Inside CONA Services' Digital Overhaul: Modernizing Customer Engagement for Coca-Cola Bottlers

Modernizing customer engagement at scale is a challenge that many consumer goods companies are tackling head-on, but few face the level of complexity managed by CONA Services. As the IT support organization for the 11 largest Coca-Cola bottlers across North America, CONA must balance standardization with flexibility, managing high transaction volumes across shared platforms. During a recent CGT webinar, Samantha Mitchell, chief digital officer at CONA Services, provided attendees with an inside look at how the company modernized its customer engagement platform. In this transcript of the conversation, Mitchell shares how CONA stood up a dedicated digital office, recruited cross-industry talent and extended beyond traditional IT to include digital marketing and analytics functions. Learn how this omnichannel strategy not only streamlined operations but also empowered sales teams and improved customer experiences.Liz Dominguez: Hello, everyone, and welcome to “Reimagining Customer Engagement: CONA Services' Digital Transformation.” My name is Liz Dominguez, and I'm CGT's senior editor, and I'm excited to welcome you here today. I'd like to welcome Samantha Mitchell, chief digital officer at CONA Services. Devin Kunysz, senior director, industry GTM within consumer goods and retail with Salesforce, and Becky Wright, executive vice president of growth at Cloudgaia. Welcome, everyone.So Devin, to kick us off, why don't you share some of the biggest transformation trends that are shaping consumer goods right now, especially when it comes to customer engagement?Devin Kunysz: Absolutely. So I think, no surprise here, the first trend that we're really seeing is the idea of AI, and I spend a lot of time with consumer goods companies. The leaders in the space have invested heavily in AI. So 85% of the companies that are delivering double-digit growth have invested in AI. That's about a 25% delta versus the companies that are not growing double digits. I find that to be very interesting.You're going to hear a lot about this. One of the things I'm seeing now is this idea of consumer and customer centricity, and I mean that because B2B and B2C trends are blurring. You're going to hear from Sam exactly about what that means, but it's building the data foundations, the platform, and marketing engine to personalize one-to-one. Whether you're talking to a consumer or you're talking to a customer from your B2B side, that same expectation is kind of going across the route-to-market.And then obviously, as I spend time with companies, look, the first quarter of this year has shown there's a lot of headwinds in the market, improving productivity, driving cost efficiency, that still remains a top priority, but what I'm really hearing from the smartest and most forward-thinking CPGs is this deep focus on optimizing their route-to-market. So that might mean reducing cost of sales, but it also means guided selling tools for their sales team, the right education and support. And I think one of the reasons I'm so excited about Sam's conversation today is, I think CONA and Coca-Cola have been some of the best in delivering this, and so I think we're going to hear some great tips and tricks for customers.Dominguez: Thanks, Devin. So we're going to get back to you for more trends, but Sam, let's pivot over to you for a second. Can you give us a macro view into CONA's digital transformation?Sam Mitchell: A macro view? Yes, sure. As you mentioned, CONA is an IT services company that builds and supports IT applications and infrastructure for 11 of the large bottlers within the U.S. and Canada. This obviously comes with its complexity and its enormity as well, given the volume of transactions that go through all of our systems. We operate from a lot of the common core systems across the enterprise, like SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft, etc. And this enables the standardization of a lot of our processes, and the opportunity to scale at pace, which is really exciting. It comes with its complexity, because of the standards, governance and alignment that we need to continue to have these common processes and solutions supported from the backend, but it also gains economies of scale across the system, as you can imagine. So, building infrastructure and applications for a common set of processes with these bottlers across North America is exciting and challenging at the same time.The enterprise view of what we do, and how we bring that to life for our customers, has also been really exciting, bringing digital and physical transformation into the one org, and having that omnichannel approach so that all of the insights and analytics can be within the one data warehouse, giving all of our bottlers some of the competitive advantage around seeing the enterprise across the country has been amazing.Dominguez: Great. Thank you for that background. So Devin, let's go a level deeper, diving into AI. How is the technology reshaping B2B commerce and engagement within consumer goods? And how are leaders using technology and data to stay ahead of expectations?Kunysz: Such a great question. The first conversation I'll have is, I spend a lot of time with CIOs and chief digital officers, and the question they're asking is, "Well, is AI here yet from a shopper's side point?" And as I said, B2C and B2B trends are blurring. The way that I shop on Amazon influences the way that I interact with my B2B partners on their digital platforms. So I would tell you AI shopping is here, and the question is, is your brand ready? Because the shopper is starting their journey on AI.We've seen 114% growth in AI traffic to commerce platforms from a Salesforce perspective. So what's driving that? Thirty percent of Gen Z, so the next generation, which, by the way, some of the Gen Z folks are already in decision-maker roles in C stores, etc. They're the next generation, they're not as young as you might think they are. They start their purchase journey with an AI query, which is really interesting. A third of their purchase journeys start on AI.The other thing, I always say, Amazon trains shoppers. Fourteen percent of Amazon searches were answered by Rufus, the chatbot. That's about 274,000 answers per hour, which is a crazy number of training of consumers. And then the other thing I think AI is really delivering for companies, we've all talked for years about leveraging and activating our data, and AI is improving the way that people use their customer data for targeting. It can quickly retarget based on behavior, it can drive almost real-time segmentation. And so there's a lot of power in AI, and I think the really interesting thing from an enterprise perspective, so from a B2B perspective, is where are people spending their time in AI?And so we've gone out and done some surveys: where have we fully implemented AI in our operations? So, almost 80% of service organizations across the consumer goods industry have implemented AI. AI is very logical in service; it's something people have been talking about, and I'm seeing people actually use this to deliver white glove, to automate processes, to address what I'll call gaps in their customer experience. So, for example, maybe your call center is only open from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Well, what happens between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.? If I have an issue? AI can actually bridge that gap, and can provide the answer to a lot of the automated routine queries that come in.The other two places that I'm seeing huge investments are the idea of the sales organization, and then what I'll call demand generating, so marketing and commerce organizations. And as I said, developing that platform to leverage the data is the key. So I think that what you're going to hear from Sam and Becky about how they've built their digital customer engagement platform is going to be a really best-in-class example of creating the foundations that then allow you to take it forward and drive to AI. If you don't have that foundation in place, you've essentially just built an AI kind of as a science project. And what I've been telling customers is actually bad AI is worse than no AI. You can go across the Internet, you can find lots of examples of bad AI where people are interacting poorly. So I'll advance those to the next conversation. I think the more fireside chat stuff is interesting, and excited to hear more from Sam and Becky.Dominguez: Thank you so much, Devin. That's some great background to kind of set the stage. So, before we dive into the transformation itself, Sam, could you walk us through what CONA does, who you support within the Coca-Cola system, and what makes your organization especially complex when delivering a transformation like this?Mitchell: So as mentioned before, the complexities around the governance and the standards with aligning 11 bottlers to where we want to go, making sure that the roadmap complements all their needs, that their go-to-market strategies, although are very similar, have uniquenesses to them, and we need to be able to accommodate that within the one platform. So the flexibility of being able to deliver that quickly, robustly, and make some localizations where it's important for the enablement of those route-to-market strategies and those digital transformations is really, really key.So again, flexibility, accelerations at the speed that the bottlers want to adopt the technology. Not everybody is at the same maturity of how they want to go to market, or what their actual organization is looking to achieve. Some territories operate, like I said, a little bit differently, with a lot of different products. They have some adjacent products, services, and processes that need to complement, like the beverage delivery and the DSD model. So that complexity times 11, across such a large organization within the U.S. and Canada, does make it quite challenging, but also very rewarding when things are delivered, and you can see the fruits of your design, your strategy and all of that thinking come to life.There are a lot of users within our solutions. We have over 100,000 users within each of our platforms, and so making that internally and externally work from a customer experience and an associate experience as well, again, is another challenge, but makes it, like I said, rewarding once you can get it right and put it in the hands of the users, and the adoption and the adaptability is really easy. So there's just some of the complexities and the challenges that we face, but like I said, the commonality of being able to provide the one solution with a lot of flexibility across a lot of markets gives scale, and enables that speed to market when you're looking at doing new enhancements, and continuous improvement on top of that.Dominguez: And so let's touch on tackling that complexity. How did the idea of unifying physical and digital experiences take shape at CONA? And how did you translate it into a clear transformation strategy?Mitchell: That's a good question. It took some time, and over that period of time, I had done it a couple of times before in other Coke bottling systems throughout Asia-Pacific. The American market is a little bit more complex, with a lot of different matrices here, and the customer base is quite different as well, with a lot of national customers, so consistency across all of our storefronts and across our markets was also key. As you can imagine, you've got national customers from each corner of the country wanting to have the same experience, no matter whether they're in Seattle or they're in Florida, and different bottlers are operating that. So it was key to get alignment with our CEOs of each of our bottlers as well, and making sure that the strategy around digital transformation and bringing commerce to life as an engagement platform and not just an ordering platform complemented everything we did in the backend and with our field sales.The change management as part of this transformation was really, really key, because a lot of customers that the bottlers were planning to migrate onto the platform were then taking the order, taking away from the sales reps, and their jobs needed to be a little bit reinvented, more skills needed in business development, and upselling and cross-selling. It gave them more time to actually grow their territory and their customer base. But then we also had to make sure that we had solutions that were seamless and intuitive for customers to be able to do business their way whenever they wanted, so the key to the platform, and its simplicity was a big thinking within our strategy, and bringing that digital and that physical together, and having that omnichannel approach to seeing all of the interactions and transactions in the one space to make key decisions on across the enterprise, and sharing that with each of the bottlers, because each of their territories may have been doing things differently. They have different throughput, different consumer traffic, which was really, really key.But it helped accelerate their decision-making on bringing the B2B solution into the CONA org, and standing that up for somewhat over 280,000 users, which was really exciting.Dominguez: Yeah, I can see it was definitely a collaborative effort. So, how did you build out your digital team once that vision was set? What did you look for in the right leader? And how did you grow the team from there?Mitchell: So we established a new digital office as part of this strategy agreement. We never had a digital office at CONA, we call it the CDO, the CONA Digital Office. I went about recruiting the best part of 25 of the best professionals I could find in the industry across North America and Canada. It took us the best part of about three or four months to find and recruit these people. Everything from product to engineering, UX/UI and customer experience. And then we also extended our services outside of just IT applications and support, to include marketing operations and analytical insights of commerce as well.So we had to bring the best and the brightest to the table for digital marketing, and that team works along with our brand teams, particularly the Coke company, to bring all of the marketing banners, and the content and the brands to life on the platform. So recruiting the right leaders in that space, for me, it was important that I got a little bit of cross-industry diversification. A lot of the people that we had hired hadn't been in the Coke system before or in the DSD world. Many had been in the CPG world, which gave them a lot of good background and foundation on what we do, but then getting some different thinking from different areas of brands and where they had been before, and applying that to our thinking, and complementing the experience that a few of us already had that were in the digital office already was really, really key.I also wanted some blue-sky thinking, and some out-of-the-box thinking, and people who understood what technology and business process... How all of that went together to enable digital transformation. It's not just the technology that we need; it's an enabler, but for business leaders to understand and communicate with their teams how technology can enable their strategies was really, really important. So that storyline, that change management approach, the business value that it brought, and then of course, all of their experience on how to make it come to life, was really important in how I went about hiring the best team that I've probably had in my career. They're fantastic. It's testament to them on the speed at which we were able to stand this platform up, and the enormity of the platform is incredible. And then be able to migrate and onboard, like I said, over 280,000 users, and continue to run 11 to 12 storefronts all on the one platform, has been instrumental to how we've been able to execute the strategy.Dominguez: And as you were standing up that internal team, you were also making critical decisions around your external ecosystem. What was most important to you when picking the tech and partner for such a big transformation?Mitchell: So when picking the tech, for me, it was important that it complemented our tech stack already. That if it wasn't core to what we already had, it integrated really well. Production is king, and we know that this was customer-facing, so it had to have really solid performance and capability within our own infrastructure. It had to be flexible. Like I said, although we have 11 bottlers, and we have very similar go-to-market strategies, some of our processes are different. So the flexibility needed to be there for our bottlers and our customers. So, just going back to the solution, it fitting our tech stack was really, really important. Making sure that the data was accurate, the quality of data, and the data model was going to complement what we needed. We were going out to now doing, like I said, a lot of digital marketing, so the enablement of getting the right message to the right customer at the right time was important. So that played a big part in choosing our application and our software partner, which was Salesforce.In picking our application and SI partner, for me, I was looking for somebody who had CPG experience, had proven successful implementations in complex multi-stakeholder environments. Like I mentioned, having 11 bottlers, we needed to get 11 pieces of data design and technology design signed off, so that can become quite challenging as well. So, making sure that our partner had the right background and the right capability and experience to work with the complexity that goes with our governance model, and being able to intake that, and then design from that was really important.If they had any experience in the system already, particularly in DSD. There's not a lot of direct store distribution solutions out there that are as big as the Coke system, so that produces its complexity at the same time as well. And then again, for me, fitting into the culture of the CDO, and I have this one team approach, so I'm never referring to anyone as "that is my vendor partner" or "this is my Salesforce partner." We all work as a team. And so culturally, the technical experience, the engineering experience, with the cultural experience on being able to work hand in hand was really, really important for me. And again, I think testimony to the companies that we chose, the Cloudgaias, the Salesforce, and some other strategic partners that helped us through our OCM and our change management journey, came together and just fit like a puzzle, and that was part of the success — if not, a big part of the success of getting this over the line.Dominguez: And so tied to that, I'm going to flip over to you, Becky. Cloudgaia was one of the partners supporting CONA's roadmap very early on. And so once that partnership was in place, how did Cloudgaia approach turning CONA's vision into a scalable customer-first engagement platform?Becky Wright: The key to this, and then Sam alluded to it, was a true collaboration from day one. We knew coming in that we weren't just implementing a technology solution, we were really building something together that would lay the foundation and grow with their business, and their customers' businesses. So our teams really came together as one, and it was a really unique experience. It was pretty cool, still is.We work really, really closely with CONA's stakeholders, but we also get input from the business, from the IT teams and also from their bottling community all the time. So that strong collaboration, and strong collaboration even with our technology partner, Salesforce, allowed us to really design and implement a foundation for a solution that I believe has exceeded expectations in some areas, and that continues to evolve and delight the customers involved. So I would say that just as important as the technology was the partnership, and the way that we came together as one team. In the end, it really wasn't about just delivering a system, it was about building that foundation together and understanding that that was going to support their ecosystem for many years to come.Mitchell: And if I can just add to that, Becky, I think that's really important that it wasn't just picking a partner for the project to stand it up, but a long-term engagement. And we're continuing to partner, and continuing to build roadmaps, working with Salesforce and their product teams to influence some of the key themes we're seeing, and feedback from our customers. And because of that collaboration, it just enabled us to get on the phone, and get in a room, and quickly talk about it, and bring things to life with speed. So it's a long-term partnership, not just that project partnership. That's key as well.Dominguez: Sam, any best practices that you can share in terms of making that collaboration work, bringing so many teams together and ensuring that they're working together smoothly?Mitchell: As far as best practices go, I think just having your routines in place, making sure that you're touching base, everybody's really clear, there's clarity around what we're doing, so setting the vision, referring back to the vision all of the time. Sticking to the scope that you've identified. People always want perfection. The progress over perfection is a thing we have to keep reiterating with people, and there's going to be multiple cycles and enhancements along the way. So some of those best practices sort of help people stick to timelines, and then realize value quicker, don't let the value slip away.And then just making sure that as we are all working towards the build, and the tests, and the implementation, that we've got the right people at the right time, making sure that things are delivered, and tested, and when we go to production, that we have a seamless... Nothing is ever seamless, but perception is that it's seamless for our customers. So putting yourself in the shoes of the user and the end customer, and making sure that you are satisfied with that, so then you know that the customers would be satisfied with that as well, and not get too deep into just what we're doing in the building of that, but making sure we understand the big picture the whole time. So continuing to re-emphasize the vision, and why we're doing what we're doing, and relating it back to business value, I think really helps people connect the part that they're doing to contribute to the project.Dominguez: And that's a perfect shift into how the strategy came to life for the customers and bottlers. So, Sam, how did you approach the design and delivery for myCoke to ensure a seamless customer-centric B2B experience across all touchpoints? And what were some of the key factors that ensured its success?Mitchell: So some of the design approach was, we did have a legacy tool that was in a different org on older, less modern technology. So we were taking a lot of the feedback from customers, and incorporating that into our design, and that's really important. Using data, insights and customer feedback to actually design the future, so that usability isn't going to be something that you need to try out, it just gets adopted immediately, is really important. Making sure that we had the right targeted content and the right capabilities exposed to the personas. So we did a little bit more of micromanaging down to the persona level to make sure that we offered up the right user experience and customer journey for each of those different users.The third thing was probably making sure that as we designed, we were adding capability, like Devin mentioned, consumer and customer are coming together. The user just wants a seamless experience that is as good as, if not better than any of the applications they use in their personal life. So, making sure that the solution had not a lot of friction, was easily accessible, people could find what they need, save things as they wanted, so that it became more personalized for them, was really key and important to getting that design right upfront. And then continuing to, like I said, iterate, and have continuous improvement and customer feedback along the way.Dominguez: Well, of course, every large transformation has its moments where things just don't go as planned. So, Sam, let's touch on some of the key challenges that your team faced, and what you learned as the program evolved.Mitchell: So some of the key challenges, like I said, are complex, and it's quite large. We had a few hundred people working on our project, so just coordinating all of our streams of work was a challenge in itself. So we had project managers for lots of different streams of work, but then we had an overall program office running a bunch of different things. Keeping your eye on, like Devin said, change management, training, making sure that not just the solution is being built, but the business and the associates are being brought along on the journey, so that they're understanding how all of this is sort of coming to life along the way, is really, really important.We had a bit of a false start at the beginning, and we had to make some changes, and we brought in Cloudgaia in that space as well. They were fixing the plane while it was flying in the air, and we were painting the outside of it, and putting our brand stuff on it all at the same time. Because programs like this are so large, if everything did go smoothly, it would be a miracle. But I think the best thing you can do is just learn from it, and be reactive to it, and making sure that, like I said, if you've got your plans in place, and then some things fall off the rails, just being able to divert really quickly, making sure that we've got the outcome in mind, and then having the right expertise in certain areas.With our program, it wasn't just implementing a B2B solution, we had a lot of integration and a lot of backend complexity as well. The enormity of the volume that goes through the platform, I think we might have underestimated, not from a transactional quantity, but from a system performance, and how we need to make sure that we can flex up and down on making that system really responsive. So again, we learned from that. The best thing we probably did was, as we started migrating, we did it in what we were calling tranches. So it wasn't a big bang; it was groups of customers and groups of territories at a time. So as we onboarded each of the different bottlers and their customers, the platform grew and grew, and we could slowly see and capture some things that may have been a bigger issue at the end, and started fixing them along the way. Those learnings were sort of put into place after we did the first pilot, and then started expanding that as well.Dominguez: Becky, I'd love to get your take on it. In the B2B digital transformation projects that you've worked on, what might be some common challenges that companies run into, such as fragmentation or scalability? And how have you seen those challenges successfully resolved?Wright: Oh my gosh. We work very, very deeply in the consumer goods industry and on complex projects across other industries, so I could go on forever. I could talk about data strategies, and data silos, and fragmented systems and lack of customer-first thinking. I think I'd like to zoom out on that, because I think it kind of brings it full circle, this last part of the conversation. As Devin and Sam said earlier, technology is there to augment. I think we can all agree that digital transformation is not a one-and-done project. It's a journey, and I think we may all agree on this call that it's become a lifestyle for companies now.So I would point out that the successful transformations are the ones where the business and tech teams can really move in sync, that are backed by strong, thoughtful and informed leadership, empowered by almost enmeshed partnerships. I think that was one of the things that really drove our success here, Sam, as you alluded to, especially in the situation. And we can laugh about the speed bumps, and the obstacles that got thrown in place. As you mentioned, no project of this scope and size comes without some challenges. It can't just be driven by internal goals, it really has to be driven by the team at large, and the people that you put in place. You can overcome all of those other mistakes if you have the right team on it.One other thing that I thought of, Sam, that got us through a lot was progress over perfection. And I think Devin opened with, "Just start somewhere. Just go." And when you have the right teams in place, both internally and with your partners, you really have the confidence to move quickly, and know that no matter what comes up, you're going to be able to handle it. And out of every misstep, there's something that you learn that propels you forward.Dominguez: That's great. So we're nearing the end of our conversation here, but to close us out, I'd love to hear one piece of advice that you would all offer customer engagement or digital leaders that are navigating digital transformation in today's environment. So Sam, why don't you kick us off? And then Devin and Becky can jump in.Mitchell: Sure. I think the one big thing for me is that digital transformation or business process transformation is all about mindset and culture. It needs to come from the top. And if your top leaders aren't engaged in it, and don't feel like it's part of their strategy, then you will never succeed, because people underneath them look and learn from their leaders. The most successful transformations I've been involved in, and the easiest to implement and adopt have been where leaders have digital within all of their pillars, whether it's supply chain, finance, HR, commercial, it's not IT saying it's a digital transformation, it's actually the business owning it, and bringing people on the journey. And technology is an enabler, and it's a great enabler, but it's the mindset and the culture that really is important for these things to be hugely successful.Kunysz: Yeah, I love that one. I guess I'll build on what Sam said. I think when you're doing this, a lot of times I have conversations like, "All right, we want to skip right to the AI." And I think what I would ask you to take a step back and ask is, have you identified your platform for those pillars? So when Sam's talking about your pillars of the business, have you actually built a digital platform, or are you like, "No, skip. We want to go straight ahead, and we want to run the latest and greatest algorithmic trade prediction that tells me exactly what promotion I should run in this account"? And to me, it's a little bit like, if I was remodeling a kitchen, I'm not just going to put a $10,000 oven into my current kitchen, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to do the countertops, I'm going to build the right cabinets, I'm going to do all those important things.And so I think what's really cool is, Sam's talking about getting to AI now, and she's built this incredible platform where AI can leverage all of that workflow and data that she's created. If she tried to do AI without that platform, I actually think it would be a lot harder, and it would be a much more start-stop process. So I would say get your platforms right, get your strategic vision set, and then we can bolt on all of the other really cool technology things, because at the end of the day, as everyone I think on this call has said, the technology is just an enabler to process and strategy that you've built out, that would be my advice.Wright: Yeah, and I think I can sum it up too. This has been a great discussion, but I think accepting digital transformation, or as Sam said, business systems transformation, it's a great line, as an always on. It's just something that is a constant now in our businesses. And of course, coming from the partner side, I would really push the idea that you need to build partnerships that you can trust, not just with what project is happening today, but with your roadmap, with your needs, with your challenges, what you anticipate for the future, but also with your vision.That was one thing that was really key to unlocking success here, was, Sam and the entire leadership team had a vision for what they wanted, they shared it openly, we constantly referenced it, and it became the theme of the project and of the relationship, and it really brought us together as one. And I think thinking of a technology project as just a project, or a partner, as just a one-and-done engagement, is not going to help you unlock the true value of digital transformation, and what that can bring to your business for now and in the future.So I just wanted to sum up and say thanks. This has been a really great conversation. I know, Devin, you and I have other opportunities. Sam's going to join us for some other things coming up. So there are some next steps that you can take to learn more about the CONA project. We have a slide up now with a QR code that will let you take the next steps on where to learn more, and maybe even come meet the entire team that was involved in this project. They're a really cool, unique, and innovative group of people. So we're excited to showcase them soon.Dominguez: That’s all the time that we have for today. So I do want to go ahead and wrap things up. I'd like to thank Samantha, Devi, and Becky for giving us their time and their subject matter expertise. And I'd also like to thank Cloudgaia for sponsoring today's webinar. Thank you to our attendees for giving us your time today. We hope you found it worthwhile. Have a great rest of your day.

Inside CONA Services' Digital Overhaul: Modernizing Customer Engagement for Coca-Cola Bottlers

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