Building Competitiveness and Business Performance with ICT

Real SuccessCoca-Cola Europe:Global Tools, RapidLocal ResponsesThe world’s powerful beverage maker, theCoca-Cola Company owns, licenses andmarkets more than 500 non-alcoholicbeverage brands, primarily sparkling beveragesbut also a variety of still beverages, such aswaters, enhanced waters, juices and juicedrinks, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, andenergy and sports drinks. It also owns andmarkets a range of billion dollar brands, suchas Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite. Thecompany is grouped in five regions Eurasia andAfrica, Europe, Latin America, North America,Pacific, each divided into bottling operationsand corporate.In 2011, the Coca-Cola Company had netoperating revenues of $46.54 billion comparedto $35.12 billion in the previous year, anincrease of 26 percent. Also in 2011, Coca-Cola topped Interbrand’s ranking of the 100Best Global Brands for the 13th consecutiveyear. The estimated brand value of Coca‐Cola,which celebrated its 126th anniversary, is now$77.8 billion. This brand awareness translates inmassive sales. The average number of 8-ounceservings per person of Coca-Cola was 92servings in 2011, and in Belgium it was 340servings consumed per person.Leveraging the Cloud to enhancecommunicationsHaving five geographic operating groups andemploying 146,200 associates globally, theCoca-Cola Company employs in its Europecorporate organization 2,600 associatesand in its Europe bottling operations 11,300associates. Within corporate, Europe GroupCIO Sabine Everaet employs 45 IT specialists,while outsourcing most of the technology andapplications maintenance and support.Driving a lean IT organization, Everaet hasrealized significant productivity gains bydeveloping local solutions that leveragethe standardized ICT technology, businessprocesses and data that are available across theglobal organization. For example, her grouprecently decided to move to cloud-basedstandard tools for both internal collaborationand engagement with external stakeholders.One tool provides a social media environmentwhere internal teams, which are widelydispersed throughout Europe, can collaborateacross different areas of expertise, such asfunctional, product, geographic, and customer.Everaet’s teams use another cloud-based toolfrom the same external service provider tocollaborate and engage with a variety of externalstakeholders. “We are using cloud-based toolsto register inquiries, complaints, interactionswith all our stakeholders, consumers, bloggers,opinion leaders, etc.,” Everaet said. “The beautyof these tools is that they integrate with socialnetworks so that we can easily augment thedata we gather from consumers on the net.”Everaet adds, “from a business perspective, weare able to deliver applications in three monthsrather than over two years – that is a hugedifference for our business today because thespace is evolving and we need to respond todemand rapidly.”Global Apps, Local DeploymentEveraet benefits from having as her boss aglobal CIO primarily invested in the corporatestrategy, and from whom she can draw certainglobal tools. However she does not make theclassic error of relying too heavily on a topdowncorporate approach whereby globalapplications are automatically deployed locally.“I draw on global applications where locallyrelevant, such as for functions like HR, Finance,and Procurement, etc.,” she explained, “In othercases, when there is nothing available globallythat covers what we want to do locally, wetake the lead and develop applications in anintegrated and scalable way, respecting theglobal enterprise architecture,”In collaboration with the global CIO, Everaethas found the right balance between a globallycentralized and standardized approach and alocally controlled and tailored focus. “Not allglobal options are relevant to local businesses.Business intelligence, dash-boarding and digitalmarketing have to be locally responsive.” Acritical success factor for maintaining the rightbalance between local and global that Everaethighlights is that all locally tailored solutions aredone so with the consent of global leadership.Another critical success factor is to ensurethat any solution developed for one countryis consistent with global standards so thatthe solution relates to Coca Cola’s enterprisearchitecture – either as compliant or as anexception) and is scalable globally. As Everaetexplains, “I’ve got the clear mandate from theGroup President that whatever is built for acountry here must be scalable beyond Europeas well.”Recently, the global CIO hired a new chiefof enterprise architecture who is specificallyfocused on innovation and new technologythat can be applied in a rapidly changingenvironment. He is based in Silicon Valley, toensure that he is connected into the area’sfamous ecosystem of ICT innovation andentrepreneurship. He quickly built on thecompany’s global relationship with its strategicpartner of cloud-based services, enablingEveraet to solve problems faster. For example,when a major retail client in the UK required ane-commerce tool Everaet and her team wereable to work closely with the global enterprisearchitect and provide the client a solutionquickly.In shifting her resources from the back officeto the marketing, sales and bottling leadershipspace, Everaet said she “has seen a big need inhaving a local architect work on everything inthe front office and facing the European market.”At her request, her local architect has alreadystarted to build a new proactive consumer callcenter in Europe that is completely connectedwith the social networks.Having Key Local SkillsGoing forward, Everaet wants to enrich theskills of her entire IT team by enabling them toslip easily into the role of high-level business-ICT relationship managers. By doing so, herteam will ensure an alignment between ICTand the rest of the organization. “You needto have people in-house who can keep trackof emerging technologies and who are wellconnectedto eco-systems of innovation,”Everaet said. “They need to understand howthese technologies are being used by the mostinnovative companies.”In addition, she wants to empower IT specialistsso that they can engage with the business side.Said Everaet, “I am really encouraging my guysto work with the business units, work withsenior management of the bottlers, work withcorporate, understand what the dynamicsare, see things from their perspective, learnto connect the dots, and come away with aholistic view.”Everaet believes that the business cannotalways know what it wants without hertechnology support. Thus instead of performingthe classical requirement-gathering duties,her project managers are trained to provideleadership to the business side on “what webelieve is going to be important in the futuresupported by new technology.”24 INSEAD eLab ICT Report