“Curriculum was buying used textbooks, and the easiest place to obtain them was Amazon,” says the director of purchasing and warehouse at William S. Hart Union High School District in Santa Clarita, California. “The way we were doing it before the approval process was taking too long, and sometimes the textbooks that they wanted to procure were no longer available.” She thinks the Amazon Business account improves the overall efficiency at the school site.

Procurement is a complicated process that can vary by state and school district. Typically, items a school wants to purchase that cost more than a certain amount must go through a bidding process to ensure transparent use of public taxpayer money.

Daniel Smith, general manager of education at Amazon, calls the accounting and reporting required in the procurement process for K-12 and higher education a “patchwork of federal, state and local laws that are frankly very confusing,” even for professionals with years of experience.

Smith adds that the company’s “goal is to help districts reduce the costs of procurement for smaller purchases where the procurement cost of a [purchase order] ranges from $42–$124, and it takes between 3–16 days just to process the requisition, excluding product fulfillment and shipping times.” That data cited comes from a report from the Council of Great City Schools, a group made up of 68 large U.S. urban school districts.

Amazon Business was designed to preserve the Amazon user experience, Smith says, with custom pages that help educators find items recommended by their peers. He wants to continue adding more of those education-specific features and functionalities that help customers find new products.

Read more about Amazon Business by Tina Nazerian at EdSurge.