Amazon Business Reshape — A recipe for digitalization, agility and resilience

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Amazon Business Reshapefor Europe and Japan is just around the corner — March 10^thto be exact. It’s a free-to-attend virtual half-day event for industry experts, procurement leaders and supply chain decision makers from both the private and public sectors, from enterprise-level to small and medium-sized businesses to startup organizations.

The 2022 event will again feature keynotes, leadership and product sessions and customer and industry panels from some ofAmazon Business’ regional leaders and industry experts from different sectors, including retail, IT, manufacturing, facility services and the public sector. They’ll be sharing their experiences, learnings and advice on all manner of cost-saving, efficiency-gaining and CSR-related procurement processes, and how agility and resilience from digitalization feed into those successes.

AtAmazon Business Exchange in 2021sustainability emerged as a resounding theme: how procurement can drive digitalization, have a strategic impact on the organization, and bolster its sustainability efforts and goals. This resonated with Spend Matters too, as we were at the time looking intosustainability effortsamong the procurement tech vendor community. Our analyst Bertrand Maltaverne said at the time:

“Challenges are still ahead of us. As we made progress into 2021, the looming climate crisis made itself very visible and added to, hopefully, the creation of the right sense of urgency required to move at individual, organizational and societal levels to the next stages of the change cycle … we are at a much-needed turning point in terms of the influence that procurement can have on our future.”

So it’s good to see that this point about influence resonates in this year’sagenda. Amazon Business Reshape will focus on helping procurement leaders make procurement a value driver and growth lever for the business.

What procurement needs now is resilience and flexibility through digitalization

Having realigned their procurement strategies to get through the uncertainties of the past two years, procurement leaders now have to hang on to that success. Reshape highlights howdigitalization,resilienceandflexibilitywill be the priorities for procurement, finance and supply functions for the year ahead.

不仅有这些关键的主题更加突出areas for attention by C-suite members of Amazon Business’ customers and partners but Spend Matters has found through its ongoing conversations with industry that these are among the most pertinent attributes to embrace that will help businesses get back, and stay, on track. Overcoming the ongoing strains in the global supply chain and disruption to demand very much require a flexible approach from procurement if it wants to be resilient to future challenges.

“Antifragile companies,” as our analyst puts it, “thrive when unexpected events happen because they have developed an ability to adapt and turn them into opportunities for growth. Such organizations are masters at sensing, responding and learning.”

Aligning procurement with business objectives

Given those priorities, we are interested particularly in the opening session of Reshape which will explore ‘Procurement strategies for the C-suite’ because it validates how important procurement, and doing procurement well, is becoming to senior business execs. It’s a validation that the C-suite understands more than ever the criticality of keeping purchasing, supplies and the supply chain healthy and robust.

This will be a panel session discussion between three Amazon Business leaders and three senior members of procurement and finance from industry-leading organizations:Barilla Group, Johnson & Johnson and Woven Planet Holdings. They will discuss how enterprises are using digital purchasing solutions to increase agility, reshape their buying practices, and therefore efficiency, and accelerate growth.

And in a similar vein we are interested to hear whatAccentureand the Strategic Sourcing and Supply Chain Analytics director fromThe Texas Children’s Hospitalhave to say aboutmeeting business objectives through purchasing agility.

Adapting agile procurement processeswill also be the subject of discussion by Amazon Business regional leaders as they interview a panel of customers. Again, the discussion themes support businesses’ ongoing dependence on resilience and flexibility, often through better use and understanding of technology to drive growth through sourcing agility, build diverse supplier programs and transform procurement through digitalization.

Then looking more at the social agenda, the General Director Supplier Diversity and Procurement Operations forUnion Pacific Railroadwill talk aboutFostering socially responsible procurementto show how businesses can easily identify and source from credentialed diverse, local, and small businesses. She’ll also discuss how digital tools can be used to check purchasing patterns and track progress with sustainability goals.

And speaking of smaller businesses, the event also offers a tailored track that explores:

Buying for growth: Strategies to scale with your business— looking at how businesses can automate routine buying processes to save time and simplify operations, make better data-driven decisions using real-time analytics, and empower employees with the tools they need. Again, we are seeing that supply chain visibility and transparency is a huge topic for CPOs right now, so gaining market intelligence through analytics (getting a better understanding of pricing trends and the factors that affect them for example) is another top priority.

Empower employees with digital purchasing— a panel of industry leaders will explain how they are simplifying employee purchasing with a one-stop shopping experience, customized buying policies and convenient delivery options.

Product flash

We’re always interested to hear about developments in technology (and how they are being deployed) that will resonate with our audience. So we’re excited to hear what Amazon Business has in store to add to its growing suite of procurement products. In this ‘Product Flash’ Amazon Business will quickly reveal its new products and solutions to help customers get the most out of their procurement strategies: time-saving tools to help optimize spend, streamlined reconciliation, and better compliance with internal purchasing policies.

Join us, and over 1500 procurement and supply leaders, on March 10^that 9am CET, 10am rest of Europe, for this free on-line event.

Register here