Operational efficiency and compliance with safety and responsible purchasing standards are often at odds. Why? Because their objectives frequently conflict. While speed and cost-effectiveness are the keys to efficiency, compliance involves complex rules and practices that can slow processes down.
For example, safety inspections that require frequent audits to drive compliance can interfere with production schedules and reduce output. Responsible sourcing may take longer than conventional purchasing, which slows the finance team down. As a result of this constant tug-of-war, companies struggle to track and report safety and environmental impact while managing suppliers and monitoring compliance metrics.
To foster growth and resilience, manufacturing organizations must balance these competing priorities. Leaning on a comprehensive purchase solution like Amazon Business helps enable smarter procurement decisions while simplifying safety and putting environmental-compliance goals within reach.
Your procurement systems should offer five features that can help speed up and simplify purchasing, compliance, and spend management.
1. Built-in tools to turn procurement data into actionable insights
According to the 2025 State of Procurement Data Report from Amazon Business, 64% of purchasing decision-makers named generating better insights as a top priority. Without visibility into spending patterns, it can be challenging to identify inefficiencies, enforce cost controls, and maintain budgets.
Automated reporting features can help leaders accomplish this goal by pulling back the curtain to reveal what’s being purchased, which seller it’s being purchased from, how spending patterns evolve, and whether purchases meet predefined policies.
The availability of customizable dashboards should empower you to establish parameters based on whatever your team wants to track. With a quick glance, you can track spending and savings, spot trends, and find easy ways to improve purchasing decisions—all without manually gathering this information.
2. Guided buying rules for smarter purchases across teams
Responsible purchasing is top of mind for decision-makers, with 80% saying their organizations have mandates or goals for working with certified suppliers (those with certifications and/or classifications from a recognized diversity, ownership, or quality certifications and classifications), according to the State of Procurement Data Report.
When employees make purchases that don’t comply, their violations can put safety, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement, and environmental compliance at risk. Non-compliant purchases can also increase costs and introduce unnecessary administrative work.
To put guardrails around purchasing practices and enable faster decision-making, administrators can set up buying policies. For example, preferences for certified products, such as Climate Pledge Friendly or EPA Safer Choice items, can be established to enable faster (and compliant) buying.
This prevents employees from making purchases that don’t align with policies, budgets, or organizational goals. They’re empowered to make decisions without having to double-check before clicking “buy now.”
3. Automated reordering capabilities keep critical safety supplies in stock
No organization can afford to run out of essential supplies. Stockouts can lead to costly downtime, compromise deadlines, and even sacrifice quality. But avoiding them often requires manual inventory checks and reordering supplies.
Amazon Business Restock replenishment service can help your procurement team streamline inventory management and support consistent access to essential supplies.
When your procurement service monitors inventory levels at specific locations, items can be automatically reordered and restocked once they reach a certain point. You can also choose to tailor your restocking schedule based on your needs to avoid under- or over-stocking during certain times of the year.
As critical safety supplies are replenished, your procurement tool should provide detailed reports on inventory use and spending.
4. Integration capabilities to seamlessly connect to existing ERP systems
Procurement teams can spend hours manually entering purchase orders, invoices, and inventory updates into their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This is not only time-consuming but also introduces human error.
When your procurement tool integrates with your ERP, you can decrease manual tasks and improve accuracy. By accessing procurement directly from your ERP, purchasing is made even simpler and easier to track. Data from invoices, purchase orders, and inventory can be shared instantly, so both systems operate according to the same information.
ERP integration also allows purchasing rules to be embedded directly into workflows. For instance, you could choose to restrict purchases to items only with specific certifications and automatically flag purchases that violate these policies. And you can do it without any extra manual effort.
5. Curated product selections to help streamline ordering processes
Looking through a seemingly endless list of purchasing possibilities can be overwhelming and make it difficult to find what you need.
If your team consistently requires purchase requirements for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) or PPE supplies, seek out a tool that helps to make these purchases easy. For example, it should connect you directly to essential products through a curated catalog featuring reliable, high-demand, readily available products.
This approach to purchasing can streamline procurement and help support easier decision-making.
Maximize the potential of procurement operations
In the State of Procurement Data Report, 94% of decision-makers and senior leaders agree: There’s room to optimize procurement operations.
By seeking out intelligent procurement tools that support compliance with safety and sustainability standards, you can reduce risk and help eliminate purchase inefficiencies—the result: a procurement process that supports operational excellence and long-term growth.
Learn more at Amazon Business.
