Context
Arca Continental is one of the most important bottlers in Latin America and Coca‑Cola’s partner in Peru. An essential part of its commercial strategy is to deliver coolers on loan (comodato) to points of sale, ensuring proper beverage display and stimulating product rotation.
Until recently, this process relied on paper forms, manual signatures and several days of waiting. This not only limited the speed of cooler placement, but also reduced the ability of businesses to sell more, creating friction for both customers and internal teams.
The challenge
The goal was clear: digitize the request and approval of coolers to make it faster, more reliable and traceable.
The specific objectives were:
- Reduce the approval cycle from more than two days to just minutes.
- Eliminate capture errors and the loss of physical documents.
- Ensure end‑to‑end traceability and real‑time compliance metrics.
With thousands of active requests each month, the company needed a scalable system that ensured operational efficiency and commercial agility.
The solution
Together with Jelou, Arca Continental implemented a 100% conversational comodato flow on WhatsApp.
The process was redesigned so that both points of sale and the equipment bank could interact directly and automatically:
- Guided capture of data and documents within the chat, reducing errors.
- Instant verification of eligibility and stock in internal systems.
- Automatic approval and contract generation in under 15 minutes.
- Automatic notifications to logistics, speeding up equipment delivery.
Digitization not only removed paperwork, but also provided 100% digital traceability for audits and inventory control—something impossible to achieve with manual processes.
Results
The results confirmed the immediate impact:
- 23,000 coolers approved and delivered, with full traceability.
- USD 7.3 million in assets placed under comodato.
- 30% sales increase at points of sale that received new coolers.
- 85% effective implementation across all requests.
The transformation shortened times, improved operational accuracy and directly boosted business growth.
Conclusion
By turning a traditionally slow process into a digital conversational flow, Arca Continental accelerated cooler deployment, improved inventory visibility and generated a tangible sales impact.
This case shows that WhatsApp automation not only optimizes internal processes, but also becomes a direct growth driver in consumer goods, opening the door to new commercial applications in the beverages and retail industry.