The Supply Chain Interview: Shelley Salomon, Amazon Business

A decade in business, eight million global customers and continuous innovation for global procurement functions – Amazon Business has a lot to celebrate. That the company, which streamlines procurement for organisations of all sizes, has been so successful is testament to its laser-focus on exceptional service. It’s also an indication of just how much the procurement function needs the kinds of solutions it offers. 

For those in the profession, the last year or two have been turbulent. Supply chain disruption, global complexity and the need to optimise diversified sourcing strategies have put strain on teams already under pressure. Factor in rapid digital transformation and a growing drive for responsible sourcing, and you have a challenging balancing act for senior leaders. 

For Shelley Salomon and the Amazon Business team, there’s never been a better time to reimagine procurement. In London, for the organisation’s annual Amazon Business Exchange event (ABX 2025) – a celebration of its 10-year milestone and an opportunity to discuss how to future-proof procurement – Shelley set out these challenges in more detail. 

“It’s been a demanding year for procurement,” she explains. “In Europe, the impact of the challenging global economy is at the top of everyone’s mind, particularly around the fact that macroeconomic growth is pretty slow, requiring a focus on savings. In the US, our customers and our businesses are working to understand the changing global economic landscape as a result of tariff disruption and other headwinds. 

“Another interesting and growing area is the rise of socially-responsible purchasing,” she says. “We’re witnessing a real drive from our customers around wanting to buy more sustainable products from locally-owned and more diverse businesses and to gain enhanced supplier transparency and visibility.”

Shelley knows the intricacies of the procurement landscape more than most. After more than 20 years at Amazon, where she held various leadership roles across sales and marketing, business development, devices and logistics, she joined Amazon Business in March 2024.

“I lead our global Amazon Business across 10 regions in the EU, North America, Mexico, India and Japan,” she explains. “We think of ourselves as one of the fastest-growing start-ups at Amazon – even after 10 years. We began with the goal of taking everything Amazon had built for customers over 25 years and translating it into a business setting to offer a seamless experience. 

“Over the 10 years we’ve existed, we’ve built on that. We’ve added more innovative capabilities in order to serve larger customers, transformed things like our invoicing capabilities and other solutions, and introduced new innovations that deliver control, scale and intelligence.”

The role of a diverse supplier base

In the current climate these capabilities are a critical lifeline to procurement teams. Amazon Business works with millions of customers worldwide, from small businesses, schools, hospitals and nonprofits through to government agencies and global enterprises. Each benefits from tailored technologies and solutions, but also its vast supplier base. 

Strategically managing supplier strategies and implementing a diversified approach to sourcing is crucial for organisations looking to enhance supply chain resilience, reduce risks and foster innovation. By sourcing from multiple suppliers across regions and industries, businesses can mitigate disruption more effectively and drive greater agility in operations. 

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how we can maximise how our customers operate and gain value, while designing the right solutions,” Shelley says. “The scale and diversity of our supplier base is a real asset in times of economic turmoil. We have hundreds of thousands of suppliers, and that gives us a degree of resilience and diversification to offer our customers.”

Having this kind of supplier diversity also allows Amazon Business to help procurement teams source more sustainably and responsibly – a growing trend among businesses. Data from the organisation’s 2025 State of Procurement Report shows that responsible purchasing is a key consideration for leaders, with 80% saying their organisations have mandates or goals to work with certified suppliers. A large supplier network is essential for delivering on this ambition. 

During ABX 2025, Shelley highlighted Amazon Business’s Socially Responsible Programme, which includes a focus on local seller purchasing and sustainability certifications for enhanced supplier transparency. Also offering guided buyer policies and greater seller visibility, the programme helps businesses to align their purchasing with social responsibility and supplier sustainability ratings. 

Amazon Business can, at scale, connect customers with diverse suppliers. A significant number of its sales are done through its third-party seller community, which includes locally-owned or small businesses. This is an increasingly popular choice for customers, which are buying items from locally sourced businesses and seeking sustainably sourced products in growing numbers. Shelley reports that sales of these products are growing as much as four times faster than the organisation's underlying business.

Leading procurement innovation

A central theme at ABX 2025 was the changing role of procurement from a transactional function to strategic enabler. Technology, including the latest innovations around AI and data, are at the heart of this shift. 

Amazon Business has long been a leader in providing innovative solutions to streamline procurement and increase efficiencies. Its tools enable integration with eProcurement solutions, delivery customisations, flexible payment options and agility in the purchasing process. In addition, its Amazon Business Analytics platform helps identify purchasing trends and optimise organisational spend – crucial in an increasingly complex environment.  

Shelley highlights three examples of how technology is used to simplify purchasing, maintain compliance and scale efficiently. The first, Spend Anomaly Monitoring, is an AI-driven intelligent system that helps reduce the need for manual audits by proactively identifying errors, saving time and reducing rogue spend. 

“It leverages Gen AI,” says Shelley, “allowing organisations to set parameters around spend and receive notifications when purchasing happens that’s inconsistent with those details. It’s one of many possible Gen AI use cases we’ll likely develop in the future.”

She adds: “Our Proactive Budgeting tool allows administrators to proactively set up budgets and funds for new team members within the organisation. By eliminating the need to manually assign budget it helps to reduce administrative burden and streamlines purchasing processes.”

While a diverse supplier base helps organise mitigate risk and disruption, managing multiple vendors is a challenge. Amazon Business’s Invoice by Amazon solution brings automation to this problem by consolidating products under a single supplier framework, eliminating the complexity of managing multiple vendors and invoices. 

Enabling future procurement

ABX was a celebration for Amazon Business, but beyond that it was an important yardstick as to procurement’s key priorities and opportunities for the future. Procurement and supply chain leaders from many of the world’s largest companies came together to connect, explore innovation and share success strategies over the course of the event. 

While effective management of disruption was an ever-present theme, the event showed that procurement teams have much to grasp moving forward. In particular, Shelley points to the importance of technology, highlighting how Amazon Business will continue to develop in line with its ‘customer-obsessed’ approach. 

“We’ve built a simple and convenient buying experience so teams can spend less time shopping and more time running their organisations,” she says. “In addition, our data-driven mindset, combined with the tools and resources we provide, give customers the real-time information they need. When it comes to developing new solutions, the method is always the same: start with the customer and work backwards.”

Shelley concludes: “I think there’s two core areas of focus for us when it comes to enabling procurement customers: one is to expand our capabilities for our largest and most complex customers, and the other is around new innovations, particularly incorporating Gen AI. As customer needs evolve, we continue to invest in innovations that deliver the control, scale and intelligence they need to buy in a way that’s simpler, smarter and built for the future.”