Tech Transformation Podcast: EJ Weiss On How BEES Is Driving Transformation at AB InBev
Digitizing the route to market has been a priority for consumer goods companies for a long time, and the pandemic amped the urgency to a 10. For AB InBev, this meant really stomping on the pedal when rolling out their BEES e-commerce technology, which lets retailers place their orders through a mobile app — and a lot more.
Over the past few years, its use has exploded and has transformed how the company works with retailers. In this episode of Tech Transformation, we’re talking with EJ Weiss, global director of strategy at BEES at AB InBev, about the impact the tech has had within the company and how they use these learnings and data across the enterprise.
Listen to learn:
- Where BEES fits within AB InBev's larger e-commerce strategy
- How its success is driving additional transformation within AB InBev
- How they’re leveraging learnings to improve the technology
- What drove their decision to offer third-party products to retailers
- Other ways that BEES is transforming AB InBev and its partners
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Excerpts
On how Bees is impacting transformation within AB InBev: “One of the key things that we've seen is we have this important frontline of sales reps that have built relationships with our retailers and really know those businesses. They were spending all of their time on very manual tasks of inventory and order taking, and by implementing BEES, we've actually shifted their roles, from sales reps into business development representatives ... and this allows them to spend time reviewing the performance with the retailers, looking at opportunities for them to grow their business, educating them and helping them on their digital transformation journey. …
“Another thing that's really changed is the amount of information that we're able to gather and then utilize so we can really personalize a lot of the experiences for the retailers. If you think about an event, one that obviously drives a lot of beer sales is the World Cup. And so during the World Cup, we were able to gamify the experience for our customers. They could participate in a bracket challenge where they would select which teams they thought were going to progress within the World Cup, and we had over a million retailers participating in that bracket challenge – something we just never could have done without BEES. And overall, this has led to a significant increase in our net promoter score.”
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