90,000 UK firms source their office kit from Amazon Business

Amazon's quiet push into the procurement industry is starting to bear fruit, with the company confirming that 90,000 UK firms are now using its Amazon Business portal.

The platform, which launched in the US in 2015 but has only been available to UK firms since April, provides a marketplace to buy office equipment and IT supplies with all the perks of Amazon's next-day delivery service.

Amazon's free service also includes VAT-exclusive prices, the option to manage bulk VAT invoices, and an analytics module to oversee monthly spending.

The 90,000 businesses who've signed up include sole traders, small businesses, and larger multi-national organisations, including FTSE 100 companies, according to Amazon. It's also attracted organisations such as universities, hospitals and non-profits.

To celebrate the milestone, Amazon has introduced new features to the platform, including improved search and filter options to find sellers that list with VAT-inclusive invoices, and new catalogue curation tools that allow users to configure the platform in line with their business policies, such as restricting certain categories or products.

"We're working hard to continually introduce improvements that provide even greater selection, value and convenience to business customers looking to streamline their procurement, enabling them to save time and money, and increase their productivity," said Bill Burkland, head of Amazon Business.

"The latest suite of Amazon Business features has been driven by the feedback we've received from our customers and are designed to enhance the efficiency, visibility and controls our business customers want in their procurement process."

Amazon has expanded its procurement tools globally, with companies in Germany, India and Japan now able to sign up to the service.

It's yet another market that Amazon appears to have successfully absorbed into its ever-expanding portfolio, with its Amazon Web Services group holding 44.2% of the public cloud market share, according to Gartner, and revenues of $9.77 billion. It's also making moves to expand its AI smart assistant beyond the consumer space by bringing Alexa to the workplace.

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