Alex Fielding, CEO, and co-founder, Ripcord, highlights the competitive advantages and benefits companies gain by digitizing their supply chain processes. Using Coca-Cola as a case study, Alex examines how digitization can be implemented and the return on investment it provides.
In today’s economy, it is crucial for any modern enterprise to have a robust supply chain management and operation process. It is also one of the most complex elements of a modern enterprise.
If you want to guarantee competitiveness in today’s markets, an organization needs to optimize its supply chain. And the best way to optimize a supply chain is to digitize it. Conversely, failure to optimize a supply chain can cause any business to fall behind the competition. Additionally, if a supply chain process relies heavily on paper and physical records for management, operating effectively in the modern business era can quickly become an overwhelming responsibility.
For example, The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) and its bottlers, Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Sales and Services (CCBSS) are each multinational organizations with highly detailed and complex supply chain processes. And CCBSS, notably, sought ways to enhance its supply chains by digitizing paper records and data to ensure optimized and more efficient operation.
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A New Era for CCBSS’s Supply Chain
Coca-Cola has a unique approach to scaling its business through franchising the manufacturing, packaging, and logistics to the CCBSS “bottlers.” The CCBSS works with Coca-Cola to fulfill orders to various customers across the country, however, there was a problem with its ‘proof of delivery’ documentation with their customers.
TCCC owns contracts with those customers such as Walmart, Target, and Costco, but outsourced all of the manufacturing and logistics management of its products CCBSS. The CCBSS simply fulfills the orders.
For example, each month TCCC is required to provide evidence of the fulfillment of goods and services to customers. This is done through a proof of delivery (POD) ticket between the deliverers and receivers. The burden of proof falls on CCBSS, if they are unable to provide these tickets upon delivery of the goods, the customer won’t pay the bill.
The previous procedure was to take the POD tickets to FedEx, photocopy them and send them to a supply chain management company. Yet, the process was still losing approximately 25 million of these documents a year. A staggering number and a significant loss of revenue. The process was costly to TCCC, roughly 25 million of these were being lost per year.
In order to fulfill these orders, TCCC worked with several different contractors to support a complicated delivery ecosystem – and breakdowns and human error due to these complications were frequent.
TCCC has decided to digitize parts of its supply chain management and operation; to maximize accuracy and efficiency. By digitizing parts of the supply chain, TCCC is able to consolidate vendors and save roughly millions per year through a process called document lifecycle management. A single vendor is able to manage document management, image storage, indexing, and physical storage and shredding suppliers once done by multiple vendors. It turns what was a confusing process into a streamlined system with advanced technology that can process millions of documents with greater quality, speed, and accuracy.
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The State of Digitization in the World
Many organizations operate with 21st-century business tactics, practices and strategies designed to help them be as competitive and marketable as possible, Coca Cola and its subsidiaries included. These same organizations still keep much of their data on paper or physical records. Due, to this approach, many organizations are now faced with potentially losing data when it is needed for a specific task. In turn, this can severely hinder capabilities to effectively perform a task and hinder the bottom line of your organization.
Building an Effective Supply Chain Through Digitizing Records
Traditionally, many supply chain models are linear – and this is by design. Suppliers, producers, distributors, and retailers interact with each other in a straight-forward, linear process. Even so, these interactions are planned, ordered and confirmed transactions that are determined without much information from the other parties in the chain.
With an integrated, digitized supply chain, data does not have to move linearly. Instead, suppliers can effectively plan, qualify and confirm production based on real-time data showcasing an increase in consumer demand. Supply chain digitization allows every member of the supply chain to make informed decisions using higher-quality data.
In this new fast-moving, data-centric world, the most effective way to optimize any supply chain is to digitize it.
Utilizing High-Performance Robots to Automate and Digitize Supply Chain
We live and work in a fast-moving and efficient era of the modern enterprise. Those who fail to upgrade business processes in a “real-time” world are bound to fall behind. Through digitization, an organization can optimize its supply chain is through digitization. Digitization improves operational capability, flexibility, and profitability. Robotics-powered automation is the next logical step for any organization that is seeking to boost efficiency and supply chain operational capability.
Robotic technology has undoubtedly had a profound impact on markets such as manufacturing and industrials. Some of the most well-known corporations around the world have realized the benefits of automated robotic digitization. They are better positioned to make more informed decisions across a supply chain.
Encouraging Other Businesses To Digitize
Digitization through robotic automation can save an organization time, money and relieve stress when looking for documents needed for a particular purpose. As CCBSS digitizes its supply chain for these reasons, other major corporations need to consider the benefits of doing the same. These companies should be sold on the fact that digitization can help ensure they are maintaining a competitive edge in a competitive business market.
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