Innovation

What innovation means to us.

Innovation is in our factories, in our concrete plants, distribution centers, in short, it is in all our units. We look at our materials and minerals and look for new possibilities. We turn challenges into opportunities.

We want to build an ambidextrous organization. That with one hand delivers the results of everyday life in an exceptional way, and with the other hand draws tomorrow.

Innovation for us is to pave the future of civil construction in a simple, fast and sustainable way.

And we chose important territories to focus our efforts on:

Tirelessly support the performance of retailers.

Pursue solutions that can help maximize the productivity of construction projects through new products, construction methods, services and technology.

Understand and influence the reality of the housing deficit in our country, exploring alternatives for more affordable housing.

Be a leader in solutions to reduce the use of clinker, closely monitoring viable CO2 capture and use initiatives.

And explore viable solutions to recycle construction waste.

Case studies

VC Connect Program

As a way to increasingly develop our innovation ecosystem, we see the need to attract external partners to help us find solutions to the current and future challenges of our business.

More than a specific project, with a start and completion date, our objective is to maintain a continuous flow of solutions for the most varied topics within Votorantim Cimentos and its business areas. With this goal in mind, we designed the VC Connect Program, which includes several challenges to connect employees, suppliers and other industries, government agencies, startups, investment funds, research centers and universities in search of assertive, agile and cost-effective proposals for the challenges faced by our company.

One of the results of the first cycle of VC Connect was the VC Maps platform, which introduced to the company a new concept of digital monitoring, resulting in operational cost optimization, excellence in data automation, maintenance of mineral assets and conservation of forest areas.

The new model performs predictive analyses to monitor the mineral, real estate and environmental assets, anticipating risks using variables obtained through artificial intelligence algorithms—which multiply as the database stored in the cloud grows.

Industry 4.0

In an increasingly competitive construction market, with more demanding customers in search of sustainable solutions, we see in Industry 4.0 a great differential edge to continue our history of innovation in a much faster and comprehensive way, to ensure the continuity of our business and, above all, to leave a legacy that we will all be proud of.

With that in mind, we are developing Spectrum, a predictive maintenance program to monitor the behavior of machines in real time and anticipate possible failures as well as the impact of malfunctions/unplanned interruptions on our production process.

Market Place

We came from a journey of courage, moving and boosting lives and careers, forming a single team in the 11 countries in which we are present. We continually renew our plans and commitments to people and we are a team willing to dream and fight for what we want to build.

With Nosso Jeito VC, we are guided by doing what is right, respecting and including people as they are, valuing and learning from differences, delivering results in an ethical and humane way.

We know that achieving our future business ambition will be challenging, but we are convinced that we have the right people to thrive, with the courage to transform and go beyond.

Digital Platform

In this area, we are focused on developing new businesses and products that can add value to the brand by meeting the specific needs of different customers and by being, from an environmental standpoint, more sustainable. Backed by technology, we seek to innovate in the way we relate to our customers, expanding contact points (web, telephone), while always striving to improve their experience with Votorantim Cimentos.

Engemix Webside

With new design, content and simplified flow to improve the processing of estimate requests, the Engemix website holds all the information about our concrete market.

VC Online e-commerce portal:

Our portal receives more than half of the orders placed in Brazil, proving the effectiveness of this channel in the process of facilitating the acquisition of our products. It also includes the VC Online app, now even more functional and intuitive for use in smartphones, which was very well received by the market. At the end of 2017, we also launched the Pague Flex solution, which offers customers exclusive terms for payments in installments as a way to improve working capital, especially among small retailers.

Mapa da obra website (map of the construction site)

Comprised of a web portal and a YouTube channel, it provides information about our products and services, as well as news about the construction market. Since 2014, our sales team in Brazil has also been relying on tablets and apps to support our digital strategy, streamline customer visits and increase team productivity, as well as to consolidate a single database.

Access the website

Do-it-yourself strategy

We promote content about various applications of cement, mortar and other items in our portfolio to digital influencers and end consumers. Aired mainly on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, the videos include educational messages on how to use our products in small repairs and renovations and in decoration projects.