The Coca-Cola Company‘s History and Growth

Dsicuss about the Customer Relationship Management Implementation.

The Coca-Cola Company was started in 1886 in Atlanta by Dr. John S. Pemberton as a fountain beverage (The Coca-Cola Company, 2012). The firm has grown to become one of the most popular soft drinks sellers, having a variety of drinks and expanded internationally. Transforming the company to what it is today technologically and digitally is a journey of its kind. Today, the firm boast for having markets in over 200 countries, and of a large customer base that consumes over one billion servings each day. The firm is on record of evolving its Enterprise Information System in order to meet its complex needs.

An Enterprise Resource Planning system refers to a software suite packaged together, and that which helps enterprises and companies manage and control the use of its resources effectively and efficiently (Christopher, 2006). Among the resources and business units that are managed/integrated together include human resources and capital, inventory, materials, finance, customer information, marketing and material among many others. All these are integrated together in order to provide a perfect solution that matches the business needs. ERPs provide powerful results by coordinating information that helps gain customer trust and maintain or /and improve brand quality (Alok & Deepti, 2009). The total effect of this transformation is giving firms a competitive advantage through resource use optimization and timely and efficient responses to the ever-changing business environments (Shanks, 2000).

In order to meet its daunting operational needs, the company resorted to a Strategic Enterprise Management functionalities of MySAP system. In 2004, the international enterprise entered into a deal with SAP AG to develop a customized beverage-specific application. The application, according to the specifications was meant to help the company improve their customer service, reduce production costs and improve data sharing in in the firm’s multiple systems (Songini, 2004). The system was built around SAPS’S ERP and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) with a NetWeaver integration middleware for mobile connectivity.

The migration into the ERP system is used (and has helped) the firm streamline its processes in various ways:

Integrating financial consolidation and planning: the system has enabled financial solutions via its multilinked multiple layers. This is facilitated by SAP SEM, Business Consolidation, and mySAP financials side. Financial information submitted through the firm’s intranet for processing is consolidated both at business local legal entity and at the profit centre group. The results of the process are then used to generate more consolidated financial statements and internal management reports. The system helps generate, on daily basis, financial actuals that are used at of each month to give a financial forecast of the month.

Understanding Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

Financial planners and managers at regional and divisional levels can generate financial reports faster at the profit-centre level. This information is also used to generate useful insights in regard to operational expenses, profitability and costs of sales.

Decision making is further enhanced and enabled by the data warehousing module through which the management and planners break down the generated information and critically analyse it to achieve the best of it.

ERP systems allow key performance indicators and figures to be accessed by users in real-time, resulting in dynamism of a company. This gives system users opportunities to react to changes and undertake more data driven decisions timely and in real-time as well (Parthasarthy, 2007). This offers great help when it comes to management of inventory records in a firm.

ERP systems combine data from independent and related modules in an enterprise thus enabling automatic data update and providing reliable uniform information needed for key processes and decision making.

Coca-Cola has accelerated its corporate accounting through an automation of management and legal consolidation processes. The system creates a variety of financial documents ranging from income statements, balance sheets, appendices and cash flow statements. The automation helps the management and the firm in general, to report on their financial positions in time. Additionally, value-based accounting is supported by the system through the SEM-BCS module. Data collection and validation, interunit transaction removal, and currency generation are also supported, a functionality which gives the firm an upper hand when it comes to aligning its processes in accordance to set policies as well as statutory accounting requirements.

Coca-Cola Company had to spend a lot of time and resources in collection, analysis, and summarization of data and information flowing from its different locations to the systems. But with the automation of the process, more time is now spent analysing data other than collection and filtering (Isatou, 2017). The data warehousing solution implemented in the system as an infrastructure for and a reporting engine provides a consistent analysis and supports decision-making process. In the long run, new business ventures are recognized.

With the realization of the benefits that such systems bring with them, the company has moved to further fine-tune it so that it is more efficient and accurate. It then uses the information mined from its databases to add value and increase efficiency at all production and management stages. As a result, the firm has gained an upper hand over other firms in the same industry in the following ways:

Coca-Cola’s Strategic Enterprise Management Functionalities of MySAP system

The integration of this system in the company’s production and management processes brought together a common innovation framework which helped put management practices, policies and business intelligence thus giving the different operational units an ability to continuously seek concepts that have successfully applied in other regions and in which certain products have proved to be successful. The end result of this integration is a broad framework giving a global view of the production process. Coca-Cola collaborates with regional bottlers and uses its SAP-ERP system to communicate with them, something that leads it to achieve market forecasts.

The company taps into its clients taste through CSR- corporate social responsibilities, sponsorships, sports, music, green campaign movement, and customer loyalty rewards.

Before the fine-tuning of the system in 2014, different bottlers’ production units ran their own SAPs making collaboration, integration, and communication hard for the company (New Media CMS, 2000). This in turn harboured management of the supply processes due to inefficiency. However, the integration of the system into multiple layers has improved efficiency in the sector, a technology that is usable across the beverage industry.

According to the company’s chief information officer, Margaret Carton (Thomas, 2004) the new system has greatly reduced paperwork and ensured that cash settlements are properly and timely made and reduce space wasted in delivery lorries. Many of the firms extended processes from managerial, manufacturing all the way to the retails have been automated. The automation of these process, in turn, lead to cost savings and increased revenue creation opportunities by saving much time (Franscisco, 2016). The system replaces already sold-out stock faster hence increasing resource optimization and increasing sales.

The ERP system records and maintains data from every location or pour, providing useful information when a different product/brand is running out of stock. The system also provides for automated ordering in many of its locations. As such, each location builds its orders automatically and places them in the system. The system optimizes the orders so that the entities can pay lowest costs for the deliverables. In addition to this, the company in the 2012 Olympics created mobile application- also integrated with the SAP-ERP system and made them available for all mobile phone operating system platforms. This strategy was aimed at creating a stronger customer base through digital marketing.

Operational data from the individual locations helps in the understanding of current market trends, thus aiding in the understanding of what products are fast moving at different times of the day, and deciding on how and when to adjust the prices (Levln, 2013).

Benefits of Implementing an ERP System at Coca-Cola Company

Operational costs are reduced through infrastructure development and the maintenance of a skilled, knowledgeable and dedicated employee base.

Better management and improved decision making

The system makes critical data available to the management and helps them analyse all situations hence leading to sound decisions making. This is aided by increased flexibility and accuracy when examining financial statements. The manual multi-step data entry process has been reduced to a button-click activity, thus increasing the efficiency of reports distribution. The installation of the system at all employees’ workstations has helped create a motivated staff too. Integrating database migration and SAP Unicode was a money and timer saviour. Results indicate that database “delivers a reduction in storage needs by 40%” (Parker, 2007). The system reduced manufacturing time by about 65%, meaning that it increased throughput hence more revenue. At the same time, it is important to note that the system was completed and delivered within budgetary allocations and ahead of the schedule. The development helped the company cut license and maintenance costs used to purchase licenses from vendors such as Oracle.

The company is dedicated to leveraging innovative technologies through information technology techniques in order to improve its operations. The installation of the system has helped the firm develop a standard policy and practice of LiveCompare. Unlike in the past where the IT had to be completely shut down whenever a new application was being installed or a functionality being added, today maintenance does not need to be done in “break and fix”.

The company’s management understands how difficult it is to maintain such a system in stable condition throughout. The stability strategy pursued in adopted at different levels of the firm and has different designs depending on the circumstances over which it is required. Maintaining a stable system provides business continuity even when some functionalities and services are unavailable, enhances robustness and helps detect and thwarts attacks.

Entity resource planning systems are becoming a threat to malicious attacks. Coca-Cola and other firms that have moved this way must adopt competitive strategies to ensure that they remain and maintain their market shares and that there is enough preparedness in case of any external and/or internal attacks. This calls for long-term continued reinvestments and innovation as technology evolves.

Brand protection: the company uses the RFID technology(Claire, 2009) to track their products across the world. The tags embedded on the products ensures that the products are last exposed to counterfeiting.

Challenges Faced During ERP Implementation at Coca-Cola Company

Conclusion.

Trends in information technology can be perfectly matched with organizational needs so as to bring significant developments in the business/industry sector. Coca-Cola is an example of the many big companies that have taken this advantage and incorporated an information system in order to counter forces of competition, entrants and substitute products. This development has had the tremendous impact on the company- making it survive these forces with strength and opportunities and finally giving it a competitive advantage over other firms in the beverage industry.

Implementation of an ERP system is derived from operational needs of a company and is based on the economic deficiencies that it aims to meet (M2PressWIRE , 2007). Giving solutions to these deficiencies, the systems have become a common approach to business problems tody as they present many common benefits to firms.

References

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