← Supply Chain Now
Supply Chain Now
How AI and Innovation are Reshaping Procurement featuring Todd Heimes with Amazon Business
00:24:25
Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:10]
A
Here by Scott Lewton, supply chain. Now I'm here in beautiful Seattle at Amazon Reshape 2025, where I'm meeting with the movers and shakers doing big things across global industry. And I'm joined here by Todd Hymas, vice president with Amazon Business. Todd, how you doing?
- [00:26]
B
I'm doing great. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate the time.
- [00:29]
A
Well, I am so glad you're here. I've enjoyed the big session that you just kicked off.
- [00:35]
B
Fantastic.
- [00:36]
A
Learned from all sorts of folks there, and we got a lot of stuff I want to pick your brain on. A lot of big developments here. But first, we're going to get some inside baseball, because I learned when you were on that stage, you spent over 30 years here in Seattle. Is that right?
- [00:48]
B
That's right. I've been here just over 30 years.
- [00:50]
A
Okay.
- [00:51]
B
It's a great city.
- [00:53]
A
I was pulling hard for the Mariners. We were talking about it earlier today.
- [00:56]
B
So was I.
- [00:58]
A
But for our wonderful, smartest audience, all the global supply chain out there that may be visiting Seattle soon, what's one thing getting past the touristy buzz, what's one thing they should do? Or one thing that they shouldn't do? Give us some inside baseball there.
- [01:12]
B
Well, I'll tell you one thing that they should do. I happen to live on Bainbridge island, which is just across the water, so you can catch a ferry from the waterfront downtown here. And it takes 35 minutes to get to Bainbridge island, and it is beautiful. And you can get over there, you can walk around a little bit, maybe have dinner, have a drink, and then come back. It is a fantastic opportunity to see the water, see the mountains, and get a little time out of the city. I think it's a hidden gem on the Seattle tourist front.
- [01:46]
A
Todd, I love it. You're painting such a picture. You ready to go? Are you doing anything after this interview?
- [01:51]
B
I go there every day. As far as something not to do.
- [01:55]
A
Okay. All right. Okay. We're right ahead. Yeah.
- [01:58]
B
You don't want to plan your vacation around sunny weather in Seattle. Any month of the year. It can be really nice or it can be really rainy. It's a tough place to plan for a sunny vacation.
- [02:12]
A
You know, I should have grabbed my umbrella this morning and I almost grabbed out of the suitcase and I left it there. Got rained on a little bit. But, Todd, now that we've got the tips for everyone coming to Seattle, what to do, what not to do. Look up Todd on Bainbridge Island. It sounds like, gosh, when you reflect back on your Amazon career, You've already been here 26 years.
- [02:31]
B
That's right.
- [02:32]
A
I bet you can. I can't wait for your book to come out. You helped launch Amazon business in Europe and beyond. And that's of course a big theme here for reshape. When you look back, reflection is so important. And when you look back at your career, what's one pivotal moment in your journey that really in your mind helped define what B2B commerce means?
- [02:54]
B
Yeah, you know, I've been at Amazon for 26 years, you're right. And I've been working on Amazon business actually for 10 years. So pretty much from the inception and you're right, I lived in Luxembourg for six years and I spent that time launching Amazon business across Europe and then we moved into Japan and, and then India and so that was a fantastic six years. And then I came back here in the beginning of 2020. You know, when I think back on my career and I have spent a lot of time working on expansion at Amazon, be that.
- [03:29]
Our consumer business into new categories and new countries and then to Amazon business. I had really a seminal moment many, many years ago when we were launching our marketplace and we had a, you know, we have these S team meetings and at the time there was a meeting with Jeff and we were going back and forth, you know, should we launch with you know, a single detail page, so a single product and all the merchants on one detail page or with everybody having their own detail page and how should we do this? And there was a lot of complexities in that and I learned in that meeting the concept of we're going to do both.
- [04:10]
A
Right.
- [04:11]
B
And so I think about that now with Amazon business we have customers that are small Companies, sole props, SMBs, all the way up to the largest organizations in the world. And so that's a lot of complexity and sometimes you find that you're making choices between building solutions for sole props and SMBs or for those really large organizations and we struggle at what, you know, which way should we go? And still today the answer is both. Yes, we're going to build both solutions so that we can help those customers wherever they are, size wise or in whatever industry. And so, you know, I continue that mantra today. We're going to do both.
- [04:55]
A
Todd, I love that. Two quick points there. When I hear you talk about we're going to do both. It's the power of the. And that's right, it's the power of the. And secondly, you described being in a meeting with the Jeff Bezos, bit of a legend, how cool Was it work with Jeff?
- [05:10]
B
It was pretty amazing. Very smart guy, huge vision. And really, from the very early days. One of my favorite pictures from, I started in 99, and we were mostly books, a little bit of CDs, maybe a few DVDs at the time. And there was a picture of Jeff that's widely available in a closet with all the books that we had at the time. And we were a very successful company already at that point. And it was really Jeff's vision. And one of our leadership principles is think big. And it was really his vision to really scale the ability that we had to put items in boxes and send them out to customers and build this fulfillment network and use that for additional categories and then additional businesses. And that just continued all the way into serving business customers, man.
- [06:06]
A
And y' all have continued to build on that legacy, which is we're gonna get into a lot of innovation that all of that is powering to this day. Let's talk about a moment ago, we were talking about your journey, right. Kind of from a rearview mirror standpoint. What's your role at Amazon Business today?
- [06:23]
B
Today, I lead our small business unit. So that's worldwide. And, you know, that covers businesses that are sole proprietors up to SMBs. And so that's a very exciting part of the business that I work on. And then we also have. I also lead our global marketing team, our global business prime team, and our international expansion team. And so that marketing team is responsible for these reshape events. And so I'm really proud of the work that our team does to put these events on. It's quite a journey.
- [06:55]
A
Yes. And one of my favorite parts, beyond the business conversations we had in the last.
- [07:01]
Big segment, was Amazon's dedication to the veteran community. I was unfamiliar with that. Amazon Warriors, I think, is one of your internal groups. I love that.
- [07:10]
B
Yeah, it's very exciting. And, you know, as we said in the session earlier, we did a pints for Pat last night, and, you know, we really do take it very seriously, and we're really proud of that, man.
- [07:22]
A
Absolutely. It's one of the best things I heard all here, and I've heard lots of good things here at Reshape, so. All right, so let's get into, again, a little bit of history with Amazon Business. What made Amazon Business successful kind of out of the gate, and is that still driving any of those core initial early elements, still driving success today?
- [07:40]
B
Yeah, you know, out of the gate, we realized that. And this was really pre Amazon business. We've had business customers buying on Amazon for quite some time. And we continue to try multiple iterations to serve those customers. And finally in 2015, we landed on Amazon Business. And the number one thing we heard from customers was that they love that experience that they have on the consumer site. You think about reviews, star ratings, the ability to filter the experience, and just that great solution that we've been building for consumers for the past 30 years. And business customers said, I want that experience. I want the Amazon for business. And we said, that's what Amazon Business is. We're going to build the solution that sits on top of that great experience that you're used to as a consumer. Now we're going to give you the opportunity to use it in your business life with things like shared payment methods, multiple users on an account, all those things that we know businesses need to have. But to start, they wanted that great customer experience that they were used to.
- [08:51]
A
You know, in that last segment I keep referencing, because I really enjoyed it, one of the most important questions I heard, and you're kind of speaking to it, is how can my business buying experience be just like doing business on Amazon? Buying on Amazon, that's like a universal question that most folks can relate to. And clearly that experience has been fueling what Amazon Business is here in 2025, huh?
- [09:19]
B
100%. You know, I've talked to really CPO's all over the globe that have said, you know, our users, our employees, they use Amazon Consumer in their personal lives and they have this great experience. They know what they're going to buy, they know when it's going to ship, they know when it's going to arrive. And then they use their procurement systems and, and these are CPOs that run the procurement systems saying that they don't know when it's going to arrive, they don't know how much they're paying, There's a black box. And they wanted that same experience. And so we have a lot to do to continue to serve our business customers. But we know that they value that experience.
- [10:01]
A
Yeah, it's so consistent. I'm a big Chick fil a fan, right. Being from Atlanta or living in Atlanta, it's a legend in our neck of the woods. And you get the same experience, the same quality each and every time you go. And you're kind of speaking to that value of consistency with Amazon Business as well.
- [10:21]
B
That's right. No training required to use Amazon business. Right. You can give your access to Amazon business to thousands of employees and they can start using it immediately because of that same experience that they have in their consumer world.
- [10:37]
A
Todd, I love it. So we've had a ton of conversations here. I've seen a lot of the breakout sessions. There's a buzz here and there's emerging themes. Right. And every event I go to, when I'm on the plane going come, you know, or in the car heading back home, usually three or four top themes kind of emerge. Right. What are all the folks here talking about? Customers, attendees, speakers. In your view, what are a couple of those top themes?
- [11:03]
B
Well, I think what people are really talking about here is innovation and AI. Those are the two words that I think you hear in almost every conversation. And that's really what we're focused on at Amazon business is how can we continue to innovate for our customers and how can we continue to use AI to help them improve the procurement function.
- [11:29]
A
One of the speakers, I won't say her name, but a fintech cpo, I loved her perspectives on it. And she used the word drudgery a couple of times. Right. We got a 86 drudgery turn to AI and other modern day technology and get that out of our team members, our valuable team members days. I love that. And that conjures up quite an image when you hear drudgery, huh?
- [11:51]
B
Right, it does. And you know, I agree with her. There are a lot of inefficiencies currently in the procurement space. And so that is one of the things that we focus on at Amazon business is how can we really give our customers the ability to bring efficiencies to procurement function and AI. Look, we're just at the beginning. This is going to change the way we do procurement.
- [12:19]
A
Yes.
- [12:19]
B
And it's very exciting.
- [12:20]
A
It is, Todd. Speaking of that, I was talking at an event a month or so ago and I was using the barcode, the history of the barcode, because the barcode was patented in the 50s by a couple gentlemen, but for one different set of reasons. And I bet neither one of those gentlemen know the extent of how the barcode has revolutionized so many things. And you know, we're kind of there with AI too. I think we're using it for so many ever evolving purposes. But gosh, a couple years from now, I bet we can't even fathom the degree and innovation that AI and other modern day innovative technology is going to be driving. Huh?
- [12:59]
B
Yeah, it's moving very quickly. It's quite impressive. I was walking downtown to the hotel yesterday and there's a billboard downtown that says is your API ready for AI? And I was Quite surprised. Like, here we are, things are moving so fast that here's a Billboard talking about APIs and AI. The this is gonna change drastically over the next 24 months.
- [13:25]
A
It is. And you know, another theme, Velocity, we've heard a lot about that AQ Adaptability quotient we heard earlier. I love that. That was new to me. And another thing, a big theme that's emerged here and you kind of referenced it earlier. In fact, we've done our homework. We've been spying on you a little bit. And a lot of your colleagues talk about not just passion, but immense passion for serving and fueling customer success.
- [13:53]
Where does all that passion stem from, Todd, for you? And what's one of your favorite customer stories?
- [14:00]
B
Yeah, well, you know, I appreciate that people say that I am very passionate about customers. I learned long ago again from our founder, Jeff Bezos, that starting with the customer and working backwards is really going to pay off. And so we spend a lot of time talking to our customers and that's everybody, as I said, from the really small customers to the largest organizations in the world. And you know, when we have an event like this and we get these customers to come and talk to us and spend time on the stage with us, have these breakout sessions, those are the sessions that the attendees love the most. Hearing from other customers about their experience. How are they using different tools, how are they really trying to revolutionize their procurement function? One of my favorite customer stories is our carnival customer story. It's so exciting.
- [14:54]
A
The cruise line.
- [14:55]
B
The cruise line, okay. It's very difficult to pull a big ship into port and procure all the things that you need within an 18 hour turn. And you don't really think about it. You just show up and get on and go have your great cruise to Alaska and. But somebody needs to replace all of those cups and dishes and linens and so many things that they need to buy. And we're really working with them now to help them procure all the things that they need and get them very quickly in a fast turn. Super exciting.
- [15:33]
A
Well, and all those people that make that happen, they all. The front line, a beautiful front line, a beautiful human element. That's what keeps power and global business forward. And going back to that drudgery term, we gotta eliminate drudgery from there day to day, huh?
- [15:48]
B
I agree, I agree. We want to give a great set of tools and experiences to employees that, you know, they need to buy things to do the work that they're doing. And you know, that's really the mission we're on at Amazon Business. You know, sometimes we talk about democratizing procurement and it's really more giving a self service tool set to employees and team members to do the procurement that they need to do.
- [16:15]
A
Yeah, well said. Very well said. Okay, well, you know, I think there might be a band warming up, so folks may be picking up on that.
- [16:24]
B
Yeah, we do have a band or.
- [16:25]
A
Maybe a wrestling, maybe wrestling matches, who knows?
- [16:28]
B
Lots of fun stuff happening here.
- [16:30]
A
Appreciate it. Okay, I want to go back to AI because I think it's federally mandated that we talk about AI seven times in each. Supply chain conversations, but I'm only halfway kidding. It is amazing. I love each hour I think I read a new use case, a real impactful use case of how AI is being applied. Big dominant theme I keep referencing. This age we're in is certainly a golden age of supply chain tech. Give us some just general observations about AI and then we're going to talk about some of the specific announcements you all rolled out here this week.
- [17:05]
B
Well, generally speaking, AI, We've been using AI at Amazon for many years and we've seen the value of it and now we're really starting to be able to bring that into the customer experience and give them tools. We have Rufus on our consumer site. We're now going to make that available to our business customers, which is a great tool to help find items that you want to buy. And as you mentioned, we're excited to announce a couple of new features that are AI driven.
- [17:39]
A
We're going to get into that. But I got to ask you a quick trivia question. Rufus, I want to say he was Bill and Ted's guide in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Is there any way that that Rufus came from that movie? The name?
- [17:52]
B
Well, that is a good story and I might use that next time, but no. So Amazon here in the US not so much in some of our international locations, but Dogs in the Office has been a thing since day one. And one of our original dogs was named Rufus. And so we have an office building named Rufus and that's how our AI assistant became named Rufus.
- [18:19]
A
You know I love that story. We're big dog people here in my household. But you had a perfect Bill and Ted excellent adventure tie in there. But anyway, let's get to some incredible AI related announcements here today and there's a bevy of them. We'd be here for a couple hours to dive in deep, but.
- [18:41]
Your top of your list. What's a couple of your favorite developments in terms of the rollouts that we've learned this week.
- [18:48]
B
Well the number one thing that I think is really exciting being announced this week is the the Amazon Business Assistant. Now that's an AI assistant that is really focused on helping our customers make the most from their Amazon business account.
- [19:04]
We've built a lot of tools and a lot of capabilities to help customers use Amazon Business. But this Amazon Business Assistant is going to really, in a conversational way make it easy for customers to ask, hey, I want to set up some approvals. How can I do that? Which business prime plan should I get based on my company and the number of users I have in my account? Things like that that are really focused on helping customers get the most from their Amazon business account. The second thing I would mention is our Spend Anomaly feature, Spend Anomalies, that's a great use case especially for our larger customers who might have a lot of users. And we mentioned making it easy for users to do their procurement self service. Well you also need to have eyes on are there any outliers. So the Spend Anomaly tool will help you pick up things like things that maybe are in a new category, spend in a new category or above a certain spend threshold and then you can look into that and make some adjustments. So those are two things that I think are really going to be really impactful for our customers. I love it.
- [20:18]
A
And I think some of Yalls customers in one of the sessions I was a part of talked about that tool in particular and how it was helping them eliminate manual audits. That was great news to hear who likes a manual audit? You will see no hands raised in any crowd. Right? Other themes from these new AI driven tools, more predictive decision making rather than risk reactive decision making. Saving time of course, driving efficiencies.
- [20:46]
Putting. It really sounds like to me Todd that you and the Amazon team, as highly focused as you are on customers innovation, putting yourself in the shoes of SMB business owners and what makes their days easier and fuels their success. Does that help guide Yalls thinking here?
- [21:06]
B
Yeah, that's a key part of what we think about. And one thing I always tell our SMB customers is one thing we think about at Amazon Business and we built on the back of aws, we've built all of these AI solutions. We know there's a ton of data and we try to make that data available through our dashboards and our analytics tools. An SMB really can get the same amount of tools that a really large organization has access to through the power now of big data and AI. So I encourage SMBs to lean in, use the tools and benefit from all of this innovation.
- [21:49]
A
Yes, the Smalls can benefit from what the bigs have used for a long time. And you talked about democratization. I mean, you're kind of speaking to that right now. That's right.
- [21:59]
B
We really want to make these tools available to everybody and bring efficiency and solve the drudgery problem for all of our customers.
- [22:06]
A
Hey, that is music to my ears. Music to my ears. And I could never say the word democratization. I'm surprised I said that.
- [22:13]
B
Right.
- [22:13]
A
You nailed it.
- [22:14]
B
Good job.
- [22:14]
A
I didn't miss these syllables. Okay, I got two final questions for you, Todd. And again, I appreciate your time here. So we serve the global end to end supply chain community, right? That's our mission every single day when we get up and we, we go to bed at night and all points in between. As you think of those leaders and those frontline folks, all the beautiful human factor that want to find more and more success, especially in this velocity has been a big theme here. Ever increasing velocity. What's one piece of advice you'd offer up supply chain leaders out there that want to keep ahead, not just survive, but thrive?
- [22:52]
B
Well, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now and you know, one of the things that we're trying to do with Amazon business is help our customers deal with that uncertainty and help them manage through it. You know, one of the things we heard in those last session was all about data. And you know, everyone knows that we have so much data and really focusing on good data in, good data out. Right. And so I think customers, supply chain partners, everybody needs to think about how are we managing our data. And I think that's really going to be a key factor going forward.
- [23:29]
A
Not a doubt, not a doubt. Okay, so an uncertainty. We could be here for hours talking about the historic levels of uncertainty according to the smart economists and analysts out there that I've been following.
- [23:43]
Simple question as I wrap here with you, Todd. How can folks connect with you and learn more about anything we've touched on here today?
- [23:50]
B
I think the best way to get in touch with me is through LinkedIn. That's where we post everything that we're doing here at Reshape as well as many great stories about Amazon business, the features we've built and what we're working on.
- [24:04]
A
Outstanding. It's just that easy. Well, Todd Hymas, Vice President of Business of Amazon Business, thank you for joining me here for an interview at Amazon reshape 2025. And folks, stick around as we continue our coverage of a home run event here in beautiful Seattle.