FOSTERING AN
E-COMMERCE PARTNERSHIP
BEES is a business-to-business e-commerce platform that helps small and medium-sized retailers connect with suppliers and seamlessly manage their orders, deliveries and payments. Now serving over 2.5 million active monthly users in 20 markets, BEES facilitates approximately 1.9 million orders per week with a GMV of over $7.4 billion.
Our goal was to develop a taxonomy for BEES that could accommodate current and future category expansions. We also worked to enhance and standardize the frontend taxonomy, improving user navigation on the platform across the relevant locales.
PROJECT DETAILS
| CLIENT: |
Bees/InBev/Budwiser |
| START OF ENGAGEMENT: |
2023 |
| SERVICES: |
Product Taxonomy |
| WEBSITE: |
A UNIFIED APPROACH
We began by reviewing BEES taxonomies from Peru, Mexico and the global framework to identify and map similarities across product hierarchies. We also conducted a requirements analysis with stakeholders—including Sales/BDR, Revenue Management, Partner Team, Campaign/Marketing and Trade Marketing. This process included a stakeholder survey, followed by 10 virtual working sessions that expanded on survey insights through discussions and collaborative reviews. After analyzing background information, segmentation extracts and hierarchy trees, our team was able to standardize data across countries, establish consistent naming conventions for POCs, define clear TOBs and attribute structures, and validate POC data with a unified taxonomy approach.
TAXONOMY DEFINITION
AND SKU CATEGORIZATION
We provided BEES with an optimized product hierarchy and taxonomy, defined across 19 domains and ranging from apparel to electronics in multiple locales. This included related category templates, attributes with associated LOVs (List of Values) and their defined data types and attribute requirements—all in accordance with the Baymard Institute guidelines. Once completed, geekspeak classified or mapped the provided BEES catalogue into the relevant leaf nodes so that each SKU was properly categorized. We then delivered a complete Taxonomy Governance document to ensure any future updates or maintenance to the taxonomy could be documented and followed according to set guidelines.