In 2007, Coca-Cola’s bottling operations in Germany were consolidated from eight bottlers into one: Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG (CCEAG). The merger left CCEAG responsible for a tremendous overhaul of operations. It not only needed to create a system of efficiency in order to service its massive amount of customers, but it also had to find a new way to connect and engage with shoppers.
Today, CCEAG manages more than half-a-million customers in Germany and is responsible for more than 80 products and 500 SKUs. With 10,000 employees operating out of seven sales regions with 60 operating locations, it was imperative for CCEAG to implement a centralized system that empowered its employees.
CCEAG also was in need of a system that allowed them to digitally transform the way they conducted business. In order to manage this massive amount of data in a way that provided clarity and insight to its entire organization, the company turned to Salient Management’s solutions.
Digital transformation
With the boom of smartphones and social media, CCEAG quickly recognized that economic power was shifting into the hands of consumers. Information now is available in real-time for shoppers, and the company needed a way to better understand its customers in order to integrate into this new digital path-to-purchase.
The answer was to transform the way the company, itself, did daily business; innovate how it conducted business with customers; and change how it reached consumers digitally.
In order to gain insights across the entire organization and make it available to everyone, CCEAG was in need of centralized reporting. Previously, about 500 individuals were doing part-time and full-time reporting. Daily sales reports were run; numbers were entered into Excel and then shared in various layouts in separate Excel sheets. The company began screening each of its sales centers and function areas to learn how reporting was being done so that it could centralize them all.
One thing was clear: the data feed was not consistent, and leadership was constantly stuck figuring out how to calibrate the numbers. The process issues caused flaws in the data and reporting, forcing CCEAG’s employees to adjust their numbers in order to make them work instead of going back to the root cause to fix the issue. “It was a nightmare,” said Marcus Franke, director of business transformation at CCEAG. “It was inefficient, and it was a nightmare.”
Then, the company decided to make a fresh start and enable an entirely new corporate culture.
CCEAG implemented Salient’s Margin Minder to centralize reporting and analytics for all functions and hierarchy levels. It started a 100 percent self-service practice by empowering employees to interrogate data in order to make the best decision at any point by using Salient.
“From the CEO to the sales rep, they all have to go into the system to get the data. The truth is in the system,” Franke said. “Salient is our central hub for any commercial analytics.”
The company armed its sales force as well as management and executive teams with mobile and browser-based drillable dashboards for standard and dynamic reporting. Salient’s solutions allowed CCEAG to cover the entire suite of reporting needs: static reporting, semi-dynamic reporting and full-dynamic analytics.
CCEAG further segmented its user groups, separating the sales frontline from supporting functions, such as sales support. All of the sales teams were provided with standard mobile dashboards, allowing the salesforce to view the business via iPads. An additional 1,000 users rely on Margin Minder on desktop computers to optimally execute sales support functions.
After digitizing and centralizing its analytics, CCEAG was left with the challenge of better coordinating its customers and better reaching consumers.
Salient’s solutions allow CCEAG to continuously monitor and improve metrics and execution scores for each location down to the most granular element. CCEAG also leveraged maps of the social and demographic data for each territory that it worked in to closely monitor its customers and sales representatives in each location.
CCEAG was able to link key account hierarchies with a regionally-driven execution side in order to dive into social demographic data and geographic information.
Because CCEAG has successfully digitized its operations, its customers are able to do business with the company 24/7. It has also allowed CCEAG to implement new services that allow its customers to connect with shoppers digitally, enabling the company to learn more about its consumers and leverage these insights to have a positive impact on its core business and open new revenue streams.
CCEAG has successfully transitioned to an entirely self-service reporting system that empowers its employees with self-sufficiency and the ability to consistently make the best decision possible. With only five employees from the technical side and 12 from the business side providing all the information for the entire company on the back-end, it has effectively removed the barriers of every employee taking action on data with a 360-degree view of the value in every action.
After implementing Salient’s solutions across the enterprise, CCEAG now is rated the No. 1 value adding fast moving consumer goods company in Germany.
