Amazon rolls out Business Prime offering

Amazon continues to present the channel with a challenge with the e-commerce giant rolling out its Prime service to Business customers.

There have been some disagreements in the past about whether or not the channel should engage with Amazon with some industry commentators warning that the etailer should be seen as competitor.

The experience of some of those coming up against Amazon Business has been to caution that those resellers without a decent services proposition, trying simply to compete on product and price, will be in for a tough time.

Having launched its Amazon Business offering in the UK in April 2017 the firm is now adding Prime for business customers. The firm stated that is already serves more than half of the FTSE 100 companies and 80% of the largest universities.

The Prime service will be familiar to anyone who has used the consumer option, with one and same day delivery options and access to special deals some of the attractions.

There is also a tool, Spend Visibility, which should make it easier for customers to track spending, identify money saving options and keep their expenditure in line with budgets.

There will also be a guided buying feature, which will give users a chance to identify preferred suppliers and products, with Amazon promoting the tool as a way to reduce rogue spending, improve budget compliance and help consolidate suppliers. 

“Business Prime enables customers to get the most out of the great selection, pricing and purchasing experience on Amazon Business,” said Dave Brittain, head of Amazon Business in the UK.

“We continue to listen to feedback from our business customers and are excited to introduce these new benefits which take the most business-relevant parts of Prime membership and add additional features to make life easier for organisations of all shapes and sizes. Our goal is to help businesses drive even more transparency into their procurement process, while ultimately lowering their total cost of purchasing," he added.

Amazon Business started life in the US back in 2015 and then started to be rolled out in stages with the UK getting the service in 2017. It is now also available in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan and India.