CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT

CRM STRATEGY OF COCA COLA

COCA COLA
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The CocaCola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke (a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company in the United States since March 27, 1944). Originally intended as a patent medicine when it was invented in the late 1886 by a pharmacist John Pemberton, Coca-Cola was bought out by businessman As a Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coke to its dominance of the world soft-drink market throughout the 20th century. The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) owns four of the top five soft-drink brands (Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta, and Sprite). Its other brands include Minute Maid, Powerade, and Dasani water. In North America it sells Groupe Danone's Evian; it also sells brands from rival Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (Crush, Dr. Pepper, and Schweppes) outside Australia, Europe, and North America. The firm makes or licenses more than 3,500 drinks for sale in 200-plus countries. In late 2010 TCCC bought out its leading bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), and renamed it Coca-Cola Refreshments USA.

CRM IN COCA COLA

SAP and Coca-Cola Enterprises focus on the seamless integration of mobile and back-end activities, leveraging the SAP Net Weaver open integration and application platform to enable SAP Mobile Infrastructure. The new capabilities will allow Coca-Cola Enterprises to significantly enhance the support it provides to its associates in the marketplace and ultimately directly to its customers as they engage with consumers. The main features are:

Coca Cola Enterprise has an integrated on-demand CRM solution with its e-commerce engine. Sales managers and distributors have real-time access to reports for different markets and customer bases via Sugar Professional's report engine.

Sugar Professional has given Coca-Cola the ability to drive and optimize new distribution channels and has lead to increased orders and reorders.

The representatives of coca cola say, on the simplest level, in creating a Facebook group for your organization, youre banking on a number of things:

1. That your customers actually use Facebook. 2. That they can be informed via the Facebook tools provided of the existence of your group - in addition to your own normal communications channels. 3. That they will find what you are providing to be enough interest to make your community a regular stop when they are logged in to Facebook. 4. That the customers will opt in to being updated about the continuing activities of your community. 5. That they have no objection to Facebook owning the knowledge of their activities in your group as an asset and as part of their Facebook customer record also known as their profile.

There are sites like Coca-Cola is working with a strategy that has as parts of it, social networking use and the use of technology tied tightly into CRM and SCM. So the customer can socialize with other customers around the coolness of Coke or the nostalgia around Coke on the Facebook page.

IS IT STRATEGIC?
Yes, it is strategic for Coca Cola to apply CRM in their business model so as to combine e-commerce, CRM and logistics into one streamlined package. Coca-Cola Enterprise required a cost-effective software solution that could be customized to fit as part of a larger e-commerce and logistics platform. They needed a CRM solution to give sales managers and distributors greater visibility into sales and distribution channels to identify new opportunities and potential sales. Another key marketing concept that forced Coca-Cola to decide that they need to implement CRM is the idea to build strong relationships with customers by providing excellent customer service and keeping the customers satisfied with a high quality product. These will not only keep the customer base of the two businesses growing, but it will prove to be quite profitable for the companies. On website, Coca-Cola worked hard to maintain high CRM standards. They provide e-mail links and telephone numbers so that customers can contact the company with questions or complaints. Furthermore, www.cocacola.com provide FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) sections in which customers can find questions that are frequently asked about customer service issues.

WHERE DOES IT HURT?

The main goal was to get a global solution that combined e-commerce, CRM, and logistics into one package that everybody could standardize on. With SugarCRM and Synolia, we accomplished that and more.

Problem:

Coca-Cola Enterprise required a cost-effective software solution that could be customized to fit as part of a larger e-commerce and logistics platform.

A solution to give sales managers and distributors greater access into sales and distribution channels to identify new opportunities for sales.

Solution:

Synolia customized and deployed Sugar Professional On-Demand to 40 users in three months. Coca Cola Enterprise now has an integrated on-demand CRM solution with its e-commerce engine and logistics platform. Sales managers and distributors now have real-time access to reports for different markets and customer bases via Sugar Professional's report engine.

Sugar Professional has given Coca-Cola the ability to drive and optimize new distribution channels and has lead to increased orders and reorders.

Also Coca Cola is in the process of rolling out SAP CRM to all its bottling companies, supporting both inbound service request calls from retailers and consumers as well as outbound marketing calls. The system will be used by call centers with various sizes, ranging from 1000 to 10 agents. With SAP CRM, Coca Cola is transforming these call centers into strategic assets.

DO WE NEED PERFECT DATA?

If companies have access to original data, then company should go for it as it will give the accurate raw material to plan out CRM strategies. For example-Here in this case focus is on young and people who are health conscious, if we know the exact number of people it would be great for us. But if somehow it is not possible to collect the exact data then company can also go with an approximated value also or secondary data.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

The answer to this question is increased implementation of CRM in the marketing field of the companies. Companies are now trying to interact more and more with customers. They want to know what customers are expecting and then live up to the expectations. They want to target the customer more on individual basis. For example-Coca-Cola and ChaCha kicked off their mobile marketing engagement at the Allstate Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on July 27.

So, we can say that Customer Relationship Management is a tool which almost all the companies are adopting at certain levels to insure that they survive and excel in this competitive era.

Advantages that a Customer Relationship Management system can bring to Coca-Cola:-

Shared or distributed data Cost reduction Better Customer Service Increased Customer Satisfaction Better Customer Retention Loyal customers More Profit

REFERENCES:
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-coca-cola-company

http://sapcrmvoice.wordpress.com

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/customers/coca-cola.html

http://www.inforefuge.com/cocacola-pepsi-web-marketing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola