Coca-Cola HBC Uses RunMyJobs by Redwood To Centralize Operations, Improve Transparency & Control

When Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (CCHBC), one of the world’s largest bottlers of products of The Coca-Cola Company, merged its operations, its leaders knew they needed to successfully integrate their disparate operations systems or face critical challenges.

The merger brought together Athens-based Hellenic Bottling Company S.A. with Coca-Cola Beverages plc, spanning 26 countries from Ireland to Estonia and a population of more than 500 million people. With annual revenues of more than $4 billion and over 37,000 employees, the company is a global leader in the beverage bottling and distribution industry.

As the company’s leaders worked to bring the two companies together, they focused on the fragmented operation networks that were stretched beyond their initial planned capacity. To address this, they needed to bring together their existing IT infrastructures and implement SAP as their company-wide ERP. Ultimately, they needed to more easily and effectively manage operations within a single company entity, while allowing the company to continue expanding and meet its growth goals.

The Goal: Centralizing Critical Systems

With the merger, CCHBC’s production facilities dramatically increased. This rapid growth left the company with disparate operations with no definitive reporting or control. To remedy this, the company leaders knew they needed to implement a centralization initiative, integrating and consolidating internal IT systems across numerous countries.

After evaluating their options, CCHBC implemented SAP R/3, SAP BW and SAP SCM enterprise-wide so they could manage the business as one entity. To facilitate this process, the organization developed the Enterprise IS Association, which split into two areas of responsibility. The first was the “template team,” which was responsible for SAP landscape design, and the second was the “deployment team,” which became responsible for SAP data migration. The Enterprise IS Association is responsible for the successful implementation and support of SAP products throughout CCHBC.

“Until now, our SAP installation spans seven countries and serves 2,100 end-users. [In a few years,] we will almost double our current processing requirements by extending SAP technology to an additional five countries, totaling 3,300 end-users (across 12 countries),” said Raymond Wooninck, SAP Technology Manager and Template Team leader at CCHBC. “We needed to select and implement a process automation and batch scheduling solution that could automate the existing workload and scale much larger.”

To do this, CCHBC leadership knew they needed a robust automation solution that would allow them to integrate across the SAP NetWeaver stack, giving them control and transparency across all the newly-merged operations. In addition, they’d need a scalable solution that would keep up with their ambitious growth plans.

Why RunMyJobs?

Coca-Cola HBC selected RunMyJobs for SAP solutions for its deep SAP expertise and ine. The Redwood team worked closely with the Coca-Cola team to implement RunMyJobs and within two months, it was up-and-running. Considering CCHBC’s own investment in SAP technology and the solution’s integration with the SAP NetWeaver stack, RunMyJobs by Redwood for SAP solutions was the logical choice.

Another driver in CCHBC’s selection was the ability to map job chains across SAP BW and SAP R/3 as well as manage interdependencies between automated processes across the full SAP environment.
Redwood’s professional services team played a key role in CCHBC’s ability to quickly implement the automation solution.

Post implementation, the daily scheduled batch workload was reduced from 300 to 180, partly as CCHB could then run parallel processing loads and were not limited by sequential scheduling from CCMS. Furthermore, RunMyJobs for SAP solutions’ mapping of job chains highlighted redundant batches for removal, streamlining hardware usage and further optimizing SAP productivity.

The Results: A Synchronized SAP Environment

In order to create an optimized production schedule, CCHBC had to automate processes with dependencies between SAP R/3, SAP BW and SAP SCM, coupled with job interception functionality. RunMyJobs allowed them to have these three systems running up-to-date and synchronized with each other. In addition, the team can now more easily maintain control and systems performance during BI data reload windows as end-user jobs can be intercepted and delayed or re-prioritized until the upload is complete.

“Reducing our ABAP programming workload saved us some time, as did error alert functionality because we no longer had to spend time checking batch log reports,” Wooninck said.

Redwood Key Partner In Coca-Cola HBC’s Ongoing Centralization Initiatives

After bringing RunMyJobs into their infrastructure, this new level of transparency and efficiency allowed the company to take the next step in their expansion plans. The Enterprise IS Association brought five new countries into CCHBC’s SAP landscape, adding around 1,200 users. This new approach allows them to manage all of CCHBC’s 26 central and eastern European countries within a single, unified SAP environment, totalling around 9,000 SAP end-users in the next four years.

“Our intent was to move the solution to its own server, guaranteeing high service execution and measurement as our SAP environment evolves,” Wooninck said. This move and the mission-critical role that RunMyJobs by Redwood plays in CCHBC’s ongoing growth demonstrates how important selecting the right automation solution and provider is to a global organization’s success.

“With so many SAP end-users across so many locations, including the data center and systems admin groups themselves, we found that RunMyJobs provides the transparency and control required to align all three applications, no matter where or when production management issues may arise,” Wooninck said.