Coca-Cola UNITED manages rapid growth with Microsoft Power Platform

Coca-Cola UNITED is one of the largest bottlers and distributors of Coca-Cola products in the United States. It has also been one of the fastest growing. While the company has been around for almost 120 years, most of its growth has occurred within the span of just four years. Microsoft Power Platform has turned out to be a key tool in helping Coca-Cola UNITED navigate this amazing growth. Here’s its story.

Back in 2014, the Coca-Cola Company launched a major refranchising effort, shifting corporate-owned operations to local bottling partners and consolidating territories. Coca-Cola UNITED was a key partner in that initiative. Within just a few years, the company had expanded operations from 18 sales centers to 54 and from 3,000 associates to over 10,000. Growth in sales was equally dramatic—from 58 million cases sold a year to over 205 million cases.

This was an exciting time for Coca-Cola UNITED but, as with any rapid expansion, there were challenges. Manual processes that worked well in earlier days were less efficient at managing the increased workload. The company saw multiple opportunities to automate and streamline processes—but limited developer resources and time-consuming custom coding were holding back progress.

The company was also getting frustrated by ever-changing coding platforms. “We’d build an app on JavaScript and then, two years later, they would come out with new templates and we’d find ourselves starting over, trying to catch up to the latest JavaScript standards,” says Bob Means, Director of Business Solutions at Coca-Cola Bottling Company United. That’s around the time when one of its developers discovered Microsoft Power Platform.

As an Azure-based technology, Microsoft Power Platform aligned well with the company’s SAP system, which the Coca-Cola Company had just moved to Azure. The team also appreciated the low-code simplicity of the platform. “Microsoft Power Platform has allowed us to break free of the challenges we had with custom code and innovate quickly on top of our legacy systems,” says Means.

Big benefits, quickly delivered

For Coca-Cola UNITED, reaping the rewards of Microsoft Power Platform came fast. Jared Simmons, Systems Analyst at Coca-Cola UNITED, was able to learn the fundamentals of the low-code platform within just a few days. “Once I learned about the data connectors and how they would work with our SQL database and our ERP system, everything else just fell into place. The Power Apps console is incredibly easy to work with.”

The first app Simmons created—a sales and inventory data repository—took just one week to build. From there, the team quickly brought forward other opportunities for low-code automation, driven in part by business managers turned low-code developers. “Once we completed our first projects, we started to realize just how much more we could do with the platform,” says Tommy Ammons, Mobile Computing Manager, Coca-Cola Company United. “The sheer potential of Microsoft Power Platform quickly won everyone over. More citizen developers jumped in. And that’s when we really started rolling,” adds Ammons.

Azure DevOps helped scale Microsoft Power Platform to this larger team, providing a predictable and manageable platform for development. “The way that Azure DevOps interoperates with the solution is an important feature for us,” explains Allan McDaniel, Manager of Development for BI and Master Data at Coca-Cola Bottling Company United. “We can integrate solution components and other required infrastructure into one project. Azure DevOps makes it easier to reuse components for the projects with little to no further development.”

Coca-Cola UNITED also uses the tight interoperability with Azure to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform, especially for data connectors. “We’ve built templates and other pre-built components for our analysts that help streamline UI development,” says Simmons. “But we also value the extensibility of the platform, enabling us to build and integrate custom connectors using Azure Logic Apps.” These connectors have been particularly useful in building out integrated SAP solutions.

Here are just a few examples of how Coca-Cola UNITED is modernizing, expanding, and streamlining operations using Microsoft Power Platform solutions.

More efficient order processing

Coca-Cola UNITED wanted a faster way to process on-demand shipment requests (or “forced shipments”) from customers. Previously, account reps had to submit orders and check inventories manually, which often led to shipping delays.

A solution was built in just a few weeks using a Power Apps user interface. Because the solution pulls from multiple sources, the development team opted for a customized automation layer using Python to create a WebJob in Azure services. A customized connector was used to integrate with the central SAP system. Here’s how it works:

Power Platform Integration with SAP CRM Diagram

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"The benefits of automation were dramatic. What used to take half a day to validate inventories and other order data can now be completed in seconds. Along with more efficient processing, the new solution has also resulted in fewer errors, faster delivery times—and higher customer satisfaction. “The solution has helped restore customer confidence—which has driven even better sales,” says Means.

Equally exciting is that other bottling partners are interested in deploying the same solution. “A combination of low-code components and a unified DevOps platform will make this far easier to share with partners,” says Simmons.

“Microsoft Power Platform has allowed us to break free of the challenges we had with custom code and innovate quickly on top of our legacy systems.”

Bob Means, Director of Business Solutions, Coca-Cola Bottling Company United

A move into new markets

Coca-Cola UNITED is primarily a business-to-business operation, bridging the gap between products and retailers. But the company has also branched out to support its local community directly, supplying beverages to events for fundraising, sports, and education.

Previously, business development managers would manually collect order sheets from customers and manage invoicing in Excel. Payment collection was managed separately by event organizers.

The company saw an opportunity to improve services through automation using Microsoft Power Platform. The need to move to a more modern method of event management became even more urgent with the COVID-19 crisis. “We saw how the crisis was resulting in fund cuts within the community and we wanted to help fundraisers with a more efficient, contactless process,” says Means.

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Within weeks, the company had developed another fully automated solution. As with the earlier “forced shipment” solution, event details were entered into a Power App UI. This triggered Logic Apps in Azure to set in motion several events, such as logging of event information into the company’s local SQL database, gathering of pricing data from SAP on Azure, creation of an invoice—and integration of all data into Dynamics 365. The solution also has an integrated payment gateway.

The new digital system provides customers with virtually contactless event management, eliminating the need to submit paper order forms and collect payments from attendees. Now, customers simply submit an order online, sell the products at the event, and then wait for a check from Coca-Cola UNITED once the event has been completed.

Into the future

As the company looks to the future, it’s looking forward to doing even more with the platform, including expanded use of Power Automate, especially with new and improved robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities.

For Coca-Cola UNITED, the strength of Microsoft Power Platform is not only around what solutions can be built, but how easily solutions can be rebuilt and upgraded. As Simmons explains, “We go through technology very quickly in this business. We are continually upgrading equipment, processes, and apps. Because Microsoft Power Platform solutions are so easy to build, it’s also easier to justify replacing these solutions more frequently to meet changing needs. The high cost of custom code didn’t allow for that kind of continuous improvement. We see Microsoft Power Platform as simply a better platform for innovation.”

That’s exciting news for the development team at Coca-Cola UNITED—and even better news for the business.

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“Once I learned about the data connectors and how they would work with our SQL database and our ERP system, everything else just fell into place. The Power Apps console is incredibly easy to work with.”

Jared Simmons, Systems Analyst, Coca-Cola Bottling Company United