To improve spend efficiency, the UC Merced Supply Chain of Excellence embarked on a relaunch of Amazon Business. We aimed to capture rogue spend, align purchases with guided buying policies, slash risk, and boost P-Card use.
November marked the culmination of our Amazon Business account relaunch. Over 125 participants enjoyed a two-day, in-person, on-campus event celebrating this milestone. The event capped three months of intensive meetings with our Amazon Business professionals and our Systemwide Procurement (SWP) ePro advisor, Terese Merrell. Working together, we overhauled guided buying, implemented new local and sustainable policies, and created a new P-Card purchasing group.
After several strategic email campaigns and campus-wide Monday Memo messages, we converted an impressive 70% of individuals initially identified as rogue spenders in the first three weeks after relaunch. Campus staff and faculty responded favorably, commenting: "This is so informative!" and "This is awesome. It will make our lives so much easier."
We followed up these general education campaigns with focused sessions with power buyers to demonstrate Amazon Business features that will ease their workload, like custom bulk quoting.
To maintain momentum, we are hosting weekly office hours and using targeted communications to convert remaining accounts. An effective method has been to create calendar events with priority spenders to compel completing the conversion steps. These events offer account coaching and personalized guidance to ensure full compliance.
Our power project team includes Kristi Morales, Anna Coffman, Maria Higareda-Marquez, Jody Murray, Gova Ramadugu, and Meagan Torres of UC Merced; SWP’s ePro expert, Terese Merrell; along with Rosie Blair and Alex Villanueva, the Amazon Business dynamic duo.