Context
Arca Continental is one of the largest bottlers in Latin America, responsible for distributing beverages and snacks to thousands of store owners across the region. However, until 2023, many customers still placed orders by phone or through in‑person visits, leading to frequent capture errors, slow processing and high operational costs.
With more than 60% of store owners being minimally digital, the company faced the challenge of modernizing order capture without imposing new technological barriers. The goal was clear: accelerate sales, ensure inventory accuracy and free up commercial resources to focus on market development activities.
The challenge
The challenge was to design an order capture model that:
- Included store owners with low digital adoption, without requiring downloads or additional registrations.
- Synchronized prices, promotions and portfolio with the ERP in real time.
- Reduced processing times and eliminated re‑entry errors.
In addition, the system had to scale quickly to multiple countries, ensuring consistency in internal processes and centralized visibility of metrics.
The solution
Together with Jelou, Arca Continental implemented a B2B ordering ecosystem on WhatsApp, turning the most used channel by store owners into their main commercial platform.
The conversational flow included:
- Intelligent agent with interactive catalog, prices and promotions updated in real time.
- Automatic inventory validation and direct order submission to the logistics system.
- Unified integrations with the ERP and internal apps, ensuring consistent customer, price and availability data.
- Order confirmation notifications and delivery tracking within the same WhatsApp thread.
The system also incorporated adoption and volume dashboards, with metrics segmented by country, route and customer type, enabling measurement and optimization from day one.
Results
Adoption exceeded expectations and delivered immediate results:
- Over USD 2.5 million in orders processed since 2023.
- 20,000 orders captured without the need for manual re‑entry.
- Rapid expansion from Ecuador to Mexico and Peru after validating the impact on sales.
- Greater inventory accuracy and reduced visit costs, freeing sales teams for higher‑value activities.
The channel proved accessible even for the least digital store owners, thanks to the simplicity of WhatsApp as an interaction interface.
Conclusion
Arca Continental’s experience confirms that conversational simplicity is key to digitizing B2B in consumer goods. By turning WhatsApp into its main ordering channel, the company gained speed, accuracy and scalability, integrating all points of sale—from the most tech‑enabled to the most traditional—into a unified ecosystem.
With this strategy, Arca Continental not only optimized operations, but also boosted regional growth, setting a precedent for commercial digitization across multiple markets.