Treating different verticals as standalone entities helps companies to focus on the unique needs of each customer, Prentis Wilson, vice president of Amazon Business, says in an MDM exclusive interview. Amazon Business concentrates on four key verticals: Government, Education, Healthcare and Commercial.
"One of the things we quickly adapted as we continued to focus on our customers was that government customers buy differently than healthcare customers and certain private sectors," said Wilson. "We started diving more deeply into some key industry verticals to make sure that we were continuing to innovate on their behalf and tailoring the requirements of the marketplace to better serve those customers."
In one example, government customers often focus on compliance and maximizing taxpayer dollars. So, in 2017, Amazon Business and U.S. Communities signed a multi-year contract for the purchase of goods and services on the Amazon Business multi-seller marketplace — making purchasing more cost efficient for public sector organizations, including local and state government entities.
"This contract helps deliver value to over 90,000 public agencies nationwide that can bypass lengthy and expensive request-for-proposal processes," said Wilson. "U.S. Communities members can take advantage of Amazon Business’ dynamic multi-seller marketplace pricing, which helps ensure competitiveness and best-value pricing."
The company also allows healthcare customers to buy from across the Amazon Business Marketplace in a multitude of categories in order to streamline the buying process.
"We hear from both healthcare manufacturers and healthcare customers that they want to find ways to simplify purchasing and reduce costs as a means to address systemic issues that take away focus from patient needs," said Wilson.
Addressing procurement challenges across multiple industries means treating each vertical as standalone entity with its own unique challenges. This improves focus on each customer’s specific needs.
"When we look at the last three years, we’ve really made progress within these verticals where procurement doesn’t look the same in each of these industries. We’re figuring out how to solve the unique challenges that each one of these verticals faces."
Read more about Amazon Business in MDM Interview, Part 2: Amazon Business VP Prentis Wilson. The complete interview is also available on MDM’s podcast series, Disrupting Distribution.
