BRF, the giant food company, partners with VTEX to implement a new B2B ecommerce

BRF expects to increase its processed food online sales with a modern channel leveraging the B2B trend of live shopping experiences

NEW YORK, June 22, 2022 – VTEX (NYSE: VTEX), the enterprise digital commerce platform for global brands and retailers, has been chosen by BRF, one of the largest global food companies, present in 127 countries, as the platform and partner to digitalize its B2B sales. The food company launched in March its B2B ecommerce in Chile, which is BRF’s largest market in Latin America, after Brazil.

“Our B2B ecommerce with VTEX will allow us to double our presence in the region, in addition to offering a high level of market segmentation and contributing to the definition of niches”

explains André Taffarello, International Direct Exports Director at BRF.

The executive adds that this is a new transactional channel for launching and showing new offers, for content production, and for market segmentation. On top of that, it also helps BRF to build relationships with customers, as it is allowing them to reach an audience that the company was not able to reach offline.

“This modern project adds the live shopping experience to the online B2B, which is a trend that is taking over the world. The companies with massive sales teams can leverage it using the concept of personal shopper, along with a hybrid online and offline channel”

said Santiago Naranjo, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at VTEX.

One of the main challenges of a B2B ecommerce is to offer a highly personalized shopping experience such as that present in the offline. In the case of an industry, that challenge is even bigger, since it is necessary to digitize a commercial relationship that in the offline scenario works the other way around: as it is the industry that actively goes after the customers. For this reason, it is essential for BRF to have a platform that combines the entire purchase history of each supermarket and butcher shop with numerous customization possibilities.

In the BRF’s B2B ecommerce developed by VTEX, each client-company has access to a virtual store that is personalized in many aspects, such as promotions, prices, delivery conditions, and even product display. 

In addition, the customers can contact a salesperson and have access to all their offline purchase history integrated into the system. In other words, in this B2B ecommerce, they have visibility of the products that they frequently buy and of the price list that they are already familiar with. 

The first purchase in this new B2B ecommerce will be made with the assistance of a salesperson and, over time, the expectation is that customers will learn and begin to make purchases more independently. With that, sellers will assume a more consultative position, being able to expand the portfolio of clients that they serve, thus reducing the travel time for face-to-face visits. 

“This B2B ecommerce project was carried out by the VTEX sales team for the BRF sales team. We understand BRF’s commercial needs and know the importance of their salespeople in this omnichannel purchase journey, so the new B2B ecommerce with Live Shopping experience becomes an instrument to enhance the team’s and BRF’s performance even more” 

says Santiago Naranjo.

For BRF, the role of this B2B ecommerce is clear: to leverage the work of the sales professionals. The new channel is a tool to digitize and help them evolve towards an even more strategic role in the company.