PROCUREMENT TECHNOLOGY
Procurement has evolved far beyond simple purchasing – it has become a strategic driver of organisational efficiency and resilience.
Doug Gray, VP of Technology at Amazon Business, is at the forefront of this transformation, leading efforts to reimagine how companies manage their supply chains and vendor relationships.
Speaking to Procurement Magazine, Doug explores how digital tools are breaking down departmental silos, empowering smarter decision-making and enabling organisations to respond swiftly to disruption.
From AI-powered analytics to automated workflows that preserve human judgment, he reveals how technology is reshaping procurement into a collaborative, transparent process that delivers measurable value across the entire organisation.
Q. HOW HAS DIGITAL PROCUREMENT TRANSFORMED COLLABORATION ACROSS YOUR INTERNAL TEAMS AND EXTERNAL SUPPLIERS?
» Digital procurement has completely reshaped how organisations – and the suppliers they depend on – work together.
Many companies used to juggle dozens or even hundreds of vendor relationships, each with its own processes, while finance, operations and procurement teams operated in silos.
Amazon Business is designed to bring those pieces together in a single, streamlined solution, giving organisations a shared view of policies, approvals and spend.
One example is Guided Buying, which steers employees toward approved products and preferred suppliers without adding unnecessary bureaucracy or slowing anyone down.
Another is Spend Anomaly Monitoring – this provides Business Prime Enterprise members alerts of spending irregularities, which users can then mark as normal or irregular to help the system better understand the organisation’ s spending patterns. That kind of subtle guardrail builds confidence across teams because people in finance, facilities and procurement can work from the same transparent process.
On the supplier side, our diverse global network makes it easy for organisations to compare options or pivot quickly when disruptions arise, avoiding the scramble to forge new relationships under pressure. Combined with reliable logistics, fast delivery and curated catalogs, digital procurement through Amazon Business creates a common playbook where internal teams and external partners collaborate seamlessly and respond more effectively to changing needs.
Q. WHAT ARE THE KEY DIGITAL TOOLS DRIVING AGILITY AND TRANSPARENCY IN YOUR PROCUREMENT PROCESSES?
» The tools that make the biggest difference are the ones that quietly remove friction and make good information visible. We recently launched Amazon Business Analytics Savings Insights, which automates spend analysis with AI to provide insights – taking the guesswork out of analysing spending data among multiple buyers.
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