Like most growth-focused companies, success depends on numerous factors, including effective and carefully tracked purchasing. For many employees, purchasing items under company policies can be a tedious process. Either because employees don’t have visibility into the purchasing policies, or because they lack access to a system in which all purchasing operations can be managed..
This can be especially frustrating if your employees don’t have access to your Amazon corporate account, creating a seemingly endless loop of communication and potential errors.
In this article we’ll take a deep dive into Amazon Punchout, an integration that allows your employees to purchase the items they need, without relying on others to follow purchasing procedures.
What is the Amazon Punchout Integration?
The Amazon Punchout integration brings the vast selection of Amazon right to your employees’ fingertips. With just a few clicks, authorized employees can search for the items they need on Amazon and simply “import” those items to a purchase request for approval.
When the pre-designated approver(s) approve the purchase order, there’s no need for further action - your order is automatically placed and shipped from Amazon.
This enables streamlined purchasing without the frustration and potential mistakes that come with manual entries. Click here to see what are the Top 6 Purchasing Mistakes of fast growing companies and how to avoid them.
How can Amazon Punchout benefit my company?
- Streamlined purchase experience - Bring the familiarity of shopping in Amazon to your entire employee base, without the risk of unauthorized purchasing.
- Enhanced purchasing compliance - Digitize purchasing policies to promote a positive buying experience. Your company benefits from greater transparency, fewer mistakes, and substantially more control over your purchases.
- Shipping Confirmation & Tracking - When your employees use this integration, you get request-to-delivery tracking and reconciliation.
- Spending insights - ControlHub users can access all purchasing related data thanks to the Amazon Punchout integration: requests, budgets, POs, and receiving all in one place. Here you can dive deeper into ControlHub’s budget tracking feature.
How simple is it to use Amazon Punchout?
Amazon Punchout is incredibly simple to use, particularly for ControlHub users:
- Find items on Amazon Business - Employees find what they need and ControlHub imports their shopping cart with a single click.
- Send purchase request for approval - Once submitted, the purchase request is automatically routed for approval based on dollar amount, location budget, etc
- Automatic post-approval ordering - After the purchase request is approved, an order is automatically placed with Amazon and on the way to the selected location..
Click here to discover how pairing purchase requisition software ControlHub with Amazon Punchout can take the guesswork out of effective company purchasing.
Here is a simple chart showing the workflow:
