When The Coca-Cola Company decided to improve its financial systems, the international beverages giant collaborated with SAP. The company had been well-served by a ten-year-old SAP solution that was highly customized to fulfill its complex needs. But it had outgrown this system and was looking for a way to introduce best-practice financial processes.

SAP provides the company with its superior end-to-end capabilities, data and systems integration and future state value creation. Both companies have started to work together to implement the solution SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation into the company’s current SAP ERP and SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse landscape. As a result, The Coca-Cola Company will be able to support business transformation, and identify opportunities for productivity and efficiency.

“SAP BusinessObjects Financial Consolidation has given us the right balance between user friendliness, reporting and analysis power, and solid scalable IT architecture across SAP and non-SAP,” says Erik. J. Verrijssen, Chief Development Officer, The Coca-Cola Company.

In addition, The Coca-Cola Company wanted to improve processes across its global franchise bottler system. The company once again partnered with SAP to design a common platform called Coke One to service developed as well as emerging markets, deliver continuous improvements and eliminate redundant IT spending in more than 200 bottler operations worldwide.

Despite the challenges of creating a common solution to suit The Coca-Cola Company’s independent franchise business model and the complexities of migrating such a complex organization to a new IT system, Coke One is already driving value for the company. The introduction of best practices and tools has helped optimize its supply chain and generate revenue growth, while eliminating redundant developmental and operational costs. Over the next two years, The Coca-Cola Company plans to rollout Coke One to bottlers on all continents with diverse market maturities.

“We have made a strategic decision to use SAP’s products and services for our next-generation business model,” says Tom Miller, General Manager of the Coke One program at The Coca-Cola Company.