual approach, the government would create policies that demand Scope 3 reporting from businesses, while also providing solutions to facilitate easier Scope 3 reporting in the first place.

Imminent government regulations concerning the monitoring of GHG emissions suggest that the gates are closing in on those who fail to accurately monitor their emissions. If anything, the time is now for ecommerce companies to finally address the full range of their carbon emissions.

Alexis Normand is the co-founder and CEO of Greenly, a carbon assessment and accountability solutions provider for small to large companies.

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