Winning Formula

Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), the world's largest marketer, producer and distributor of Coca-Cola products, was formed 20 years ago and is now responsible for distributing approximately 20 percent of The Coca-Cola Company's volume worldwide. In the early 1990s, CCE began a series of significant acquisitions, purchasing other Coca-Cola bottlers to expand its territory. Since the acquisitions, creating standard processes and procedures has been a challenge for the $18.7-billion company with 73,000 employees. Last year, CCE introduced its first-ever North American operating framework to provide a strategic roadmap for the organization with a clear, winning destination: To be the best beverage sales and distribution company in North America.

Central to the operating framework is a new structure designed to de-layer the organization and focus on marketplace execution. CCE now has three distinct operating layers in North America: the North American Business Unit, seven regional business units and 41 local market units where the company's almost 400 sales centers report into. This allows for a quicker feedback loop between the president's office and the sales centers, and gives the field teams more time to spend with customers.

Mark Schortman, vice president, North American Sales, and chief customer officer, heads the company's sales and customer service efforts and is encouraged by the positive momentum the operating framework is generating. He adds, "We are beginning to see the fruits of our standard processes delivering tighter execution and better local feedback. We now have clear priorities and we are moving towards a more tailored execution in the marketplace."

Today, CCE's operating framework enables the company to deliver improved processes and new technology solutions that are positively changing customer interactions in North America. CCE is also focused on partnering with The Coca-Cola Company to drive similar processes and standards globally.

Most Valued Supplier

CCE strives to be the most valued supplier to its customers by becoming best at marketing and innovation, shopper and consumer insights, category management, supply chain and retail execution. Collaboration with The Coca-Cola Company and other bottlers on these initiatives is important to its success. "We want all U.S. bottlers to understand and believe in CCE's vision as we move our business forward," says Schortman. "There are synergies within the system when we operate in a more cohesive fashion with our customers."

Schortman and his team are focused on creating a truly collaborative business development process with customers, creating short- and long-term plans that are tailored and adaptable enough to meet the demands of such a fast-moving industry. "We're creating a bias for action in North America," says Schortman. "Focusing our energy and expertise on the right priorities within the right structure should make us easier to do business with. Ultimately, by being more responsive and nimble, we will create more value for our customers and consumers."

Winning with Supply Chain

The emergence of supply chain as another key capability is core to CCE's plan. "For the first time in our history, we recognize that supply chain must be world-class in order to reach our destination," says Ed Sutter, vice president, North American Supply Chain, Coca-Cola Enterprises. "It's a realization that supply chain is critical to a company like ours."

At CCE, supply chain is aligned end-to-end with careful consideration paid to the entire process, from raw material to store shelf. Moving towards this holistic approach means closely aligning with Coca-Cola North America and breaking down traditional silos between procurement, manufacturing, transportation, warehouse, distribution and merchandising.

CCE also created a customer supply chain group whose primary focus is to improve supply chain synergies between customers and CCE. "Having people with a supply chain background dealing with customers has proven itself to be a win for us very early on," says Sutter.

Bringing it All Together

The operating framework and close collaboration with The Coca-Cola Company are enabling the Customer Business Solutions group to focus on new processes and solutions, which benefit customers and the industry overall. Built as a partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, CCE, and other Coca-Cola bottlers in North America, this group works with all of Coca-Cola's customers by supporting national sales efforts and Coca-Cola's customers that cross bottler geographies. "Customer Business Solutions offers a single face for the customer across the Coca-Cola system," says Ann Dozier, vice president of Business Development, Coca-Cola Customer Business Solutions.

"For example, if a retailer approaches us about streamlining their receiving processes, we would identify a solution and work with North American bottlers to implement it."

CCE and The Coca-Cola Company are also focused on creating processes that make it easier for customers to work with any DSD supplier. "Processes that need to be consistent across all DSD suppliers should be developed in an industry forum," says Dozier. "At the end of the day, the retailer needs a single solution from their suppliers to be successful. We want to be one of the companies leading that charge, a company that our retailers will look to when they want to identify forward-thinking demand chain and back office strategies."

One example of Coca-Cola's industry support is its partnership with 1Sync. 1Sync is focused on delivering a cost recovery-based, industry standard, data synchronization solution that will allow manufacturers and retailers to ensure that all item and cost information is synchronized in all of their systems. This will enable a more accurate and efficient demand chain, reduce invoice discrepancies and ensure the right product is in the right place at the right time at the right cost.

Another example is Coca-Cola's involvement in the latest study from the Grocery Manufacturers Association entitled "Unleashing the Power of DSD." DSD is core to CCE's distribution strategy and this publication documents opportunities for retailers to take advantage of solutions that DSD companies offer today to improve back door, back room and back office processes with DSD suppliers.

Standards to the Rescue

The Coca-Cola Company, Customer Business Solutions and CCE are currently focusing on the development of global processes and standards to improve collaboration across the demand chain. The Coca-Cola system believes that working with other consumer goods companies and directly with retailers on these efforts is critical.

"If we want to achieve efficiencies, we must work together to develop standards that will allow us to quickly implement with all of our customers. The same goes for the retailer, they need critical mass to be successful," says Dozier.

Sandy Douglas, senior vice president and chief customer officer for The Coca-Cola Company, has been instrumental in driving global collaboration for common processes and standards. "The work we are doing as an industry is critical to the growth of the Coca-Cola system, and all consumer goods companies," says Douglas. "The consumer landscape is more complex than ever before and it is our responsibility to take a leadership position in developing the solutions that will make suppliers and retailers as effective and efficient as possible in serving our consumers."

At the end of the day, an important part of being the most valued supplier is flawless execution. "If we develop processes and standards that impact our collaborative relationship with our retailers, then we can ensure perfect execution," says Dozier.

Coca-Cola and Target currently co-chair the Global Commerce Initiative Direct Store Delivery Process Group. This group has over 250 global participants that consist of both local and global retailers, manufacturers, distributors, and solutions providers. The focus of this group is to develop standard DSD processes for the industry and influence the development of industry standards to support DSD. Topics range from legacy EDI processes to emerging technologies like EPC/RFID. "Target believes that leading efforts like the GCI DSD Process Group will assist in developing standard processes that can be leveraged across multiple suppliers in a relatively short time period to increase efficiencies, " says Steven Benson, Business Process Team Manager, Target.

The Global Commerce Initiative supports a Global Industry Scorecard that measures the success of the implementation of standard processes and solutions globally. By leveraging these types of customer and industry measures to benchmark its progress, Coca-Cola clearly has a winning formula in place to gain competitive advantage and boost customer service.