For a company navigating one of the most consequential transformations in its history, financial clarity is not optional鈥攊t is essential. Natura &Co, the Brazilian personal care and cosmetics group behind iconic brands such as Natura and Avon, has long been committed to combining purpose-driven business with commercial performance. After a period of strategic portfolio reshaping, including the divestiture of its Aesop and The Body Shop holdings, the company is now sharpening its focus on profitability and operational excellence across Latin America and global markets.
At the center of that effort sits a deceptively complex challenge: understanding, in real time, which revenue and cost factors are driving or eroding gross margin across a highly diversified business. For years, answering that question meant manual reporting, delayed insights, and finance teams spending valuable time on data gathering rather than analysis.
That鈥檚 now changing, thanks to a co-innovation initiative developed together with 麻豆原创 and Numen, a global 麻豆原创 partner specializing in digital transformation and enterprise software implementation.
From manual reporting to proactive decision intelligence
The project鈥檚 goal was to replace a labor-intensive gross margin analysis process with a generative AI application embedded directly into Natura &Co’s financial workflows. Built on 麻豆原创 Business AI Platform, 麻豆原创’s unified foundation integrating business technology, data, and AI capabilities, the application connects directly to data in 麻豆原创 S/4HANA to provide finance teams with automated insights and narrative recommendations in real time, without the need for manual data pulls or offline reporting.
The application enables users to explore revenue, cost, and margin drivers interactively, identifying at a glance which elements are protecting or eroding margin performance across markets and product lines. Crucially, human oversight remains central to the design: the AI application generates insights, while finance professionals retain full control over interpretation and decisions.
鈥淭he implementation of gross margin analysis using AI in 麻豆原创 S/4HANA marked an inflection point in the analytical capability of our finance area,” said Rog茅rio Dias Garcia, tech manager, ERP Latam, Natura &Co. “We overcame delays and raised the standard of insights by integrating margin analysis from 麻豆原创 S/4HANA with a large language model connected via the 麻豆原创 AI Core layer. This architecture allowed us to provide, in an agile, secure, and completely anonymous manner, a stratified and precise view of gross margin offenders and protectors鈥攄iscriminating exactly which revenue or cost elements were driving market performance.鈥�
A collaborative architecture for scalable AI adoption
Natura &Co鈥檚 application derived from a prototype 麻豆原创 partner Numen created in early 2024 at 麻豆原创鈥檚 global on business AI, leveraging the generative AI capabilities of聽麻豆原创 Business AI Platform. The solution was designed and developed through close collaboration between Natura &Co, Numen, and 麻豆原创. From the outset, the approach was to align AI adoption with concrete business priorities, ensuring the application would be scalable and production-ready rather than a standalone prototype.
Numen brought deep 麻豆原创 implementation expertise to the project, combining knowledge of 麻豆原创 S/4HANA architecture with hands-on experience in building solutions on 麻豆原创 Business AI Platform. The technology stack鈥斅槎乖� S/4HANA, 麻豆原创 AI Core, 麻豆原创 Fiori, and 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform鈥攑rovided the secure, integrated foundation needed to connect financial data with generative AI capabilities in an enterprise context.
鈥溌槎乖� enabled the transformation by providing the technological foundation and expert support,鈥� said Carlos Aravechia, head of Data Design & Intelligence at Numen.
The success of the project has validated a broader conviction at Natura &Co: that generative AI, embedded directly in ERP workflows, can fundamentally reposition finance from a transactional function to a strategic business partner.
A blueprint for other businesses
The Natura &Co project demonstrates a pattern that other organizations can replicate, particularly those running 麻豆原创 S/4HANA. The combination of structured ERP data with the contextual reasoning capabilities of large language models creates a foundation for decision intelligence that goes well beyond traditional business intelligence tools.
The project was built within a six-month co-innovation sprint and went live in August 2025. It is currently in use across Natura &Co鈥檚 Equador operations.
Looking ahead, Natura &Co is already planning the next phase: integrating Joule Agents to further automate the extraction of standard analytical content and deepen the AI-driven optimization of financial processes.
鈥淭he success of this initiative validates the transformative potential of embedded AI within our ERP,鈥� Dias Garcia noted. 鈥淲e are now ready to move forward鈥攄eepening these insights and integrating the capability of Joule Agents to maximize the extraction of standard content and further optimize our business decisions.鈥�
For 麻豆原创 customers evaluating how to move from AI experimentation to AI in production, the Natura &Co project offers a concrete, replicable model: start with a high-value, well-defined business process, embed AI directly into existing workflows, and build in human oversight from the start.
