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Coca Cola’s Global Mobility Solutions


 Q&A with Matt Allington, Business Process Lead, Coca-Cola
          Field Service & Workforce Mobility 2011

Now in it’s third year, FSM 2011 is undoubtedly the most established event
delivering value to the Australasian service industry. By attending FSM 2011,
you’ll discover strategies being developed to optimise productivity, efficiency
and customer service that will enable you to find benefit for your organisation

Field Service & Workforce Mobility Summit, the leading service event, has
firmly secured its place on the service industry’s calendar, highlighting how
important the in-depth discussions are for you to drive the continual
improvement of your field services and workforce mobility.

This market-leading forum is committed to meeting your needs and in its third
year for 2011 is already recognised as the ‘go-to’ event for Australian service
organisations.


Customer Management IQ:        How are you developing your global
mobility solution at Coca-Cola?

Matt: Well, historically, the bottlers and the Coca-Cola Company have
worked on their own, and they built point solutions that meet their specific
needs. And that turned out to be a very expensive (and slow) way to develop
sales force automation. So in 2008, we decided to find our strategic partner
to work with us - an expert in the consumer packaged goods industry and
mobility - to help us build a global template that we could then take and
deploy around the world. Since then, we’ve put together a global team of
business and IT experts. And we’re working together to build this global
template that can then be configured and deployed in individual franchise
bottlers around the world.

Customer Management IQ:     How did you identify your needs for
sales force automation and select your supplier to take the project
forward?

Matt: We went through a very extensive requirements gathering process and
started off by meeting with interested franchise bottlers. We had a number of
workshops, we had questionnaires, and we gathered information from these
interested bottlers and we took that as the basis of our requirements. We
then took those requirements and went through an extensive vendor
evaluation process, where we looked at the vendors in the industry and found
someone that we thought could best deliver on our needs, and through that
process we selected our vendor of choice.

Customer Management IQ:         Can you highlight the benefits and
challenges of delivering a single global mobility platform?

Matt: There’s definitely benefits and lots of challenges of trying to develop
such a global template as the one that we’re working on. Some of the
challenges include the spread of our team - we spread over 6 time zones
around the world, and so that creates its own unique issues, we’re trying to
work with people getting face time and being effective working together. But
the benefits are there because over the last 10 years, we spent tens of
millions of dollars as an independent franchise bottlers in the Coca-Cola
Company, and today we’re still not where near best in class. So the benefits
for us to pull our resources and expertise to come up with one solution that
makes the needs of the bottlers around the world.

Customer Management IQ:      What are your expectations and
business goals once you deploy the sales force automation? Any KPIs?

Matt: We don’t have any KPIs as such for the particular project as far as our
uptake by bottlers and those sort of things. Having said that, we have no
shortage of bottlers that are interested to work with us and to deploy the
solution. The most important thing that we work on at the moment is to get
our pilot programme up and running, which is due to go live in November this
year. Once we have that running, we then have a good platform to bring
bottlers from around the world and show them what we’ve done. And out of
that will come the interest to deploy – more broadly around the world.

Customer Management IQ: What’s the next stage for sales force
automation and workforce mobility at Coca-Cola?

Matt: Well, in our current stage in the project, we’ve just finished building
release 1, and as I just said we’re about to go to pilot. Next year we’ll be
focusing on building release 2, which will deliberate a complete set of
software to cover all of the processes for sales force automation. We’ve
already started work with the same partner/supplier in doing direct store
delivery and applications. That means that we’ll be able to create hybrid roles
between our sales force and delivery field force and in to the future; and then
moving forward, we’re also looking at other low-cost devices that can be used
in some of their markets where the cost of technology is high, versus the cost
of the labour.
What is the value in attending the Field Service Management 2011
conference?

Matt: I guess what I’ve learned over the years is that success in the field
comes not from the technology, but from the way you execute those
processes in technology; and so, I’ve worked on developing my network of
contacts with industry over the years and we can learn from each other – in a
non-compete way - because it’s all about how you execute in the field.




                                  MATT ALLINGTON – Business Process
                                  Lead, Coca-Cola

                                  Customer Management IQ: Can you tell
                                  us a bit about yourself?

                                  I’ve been in the field sales industry for some
                                  20 years now. I started with Coca-Cola
                                  back in 1989. My first role was a sales rep,
                                  and out of the route trade and field sales
technology was very basic back in those days. I spent the last 15 years
working in sales, working through key account and other sales management
roles; and then about 5 years ago I moved into the IT side of the business,
mainly focusing on IT solutions for sales force.

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Coca Cola’s Global Mobility Solutions

  • 1. Coca Cola’s Global Mobility Solutions Q&A with Matt Allington, Business Process Lead, Coca-Cola Field Service & Workforce Mobility 2011 Now in it’s third year, FSM 2011 is undoubtedly the most established event delivering value to the Australasian service industry. By attending FSM 2011, you’ll discover strategies being developed to optimise productivity, efficiency and customer service that will enable you to find benefit for your organisation Field Service & Workforce Mobility Summit, the leading service event, has firmly secured its place on the service industry’s calendar, highlighting how important the in-depth discussions are for you to drive the continual improvement of your field services and workforce mobility. This market-leading forum is committed to meeting your needs and in its third year for 2011 is already recognised as the ‘go-to’ event for Australian service organisations. Customer Management IQ: How are you developing your global mobility solution at Coca-Cola? Matt: Well, historically, the bottlers and the Coca-Cola Company have worked on their own, and they built point solutions that meet their specific needs. And that turned out to be a very expensive (and slow) way to develop sales force automation. So in 2008, we decided to find our strategic partner to work with us - an expert in the consumer packaged goods industry and mobility - to help us build a global template that we could then take and deploy around the world. Since then, we’ve put together a global team of business and IT experts. And we’re working together to build this global template that can then be configured and deployed in individual franchise bottlers around the world. Customer Management IQ: How did you identify your needs for sales force automation and select your supplier to take the project forward? Matt: We went through a very extensive requirements gathering process and started off by meeting with interested franchise bottlers. We had a number of workshops, we had questionnaires, and we gathered information from these
  • 2. interested bottlers and we took that as the basis of our requirements. We then took those requirements and went through an extensive vendor evaluation process, where we looked at the vendors in the industry and found someone that we thought could best deliver on our needs, and through that process we selected our vendor of choice. Customer Management IQ: Can you highlight the benefits and challenges of delivering a single global mobility platform? Matt: There’s definitely benefits and lots of challenges of trying to develop such a global template as the one that we’re working on. Some of the challenges include the spread of our team - we spread over 6 time zones around the world, and so that creates its own unique issues, we’re trying to work with people getting face time and being effective working together. But the benefits are there because over the last 10 years, we spent tens of millions of dollars as an independent franchise bottlers in the Coca-Cola Company, and today we’re still not where near best in class. So the benefits for us to pull our resources and expertise to come up with one solution that makes the needs of the bottlers around the world. Customer Management IQ: What are your expectations and business goals once you deploy the sales force automation? Any KPIs? Matt: We don’t have any KPIs as such for the particular project as far as our uptake by bottlers and those sort of things. Having said that, we have no shortage of bottlers that are interested to work with us and to deploy the solution. The most important thing that we work on at the moment is to get our pilot programme up and running, which is due to go live in November this year. Once we have that running, we then have a good platform to bring bottlers from around the world and show them what we’ve done. And out of that will come the interest to deploy – more broadly around the world. Customer Management IQ: What’s the next stage for sales force automation and workforce mobility at Coca-Cola? Matt: Well, in our current stage in the project, we’ve just finished building release 1, and as I just said we’re about to go to pilot. Next year we’ll be focusing on building release 2, which will deliberate a complete set of software to cover all of the processes for sales force automation. We’ve already started work with the same partner/supplier in doing direct store delivery and applications. That means that we’ll be able to create hybrid roles between our sales force and delivery field force and in to the future; and then moving forward, we’re also looking at other low-cost devices that can be used in some of their markets where the cost of technology is high, versus the cost of the labour.
  • 3. What is the value in attending the Field Service Management 2011 conference? Matt: I guess what I’ve learned over the years is that success in the field comes not from the technology, but from the way you execute those processes in technology; and so, I’ve worked on developing my network of contacts with industry over the years and we can learn from each other – in a non-compete way - because it’s all about how you execute in the field. MATT ALLINGTON – Business Process Lead, Coca-Cola Customer Management IQ: Can you tell us a bit about yourself? I’ve been in the field sales industry for some 20 years now. I started with Coca-Cola back in 1989. My first role was a sales rep, and out of the route trade and field sales technology was very basic back in those days. I spent the last 15 years working in sales, working through key account and other sales management roles; and then about 5 years ago I moved into the IT side of the business, mainly focusing on IT solutions for sales force.