Mercado Libre mapped ~2,000 people in four-day interview waves, projecting 3,471% ROI in the first month
No consulting firm can interview 2,000 people in 4 days. Facing a headcount freeze and complex multi-country operations, Mercado Libre used Horizon to reach 100% of its target functions across 9 countries, and move from manual discovery to measurable ROI 90× faster.
Interviews completed in 4 days per wave (96% of invited)
Hours/month of work mapped across 18,000+ tasks
Projected Annual Savings*
To first implementations
The Challenge
Mercado Libre, Inc., Latin America's leading e-commerce and fintech ecosystem, founded in 1999, operating in 18 countries with 84,000+ employees.
Initial situation: a hiring freeze that left dozens of roles unfilled, hundreds of contractors absorbing manual work, and 600+ efficiency initiatives running in parallel with no shared evidence base. Multi-country complexity across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Manual discovery model meant months of interviews covering less than 1% of the workforce. Fragmented systems: SAP, ARIBA, PIC, CLM, Jira, BigQuery, Tableau, Apache, Bypass.
Business objectives: liberate workforce capacity, shorten procurement/contract cycles, benchmark across countries, and ensure all initiatives delivered ROI greater than 150%.
Methodology
The Horizon Approach
Manual discovery model: months of interviews covering less than 1% of the workforce, requiring 100+ coordination hours per initiative. Cost of inaction: 12k-13k hours wasted annually, 76 additional hires required, vendor onboarding delays (30-45 days), and strategic initiatives slowed by duplication.
Horizon delivered full organizational coverage: 100% of key functions engaged vs. less than 1% sampling in consulting. Speed: 4 days vs months (interview waves completed in four days, versus a manual survey that took months). Outcomes: ROI-validated initiatives, not static reports. Security fit: SOC 2, encryption, RBAC, anonymization, API integration with existing systems.
Full-scale discovery in days: AI agents interviewed 1,581 people across Finance and related functions in four-day waves, covering 100% of targeted areas in 9 countries, versus the under-1% sample a traditional consulting engagement would reach. Transcripts fused with SAP/ARIBA/PIC + BigQuery/Tableau data to expose value gaps. 24 initiatives co-created with ROI, effort, and step-by-step roadmap. Auto-generated board decks, RFPs, process maps, Jira epics.
Built on AWS. Horizon runs on Amazon Web Services and is available through AWS Marketplace.
The Results
Impact highlights: $2.3M+ projected annual savings* (12,000-13,000 hours a year targeted for automation), 3,471% projected ROI in the first month**, 24 initiatives prioritized (all ROI >150%), first implementations live in under 1 week. Contract cycles projected to drop from 7-45 days to under 10; vendor onboarding projected to drop from 30-45 days to 7-8.
On top of this data, the client's transformation team estimated up to 88,000 hours/month of maximum automation potential across three tiers (quick wins with the current stack, AI agents, transformational initiatives).
Cross-country benchmarking revealed hidden duplications and best practices. Proof of adoption: 495 platform sessions, 150+ Superconsultant conversations and 1,592 insights by January 2026, with 100+ stakeholders actively engaged in review processes.
Key Results
1,581
Interviews completed in 4 days per wave (96% of invited)
243,000
Hours/month of work mapped across 18,000+ tasks
$2.3M
Projected Annual Savings*
<1 week
To first implementations
* Horizon projection: automatable hours x loaded hourly cost, pending client validation.
** Horizon projection (projected first-month savings vs pilot cost), pending client validation.
| Process Area | Before | After | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| RFP/RFQ Processing | 14-16h/month per person, manual | Automated integration | Capacity freed, fewer errors |
| Contract Cycles | 7-45 days | <10 days (projected) | Faster revenue enablement |
| Vendor Onboarding | 30-45 days | 7-8 days (projected) | Supplier agility, compliance |
| Process Discovery | Manual survey that took months, <1% sample | Four-day interview waves, ~2,000 people mapped, 9 countries | Quicker, better decisions |
One year later: from findings to owner-led execution
In July 2026 Mercado Libre re-surveyed the same Finance organization with a focused discovery: 156 directors, N-1 leaders and subject-matter experts across 26 directorates ranked the inefficiencies that still persist, producing 105 prioritized findings in one week. Horizon now supports MELI's AI Adoption Leaders, one per director, in turning those findings into one-pagers and implementation blueprints (85% delivered by late August 2026).
What People Said
“We needed rapid evidence and clear ROI prioritization to decide where to focus first.”
Strategic Transformation Director
“We went from manual interviews to full organizational coverage in days; we had immediate clarity on where to act first.”
Strategic Transformation Supervisor