CCBCC Undergoes Database Migration
Like many manufacturers, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated (CCBCC) (www.cokeconsolidated.com) has been affected by higher fuel prices and the rising costs of raw materials.In a highly competitive market, the company cannot afford to pass along these costs to customers, and is constantly looking for ways to cut operating costs and increase profit margins, without sacrificing the high quality that is expected from its world-famous sodas.
In 2007, CCBCC’s parent company, The Coca-Cola Company
(www.coca-colacompany.com), signed a new agreement with SAP (www.sap.com) and IBM (www.ibm.com) that made it more financially attractive for CCBCC to migrate from its existing database to IBM DB2 as part of an SAP license. This development presented the perfect opportunity to reduce its IT operating costs.
Now live for four years, IBM DB2 manages key data from SAP ERP modules such as financials, warehouse management, materials management and customer data.
Andrew Juarez, lead SAP Basis/ DBA/ Unix, CCBCC, explains, “This data is highly critical to our business operations. If we did not have this information up and running in a reliable fashion, our warehouses would stop, which would have a domino effect on the entire supply chain.”
Following the migration to IBM DB2, CCBCC saw a significant improvement in response times across its systems, which allowed it to accelerate a number of supply chain processes.
According to Tom DeJuneas, IT team manager, CCBCC, “We run a very tight supply chain, so it is incredibly helpful when we can speed up our processes, as it allows us to get the product on the trucks faster, so that we can ensure that the product gets to the shelf on time. We never want to have a customer go to a vending machine or store only to find that our products are not in stock.”
Overall, this equates to $1 million in operational cost savings credited to the migration. The estimated return on investment is more than 205 percent, with a breakeven in approximately eight months and a five-year internal rate of return of more than 133 percent.
The database migration also helped CCBCC make better use of existing resources, delaying costly investments in new hardware and freeing up more money for investments in other projects. In this way, the IT department is helping CCBCC to achieve its objective of keeping prices competitive, so that it does not pass on any costs to its customers, which ultimately allows the company to maintain its volume and share of the beverage market.
FAST FACTS
Company at a Glance
CCBCC is the largest independent Coca-Cola bottler in the United States and is responsible for producing, marketing and distributing non-alcoholic beverages, primarily products of The Coca-Cola Company.
Upgrade Potential
A recent DB2 10 upgrade is expected to further boost the solution’s overall value. CCBCC estimates that it will go almost five years without having to add storage to its existing SAP systems.
“Reducing the costs of our day-to-day operations has enabled us to reinvest the savings in projects that are more important to the business…. This allows us to keep the company on the newest platforms and take advantage of the latest upgrades so that we can respond to changes more quickly and make better business decisions based on more accurate information.”
— Tom DeJuneas, IT Team Manager, CCBCC
Savings by Number
IBM DB2 migration benefits:
- Total operating cost reductions of more than $1 million over four years
- Improved compression rates by 57% as of May 2012
- Beta testing of IBM DB2 10 showed further gains of 30% - 60% in process runtimes and a 20 percent improvement in compression rates