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The Inspire Learning Partnership
Simplifying procurement with PLANERGY punchout and Amazon Business
Published on
14 October, 2025
Challenge
The Inspire Learning Partnership is a multi-academy trust based in Hampshire, comprising Blackfield Primary and Nursery School, Fawley Infant School, Kanes Hill Primary School, Hightown Primary and Nursery School, and St Monica Primary School. The Trust is committed to delivering high-quality education and fostering collaboration across all its schools while ensuring value for money and operational efficiency.
However, as the Trust expanded, so did the complexity of procurement. Each school often operated in silos, with staff emailing Amazon links to the finance team and manually creating purchase orders. This led to confusion and inefficiencies — purchase orders were sometimes incomplete, invoices flooded the finance inbox, and reclaiming VAT became difficult when staff selected non-vatable invoices. Without automated notifications, approvals could be delayed for days.
The Trust needed a solution that would unify purchasing, reduce administration, ensure compliance, and give leadership better visibility into spend — while remaining intuitive for busy staff who were not finance-trained.
Solution
To address these challenges, the Trust adopted PLANERGY punchout integrated with Amazon Business, combining a familiar Amazon shopping experience with PLANERGY’s structured procurement framework. Staff can now place orders directly on Amazon Business through the PLANERGY interface, with purchases automatically routed into department-specific approval workflows and coded to the correct general ledger accounts.
Budget holders and principals receive instant notifications prompting quick approvals, while invoices are delivered directly into PLANERGY and matched automatically to purchase orders. The finance team benefits from real-time oversight across all schools, with consistent reporting and fewer errors to correct.
Importantly, the system is straightforward even for non-finance staff. As Nikki Usher, Finance Assistant, explains: “They are not finance trained… yet they have found it incredibly easy to use. The interface is very user-friendly and doesn’t feel like a finance system.”
“The combination of PLANERGY punchout and Amazon Business has made procurement straightforward for our staff while giving us the oversight we need as a Trust. It saves us a huge amount of time — from purchase orders being approved more quickly, to invoices being processed in under a minute. Even colleagues with no finance background find it simple to use, and it’s taken a big burden off our team. That means we can focus on what really matters: delivering education.“
— Nikki Usher, Finance Assistant, The Inspire Learning Partnership
Results
Since implementing PLANERGY punchout with Amazon Business, The Inspire Learning Partnership has transformed its procurement processes. Approvals that once stalled for days now take minutes, thanks to automated prompts sent directly to principals. The finance team has seen a significant reduction in manual workload, with invoices flowing seamlessly into PLANERGY rather than cluttering email inboxes.
Invoice processing, which previously took three to four minutes per invoice, can now be completed in under a minute by matching purchase orders and invoices side by side. Staff across the schools have been empowered to take greater ownership of purchasing without needing to rely on the finance team, giving them more control and speeding up turnaround times.
The Trust also benefits from stronger compliance and improved VAT reclaim, with automated workflows ensuring the correct coding and tax rules are applied. As The Inspire Learning Partnership continues to grow, the scalability of the system makes it simple to extend efficient procurement practices across new schools.
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