"Heineken is a 161-year-old start-up"

With an online trade volume of many billions, Heineken is a global giant in B2B e-commerce. Ronald den Elzen, keynote speaker at the Webwinkel Vakdagen, works daily on Heineken's ambition to become the world's best connected brewer. He connects customers, consumers and categories, all over the world and throughout the chain.

"With AI, we can do that much faster. The technology is there. Adoption, that's the challenge."

"Heineken is a 161-year-old start-up"

Culture is key in the adoption of AI"

Den Elzen has a green heart. He started as a trainee at Heineken in February 1995, since 2020 he has been Chief Digital & Technology Officer at the data-driven brewer. "Connecting the dots," he outlines his role in the run-up to Webwinkel Vakdagen: collecting and linking together loose bits of information to gain insights that benefit customers, consumers, categories and Heineken itself. "We measure every month for all our operating companies how much progress we are making. We do this using more than 20 metrics in terms of input, output and quality. From online revenue share to digital marketing efficiency and from the number of linked breweries to the profit contribution of AI. Which, by the way, is thirty-seven times higher than in 2020."

We link proximity to global scale ."

Local player on a global scale
To measure is to know, and at Heineken there is a lot to measure and cross-pollinate. With a portfolio of four hundred brands and a huge customer base, the Dutch company operates in 192 countries. On-trade and retail concerns such as Albert Heijn and Tesco stand out, but according to Den Elzen, 70 percent of sales come in through mom-and-pop stores and other smaller outlets such as bodegas. "We assume local strength," Den Elzen explains. "We couple that proximity with global scale, which can be done very well with digitalization."

"We have a lot of insights that individual pubs and restaurants don't have, but we can share them," Den Elzen continues. "Take an Italian restaurant around the corner. We have five hundred other Italian restaurants in our database, for example, so we can help the restaurant owner improve their assortment, put down promotions and attract people. This is how we help our customers grow their business."

B2B sales company
Heineken built a reputation with consumer advertising (Beer?), but its clientele consists mainly of businesses. "We are a D2C marketing company and a B2B sales company, I sometimes say, with the supermarket and the pub around the corner as customers." Those business customers are increasingly ordering digitally, Den Elzen continues enthusiastically. Online trade volume (GMV) from "fragmented trade," small outlets and pubs and restaurants, has increased fivefold in the past five years to 13 billion euros. "80 percent of orders come in through our own apps," he says.

Building relationships
Den Elzen calls Heineken a "161-year-old start-up," constantly reinventing itself. As media consumption and taste preferences change, the company continues to make connections, he outlines, "We've always built super-strong relationships with consumers and with our customers, we've grown up with it." In times of fragmentation and differentiation, establishing and maintaining relationships is perhaps more important than ever for the brewer. That can be done ideally online.

Dual digital task
Heineken has a double digital task in 2026, Den Elzen makes concrete: "On the front end, we are busy with business transformation: we want to respond more flexibly to the wishes of customers and consumers. So start collaborating better, using AI. But we also have to deal with a back end. Look: I call Heineken a start-up, but if you were starting tomorrow you would do things differently. We have that 161-year history. Through acquisitions, companies have been glued together over the years, there's quite a bit of cleaning up to do there. Under the hood, we are working to make things simpler, faster and more productive, to harmonize. We are moving toward a central back end."

Digital Backbone
A spearhead of the sharpened strategy is the international rollout of the so-called Digital Backbone. "You can think of it as an operating system," says Den Elzen, "the Heineken standard on which we can build modules." He compares it to an iPhone, which offers access to an infinite number of different applications. "With the Digital Backbone, we offer a lot of flexibility on incredible standardization, allowing us to provide seamless experiences to our customers. You need basic definitions for that; the process of getting there is pretty painful." Not necessarily fun, but necessary, says Den Elzen: "We've created a relatively large amount of spaghetti, we're now trying to turn that into lasagna. That's not so much a matter of technology, more of adoption."

80 percent of orders come in through our own apps"

AI-driven optimization
The same goes for AI applications on the front end of digital operations. "With AI you can do a lot of things faster. Let me give you an example: take a market in which we operate with twenty brands, in twenty touch points and that in three regions. Then you have twelve hundred different combinations. Marketers are helped by an AI-driven optimization model for the commercial mix. Such a model takes into account historical data, future expectations and countless other variables. With this, a marketer in such a market gets well-founded advice: how do I best spend my money? Similar information we can share with our clients." Sounds wonderful, but to a marketing manager it sometimes seems like a black box. Den Elzen: "Not only does he wonder if the AI advice is correct, but maybe he also thinks: didn't I do it right myself? That human aspect is very much underestimated. Culture is key, we are very aware of that."

On the flip side, we try to turn spaghetti into lasagna"

According to Den Elzen, AI can add value to Heineken in many areas. All departments are thinking about concrete opportunities to eliminate pain points. "We put all those ideas on a list. Then we start testing promising ideas, usually in two markets. If we see that it adds value, we start scaling up, obviously looking carefully at where we start." For example, new solutions emerge for purchasing, promotion planning and churn detection. "The challenge then remains: do people believe it and will they use it? The technology is not the problem."

End-to-end digitization
In addition to its ninety thousand employees, Heineken also wants to take customers with it on the digital journey. With solutions that benefit them directly. At the Webwinkel Vakdagen, Den Elzen explains how the royal concern is working on end-to-end digitization. With its 161-year history, Heineken may seem traditional, but nothing could be further from the truth, the digital foreman will make clear on the main stage in Utrecht: "We are continuously data-driven to generate value for our consumers, our customers and ourselves."

Heineken x Webwinkel Vakdagen

Ronald den Elzen, Chief Digital & Technology Officer of Heineken, will give a keynote presentation at Webwinkel Vakdagen on Wednesday, March 25 at 10:45 a.m.

Our community shares its knowledge

Our community is bursting with
e-commerce experts. But how do you turn strategies into concrete results? How do you respond to changing consumer behavior, growth of your organization and new technologies in online retail?

"Selling in times of AI requires sharp choices from entrepreneurs"

How is shopping changing with the rise of AI? "That's the million dollar question," says Peter Maas. The Chief Technology Officer of Marktplaats does have an idea: "More than ever it's about relevance: what is your added value for the customer? That requires open dialogues and sharp choices. And you have to explain that value to an AI as well as you can." A relatable conversation leading up to Maas' keynote presentation at Webwinkel Vakdagen.

Feb. 9, 2026

"We now think in moments."

What do you do when interest in your product declines? It's a question that Gall & Gall, a market leader in the liquor industry with 650 stores, has taken seriously. "People drink less, they drink differently and they also buy differently. We had to think around," says general manager Nienke van de Streek. "With our omnichannel approach, we managed to gain market share in a shrinking market. That gives a positive vibe."

Jan. 30, 2026

View more blogs

Benelux's biggest digital commerce event with the best digital commerce speakers and suppliers.

Free tickets

Practical information Contact Venue & Opening hours Parking Floor plan exhibition

About WWV Organisatie Groep Zuid Working at Warning data parties

Blogs

AI and E-commerce: hype or staying power?

Sustainability is more than a nice talk, you have to actually live it up