Coca-Cola Enterprises Taps Refreshing Solutions

Even a successful, global corporation like Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. (CCE), the world's largest non-alcoholic bottler, is under pressure from the ever-increasing demands and expectations of being a leader in the highly competitive beverage industry. While consumers are demanding more product innovation than ever before, retailers trying to serve them don't necessarily have the extra space to fulfill the demand.

To continue to provide refreshing results, CCE defined many business objectives, operational challenges and requirements to help maintain its market leadership position and improve the efficiency of operations. In addition, the company set out to streamline space management processes across the organization, automate high-volume production of store-specific planograms and optimize business performance.

To achieve these business objectives, CCE realized the need for solutions that would also support its Shopper Segmented Merchandising Program, a major initiative launched in 2007 developed to optimize sales and shopper satisfaction.

"We were looking for a solution that would allow us to deliver merchandising solutions that reflect the differences across stores to effectively bring the right products to the right consumers at the right locations," says Luisa Eichman, director of space planning services at CCE. "We needed to create a business process to ensure controlled quality checks on store-level planograms while at the same time increase the productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in the planogram process."

Filling Space

CCE ultimately decided to replace its former systems with a software system that would evolve as technology continues to change. The company selected JDA Intactix Knowledge Base, Space Planning, Space Automation and CategoryAdvisor solutions to better manage the growing number of store-specific planograms being created for its customers.

Using CategoryAdvisor, CCE had a platform for planogram creation and analysis with integration to retailer point-of-sale (POS) data. By doing so, CCE has current and consistent information needed for effective decision making and analysis across categories. Business decisions are executed faster at the shelf and with greater insight, improving category optimization and effectiveness.

Incorporating Space Planning allowed CCE to streamline the execution of top-level category plans, achieve store-specific assortment management, maximize profit and extend customer loyalty by precisely placing the right products in the right positions at the right time every time.

CCE leverages JDA's Intactix Knowledge Base solution to manage planograms, fixtures, floor plans, store and merchandise data, product dimensions, attributes and performance data with the solution's relational database environment.

Additionally, the solutions help CCE to deliver market-specific category management plans for its retail partners and generate Web-based on-demand reports to the field. CCE can efficiently provide controlled Web access to share and distribute planograms and data, as well as consistent analysis and insights on shelf management to support and execute merchandising strategies.

Energizing Business Operations

With the support of the aforementioned solutions, CCE improved efficiency and streamlined planning and execution to optimize space and category performance. CCE is also able to better support its Shopper Segmented Merchandising Program. The company continues to strengthen its efficiency and effectiveness in its space automation and planogram processes. CCE has reduced out of stocks and now drives category sales and profits through more intelligent decision making.

"As we increase our portfolio of carbonated soft drink SKUs, this process improvement will target our offerings on uniqueness of each store -- what we refer to as 'Shopper DNA,'" explains Eichman. "The solutions and our new processes leverage shopper insights to drive store-level changes. We are creating store-specific planograms utilizing store-level sales data, as well as incorporating consumer insights by identifying the priority SKUs for the stores' defined segment."

Bubbling with Benefits

After deploying the solutions and implementing the new processes in more than 4,000 grocery stores, CCE achieved a 2 percent increase in unit sales and a 2 percent improvement in dollar sales. Additionally, implementing the same processes for the company's entire sparkling category in one of its retail customers resulted in a 1.9 percent improvement in the sparkling category volume and a 2.2 percent improvement in sales.

Having a strong commitment to innovation as well as achieving its corporate business objectives are central to CCE's efforts to generate superior marketplace execution, which is a cornerstone of this beverage-industry giant's operating philosophy and strategy.