Doing the right thing for the planet doesn’t have to mean giving up the things we love. Since 1977, Grupo Boticario has specialized in making environmentally-friendly, cruelty-free beauty products ranging from fragrances to cosmetics to soaps. They're now the world's largest beauty retail franchise with over 4,000 points of sale in Brazil and around the world. Software is critical to everything they do, from manufacturing to logistics to reseller relations.

Part of Grupo Boticario’s growth has been driven by strategic acquisitions of other companies, and with them their toolsets and development environments. The result was a fragmented developer toolchain with a variety of source code management and CI/CD tools that made it challenging for teams to work as quickly and efficiently. In response, Grupo Boticario selected GitHub’s platform to modernize and unify their development efforts.

Many developers at Grupo Boticario were using a mix of tools including TFS and Azure DevOps. But by standardizing on GitHub Enterprise Cloud, the company could not only streamline their tooling, but also gain access to cutting-edge features like GitHub Copilot and Actions. The move sent a message to the entire organization that Grupo Boticario was changing. Now all new projects begin on GitHub.

GitHub just works. We can focus on writing code and building great products, not on setting up and managing tools.

"GitHub just works," says Principal Software Engineer William Moraes. "We can focus on writing code and building great products, not on setting up and managing tools."

Grupo Boticario immediately made Copilot available to every developer in the company to kickstart adoption. The results have been stunning. In an internal survey, 90% of developers said they spent less time and effort on repetitive tasks and 64% said Copilot freed them up to focus on more satisfying work. 94% said they considered themselves more productive overall thanks to Copilot. In 2024 alone, the total number of lines accepted exceeded the 2 million mark.

Copilot is integral to our daily workflow. We rely on it extensively for a range of programming tasks, from writing code and documentation to testing and debugging.

"Copilot is integral to our daily workflow," says Bruno Fuzetti Penso, head of Platform Engineering. "We rely on it extensively for a range of programming tasks, from writing code and documentation to testing and debugging."

Copilot helps developers at Grupo Boticario autocomplete repetitive work so they can focus on more valuable aspects of development. For example, Copilot can help write all the various TypeScript tasks, such as type declarations based in a JSON file, that need to be completed to use the language effectively. "Copilot not only generates this kind of boilerplate code, it also tailors it to our specific needs which improves the quality and security of our code." says Penso.

But the value the team sees from Copilot goes far beyond boilerplate. "As we began using it, we discovered that GitHub Copilot wasn't just an AI assistant: It helps us become more creative and innovative because it inspires us to think outside the box by offering multiple suggestions and examples, it is like having a pair programming session," Penso explains.

Copilot Chat also helps Grupo Boticario work more effectively by answering questions from within the code editor, keeping them in the flow, saving them from having to context switch to a search engine or knowledge base to find information. Developers at Grupo Boticario have shared that it's been particularly helpful in learning new programming languages. For example, it helps developers learn to apply Terraform’s declarative programming paradigm more quickly by saving them from the need to reference documentation as frequently.   

Grupo Boticario also embraces GitHub as a place to consolidate development efforts. The company used GitHub Actions and the GitHub rest API integrations to add processes and validations to improve code quality and security by bringing information into the heart of developer workflows, surfacing problems and offering suggestions without the need to context switch. For example, the company uses GitHub Actions to pull logs from a variety of different tools—including SonarCloud, Fortify, Argo CD, and Dependabot—into a single pipeline on GitHub, saving developers from having to seek information in different locations. This way, teams can continue to use the tools they prefer while still working from a single platform.

The GitHub platform empowers sustainable growth for Grupo Boticario by surfacing repository data such as  languages used, code owners, documentation, and software dependencies that can be used to make better decisions throughout the organization.

Meanwhile, GitHub is helping foster more collaboration at Grupo Boticario. “Before we  had limited visibility into each other’s code,” says Penso. “With GitHub, it’s easier to collaborate and suggest improvements. Everything flows better.”

GitHub gives us speed. We've been able to deploy to production faster than ever.

Grupo Boticario’s adoption of GitHub’s platform has resulted in an overall productivity boost, from streamlining their tooling to facilitating collaboration to turbocharging development with Copilot. "In a word, GitHub gives us speed," says Penso. "We've been able to deploy to production faster than ever." With Copilot helping take the company’s development efforts to new places, Grupo Boticario is poised to keep scaling its business worldwide and staying ahead of the curve.