Great Plains Coca-Cola Optimizes Business Performance
As part of an effort to optimize business performance, Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company (GPCC) completed its beta site rollout of Lawson System Foundation 9 in August 2006. In just four months, the company then implemented the Lawson Human Capital Management, Enterprise Financial Management and Supply Chain Management suites to increase operational efficiencies by providing greater reliability and scalability across its core business systems. GPCC is is the seventh-largest U.S. Coca-Cola bottler and distributor of carbonated and non-carbonated Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper beverages. In November 2005, GPCC realized the need to update its technology platform to further enhance the performance of its core business systems. GPCC also wanted to upgrade its Lawson business applications to support this goal. As a result, GPCC became a beta customer for the Lawson System Foundation 9 technology platform, which became available in late 2006, and chose to migrate directly from Lawson 7.2 to Lawson 9.0 applications -- skipping the Lawson 8.1 version. "A 'skip' upgrade was our best option since we wanted to be on the most current technology, but didn't want to manage more than one migration project," says Clayton Sliger, chief financial officer, Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company. "The Lawson 9 applications and technology platform is expected to help us manage purchasing processes and provide greater scalability and usability to control operational costs long-term."