Amazon Business is built differently.
While Amazon itself is synonymous with everyday buying from traditional customers, Amazon Business was created over a decade ago to serve a different set of needs.
Organisations are not shopping like regular consumers – they are streamlining their supply chain to save time and money via the use of powerful tools designed specifically for business needs.
Fast forward 11 years and Amazon Business has become one of the fastest-growing ventures in the company’s history – driving over $35 billion in annualised sales.
In this exclusive article with Brian Steward, Director of Operations for Amazon Business, he explores the strategic approach to solving complex delivery scenarios that go far beyond residential drop-offs. He reveals how the team optimises customer delivery experience through sophisticated route planning, parcel consolidation and palletisation for large orders, and enhanced capabilities for complex deliveries, while maintaining the speed and precision customers expect from Amazon.
As a way of introducing yourself, can you give us a short intro as to your role and Amazon Business please?
Brian Steward: “I lead the worldwide Amazon Business Operations team across North America, Europe, and APAC. My role focuses on driving business strategy into Amazon Operations to improve customer delivery experience – specifically in delivery, consolidation, address management, and quality.
“We develop new solutions for delivery options like pallet delivery and deferred delivery, manage the complexity of commercial delivery locations, and launch innovations such as the branded box truck fleet for our direct delivery programme. I’ve been at Amazon for over a decade and in this Amazon Business role for four and a half years, driving this strategy across the end-to-end Amazon operations network.”
What are the key differences between business customers and traditional consumers that influence how Amazon Business approaches delivery and fulfillment?
Brian Steward: “While there are many differences between business and consumer networks, we frame our approach around three foundational areas – address type, order size, and location complexity. We start by using these factors to identify customer preferences around speed versus consolidation. For address type, we determine whether it’s a residential address for a business customer or a commercial location with specific requirements like strict business hours.
“Next, we examine order size, which drives the balance between speed and consolidation. We leverage previous order history to default customers to the best option for their unique delivery needs, suppressing irrelevant choices from their purchasing journey. Finally, we assess location complexity using a low to very high complexity model. This defines key attributes that help our delivery team understand the nuances of each customer’s location, whether it’s a large campus or a single building.”
How does Amazon Business leverage Amazon’s broader fulfillment network while adapting it to meet the specialised needs of business deliveries?
Brian Steward: “Amazon Business works daily with the broader fulfillment network, with the vast majority of our volume flowing through fulfillment centers, sort centres, and last mile delivery stations that serve both consumer and business customers.
“Our role in Amazon Business Operations is to identify where customer requirements fit seamlessly into the existing Amazon operational model. When they don’t, we invent new processes, delivery models, and operational use cases to meet the customisation needs of business customers while maintaining our high-performance bar.”
In what ways does the team optimise the customer delivery experience through sophisticated route planning, parcel consolidation and palletization for large orders while maintaining speed and precision?
Brian Steward: “We optimise customer delivery experience across three key areas: route planning, parcel consolidation, and palletisation. Route planning: We leverage technology to improve routing and prioritise high-value shipments within the Amazon Business delivery network. This involves ingesting customer delivery preferences as core inputs for route generation, then working with our internal routing and planning teams to optimise dispatch timing, package sequencing within delivery routes, and priorities to meet customer-provided business hour windows – all while balancing both consumer and business volume.
“Parcel consolidation: We focus on both shipment and delivery consolidation. For shipment consolidation, we maximise units per box while reducing overall package count through inventory placement and planning orchestration. For delivery consolidation, we offer customers several options: Consolidated bulk delivery, Amazon Day delivery (Business Prime members can pick your day), and deferred delivery (choose your delivery day up to 30 days in advance). Palletisation: We offer two primary solutions. For multiple users at a location where total order size meets pallet thresholds, we use direct delivery (or campus consolidation), which provides a consistent daily delivery model. For single users ordering pallet-sized quantities, we offer free pallet delivery with scheduling capabilities to the customer’s receiving location.”
I understand there are three critical factors that Amazon considers: the type of address being served, the size of the orders and the complexity of each location. How do you meet these challenges and provide the correct solution?
Brian Steward: “As I mentioned earlier, we focus on three critical factors: address type, order size, and location complexity. To meet these challenges, we rely on two key sources of information, direct customer input and delivery history. Direct customer input: Customers use our ‘Manage Your Deliveries’ portal to share essential information such as delivery hours, closed business days, drop-off location preferences (loading dock details, security codes, call box numbers), holidays, and pallet delivery preferences. These inputs enable us to route and deliver packages precisely to our business customers’ specifications.
“Machine learning from delivery history: When we lack direct customer data, whether it’s a new address from an existing customer or orders from external integration systems where inputs may be missing, we leverage advanced machine learning models. These models learn from previous delivery experiences to predict the right inputs, helping us adhere to business hours and understand location level complexity. Optimised customer experience: By combining this data with customer ordering patterns (such as purchase size), we simplify the checkout experience and default customers to the most suitable delivery option for their business needs. The true value is that as customers continue using Amazon Business and our technology evolves, we learn from every delivery and continuously optimize how we serve them.”
What technologies are having the biggest impact on improving deliveries for business customers?
Brian Steward: “As I mentioned earlier, machine learning is central to our approach, so I’ll focus on how AI is transforming deliveries for business customers. AI is now improving delivery experiences at scale through our agentic AI systems, which evaluate execution defects and iteratively update upstream systems. When we identify a gap, we can fix systematically, and apply the solution across customers facing similar challenges.
“Our ML models parse data from millions of customer deliveries to compute address difficulty scores and infer complex address attributes. These insights will inform the level of effort, time, and driver route durations required to execute successful deliveries. To provide proactive problem resolution we continuously parse customer complaint data to identify and address end-to-end supply chain vulnerabilities. This approach allows us to improve the delivery experience for thousands of accounts simultaneously rather than addressing issues one at a time.”
What are the biggest hurdles that your team within Amazon Business are facing at the moment and how are you overcoming them?
Brian Steward: “One of our biggest challenges is balancing the consumer network’s emphasis on speed with the large order experience that Amazon Business customers require. This is particularly complex because, as discussed earlier, our volume is commingled within consumer fulfillment channels. As the network accelerates, we must ensure our operating model has the differentiation needed to meet customers’ precision requirements, whether for standard parcel deliveries, consolidated orders, or large palletised shipments.
“How do we overcome this challenge? We address this through technology and a differentiated operational model. Technology: We use complex order orchestration to plan each customer’s order to the right building, in the right region, and through the right delivery model. This allows us to balance planning against consumer requirements while ensuring the right priority aligns with each customer’s needs. Operational differentiation: When the consumer model doesn’t meet business customer needs, we break away and invent new solutions that alter the journey an Amazon Business customer’s package takes before reaching its destination. Examples include building a new palletisation model in our sort center network specifically for our customers and optimising how the fulfillment network handles the volume.”
What might the future of your department within Amazon Business look like?
Brian Steward: “The future of Amazon Business Operations will be defined by three key areas: intelligent automation, predictive customer experience, and scalable innovation. Intelligent automation: We’ll continue advancing our machine learning and AI capabilities to predict customer needs before they articulate them. We’re working to improve how our models understand location complexity, optimise consolidation opportunities, and help configure delivery solutions for each customer’s requirements.
As we gather more delivery data and customer feedback, we aim to shift from reactive service to provide more proactive recommendations in the ‘Manage Your Deliveries’ portal. We’re exploring how our systems might help anticipate business cycles, identify order patterns, and suggest intelligent delivery preferences that align with customers’ changing needs.
“Scalable innovation: We’ll continue inventing new delivery models that balance the efficiency of the consumer network with the precision business customers require. This includes expanding our palletisation capabilities, developing new consolidation options, and creating delivery solutions we haven’t yet imagined while maintaining our high-performance bar. The key is building solutions that scale globally while remaining flexible enough to meet local market requirements. Ultimately, our vision is to make complex business deliveries feel as seamless as consumer deliveries, where the sophistication happens behind the scenes and customers simply receive exactly what they need, when and how they need it.”
Anything else you’d like to share?
Brian Steward: “Thank you for asking, there are several things I’d like to share! First, I remain very excited about the future of Amazon Business and how we’re building towards the vision I described. As we progress, I’m particularly proud of our partnership with the marketing team. In 2025, we launched the first-ever Amazon Business Branded Box Truck fleet. These compressed natural gas trucks provide multiple benefits: they reduce noise at delivery locations, lower CO2 emissions compared to diesel, and display business branding so customers know their trusted Amazon Business provider is on-site to complete the delivery.
“Second, I want to highlight our commitment to international parity within Amazon Business. Customer requirements differ significantly across North America, Europe, and APAC, requiring us to continually evolve our operating model. What works in the United States doesn’t necessarily work in Japan. As we launch features across all regions with a parity framework in mind, we build the differentiation required to meet customer needs by region. If you’re looking for a procurement partner, Amazon Business brings many new and exciting capabilities to that partnership. Both my team and I are committed to ensuring operations are one of those standout features.”
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