Coca-Cola

Representing 96% of Bolivian Coca-Cola's sales and 37% in neighboring Chile, Coca-Cola Embonor has further expanded their market reach by implementing a dynamic app to improve B2B workflow and sales, even in low connectivity areas. Designed and developed in 2019 by the Apply Digital team, this android app harnesses API technology to bridge communication between the app's front-end and Coca-Cola Embonor’s existing legacy system.

This app also helped tackle another unexpected challenge — the changing market demands of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coca-Cola Embonor was forced to pivot quickly as their sales teams found themselves unable to visit retailers in person and customers could not go to their local shops to pick up a bottle of their favorite beverage. Again, they turned to the digital space for a solution, and the app developed in 2019 became our foundational building block for future solutions.

We took the challenges that COVID-19 surfaced as an opportunity to develop and modernize the B2C and B2B commerce web experiences for Coca-Cola Embonor. These platforms had to be operational at MACH speed in less than three months, so we leveraged MACH architecture to develop a future-proof platform that could quickly adapt to the evolving market demands and gather first-party customer insights.

We developed our B2B and B2C web commerce experiences by building on the previously created B2B app, giving us a strong foundation to connect both web experiences to Coca-Cola Embonor’s legacy systems. Our developers and UX teams were able to quickly integrate a headless front-end and a modern eCommerce engine to the app’s existing ecosystem, deploying a holistic shopping experience for both retailers and shoppers.

Our goal was to develop a flexible and composable ecosystem to enable consistent experiences for customers across all channels and devices.

For this, we first used Contentful to move Coca-Cola Embonor from custom to atomic design. This evolution helped us create a unified design system to support consistent experiences.

To enable cloud-level scalability and easy maintenance in the B2C solution, we used Commerce Layer to connect our headless front-end with the legacy back-end. For the B2B commerce experience, we leveraged the existing app’s API technology to do the same. This API-driven approach ensured that teams could maintain an updated inventory of products with ease.

After establishing a strong technology foundation for content delivery and commerce, we integrated Algolia to introduce advanced search in both B2B and B2C platforms. Our final goal was to drive customer engagement to maximize the ecosystem’s impact. We did this by creating tailored marketing campaigns using Insider, which enabled Embonor's B2C platform to provide personalized promotions and customer discounts.

In collaboration with the Coca-Cola Embonor team, we deployed two unified commerce platforms on their legacy system in record time.

We were honored to be recognized for this modernization project at the 2022 MACH Alliance Awards for the Best B2B Project, demonstrating the impact that our work in composable technology has in freeing companies from the constraints of monolithic ecosystems.

Within a few months after launch, our modern solutions resulted in exceptional results for Coca-Cola Embonor in 2021.