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International School of London
How the International School of London helped its teachers find more time for teaching with Smart Buying.
The challenge
Before switching to Amazon Business, teachers at the International School of London (ISL) had to dedicate a significant amount of time to manual purchasing. This meant hours a week flicking through physical catalogues, filling in purchasing forms and chasing sign-off from department heads and finance teams.
In March 2023, the organisation took action to get time back for teaching, and brought its purchasing process under a single umbrella with Amazon Business to:
- streamline purchasing processes for teachers and finance teams.
- enable teachers to request the learning materials they need in just two clicks.
- free up teachers’ time so they can focus on enhancing student learning.
“We had two key priorities in adopting Amazon Business: using technology to streamline the purchasing of learning materials, and giving time back to our educators. It’s ultimately all been about supporting the teaching and learning. That’s why we’re here! With Amazon Business, we’ve approximately halved the steps that we need to take to make a purchase, so from an educator’s point of view it’s a much easier process,” says Joris Deckers, IT and Operations Officer, ISL Group.
Streamlining purchasing for teachers and finance teams
With Amazon Business, ISL has moved from manual purchasing across multiple physical catalogues, to a single, digitised process with access to thousands of sellers. Where educators previously had to seek in-person sign-off from department leaders, the process is now paper-free, with leaders able to approve requests at the click of a button on single ordering account.
“With Amazon Business, we’ve approximately halved the steps that we need to take to make a purchase, so from an educator’s point of view it’s a much easier process.”
— Joris Deckers, IT and Operations Officer, ISL Group
Enabling teachers to purchase the learning materials they need directly
Previously, purchasing was done in two ways: teachers had to expense purchases from personal Amazon accounts back to the organisation, or ISL’s finance teams had to manually order items requested by teachers, inputting a printed-out landing page url into the browser. Now, teachers can browse the shared Amazon Business account and submit purchases for sign-off in just two clicks, giving them the freedom to purchase materials they need from thousands of sellers when they need them.
Freeing up educators’ time so they can focus on teaching
ISL’s number one priority is to support its educators to provide better learning opportunities to its students. The efficiencies achieved through Amazon Business have allowed it to do exactly that, freeing up the time previously spent on lengthy purchasing processes so educators can focus on what they do best: educating.
