Coca-Cola Sabco (CCS) is a 60 year old organisation that became an anchor Coca-Cola soft-drink bottler in 1994. It is now a global organisation that operates across the African and Asian continents. To fulfill its vision of “Being the Best Bottler in the World”, the organisation undertook a transformation process during 1999. This included extensive evaluations of its business processes, services and IT capabilities.

Although its costs were aligned to international benchmarks, its service delivery and targeted expenditure required strategic re-alignment with CCS’s business goals. Its IT challenges translated into a lack of system integration, resulting in poor data quality, data capturing duplication, and inefficient and lengthy reporting cycles. CCS also had ill-defined business processes that were not standardised and differed by region and country. Based on customer feedback, the organisation was not process driven and unable to keep pace with the changing needs of its customers. It was not replicating services into operations swiftly enough.

As IT was not the organisation’s core function, CCS Information Services (IS) division required a professional, scaleable and flexible IT solution that was aligned to the company’s unique business requirements.

SABCO utilised the industry, operational and technical expertise resident in DataFlo – a company formed from a merger between leading global information technology company Dimension Data and Coca-Cola Sabco. DataFlo initially provided strategic consulting, project management services and integration expertise to CCS in addition to providing a major communications system upgrade.

Today the bottler’s entire IT division has been outsourced to DataFlo which provides a help desk, desktop support, strategic advice, a project support office, supply chain operations, application support, and solutions for emerging market bottlers.

Applications are web-enabled and all technology supports the convergence of voice and data.

As part of the major integration exercise DataFlo was tasked with replacing CCS’s core systems with a SAP enterprise-wide system that supports a centralised, realtime architecture - a global first within the Coca-Cola bottling community.

The best practice system is intended to effect efficiencies within the organisation and will increase productivity and facilitate swifter responses to shortages and other challenges.

“Our IT strategy is now aligned to our business requirements and we are able to measure performance in our organisation,” says Leon Norris, CCS’s Group Manager: Information Services. “DataFlo has met their service level agreement 100% and customer satisfaction levels have significantly improved.

The SAP implementation is already delivering continuous business improvement and the efficiencies, profitability and visibility of CCS has been dramatically enhanced.”

CCS has standardised its processes according to DataFlo’s “Model Company” SAP blueprint which provides templated processes that are easily assimilated into business requirements. CCS is now able to quickly replicate the entire business model within a 90 day timeframe, some business process realignment has usually been necessary prior to this, adhering to group standards and naming conventions.

“Per user cost has beaten inflation over the last three years and IS’ total cost of ownership to the Group has been reduced,” says Norris.

As a result of its strategic relationship with DataFlo, CCS’s Information Services division is closer to achieving its goals of accurate, timeous, integrated, cost effective, accessible and user friendly IT outputs.

“We are now on track with our mission of providing relevant information and business solutions to enhance decision-making and performance measurement,” concludes Norris.

DataFlo provides Solutions to CCS in the following areas: Service Desk/DesktopSupport/ Networking/Enterprise Infrastructure/ Applications/Security/ Business Continuity