Amazon Business last week launched in the United Kingdom its Business Prime program at Amazon.co.uk/business, providing online buyers a mix of spend management and expedited delivery services.

Dave Brittain, head of Amazon Business UK

“Our goal is to help businesses drive even more transparency into their procurement process, while ultimately lowering their total cost of purchasing,” Dave Brittain, head of Amazon Business in the UK, said last week.

Connecting with large companies

In the UK alone, Amazon Business says it serves more than half of the 100 companies listed in the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, also known as the FTSE 100, 80% of the UK’s largest universities and “a wide variety of businesses across various sectors.”

Among the new Business Prime features buyers on the Amazon Business UK site can use are:

• Spend visibility, including graphical data displays that let a company view and analyze what its buyers have spent on Amazon Business by volume and for particular products;
• Guided buying, which lets companies’ spending account administrators identify preferred suppliers and products, develop spending policies, control spending and reduce rogue spending;
• Upgraded delivery options, including unlimited access to one-day delivery for no extra fee; same-day delivery in selected areas; and “nominated-day” deliver, which lets buyers choosing a particular delivery day.

The Business Prime service also lets members of the program access “tens of thousands” of special discount offers on Amazon Prime days and special offers from Amazon’s suppliers.

Like in the United States and other markets where Amazon Business makes available Business Prime services, Business Prime customers pay an annual fee based on their number of users. Fees range from 80 pounds (US$100) per year for up to three users, to 4,500 pounds (US$5,634) per year for an unlimited number of users.

In addition to the U.S., where it also offers Business Prime, Amazon Business operates ecommerce sites in Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Japan. Some sites in those countries offer Business Prime services.

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