Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast refreshes planning for greater growth

When it tripled in size through an acquisition, Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast needed a robust planning solution that could bring together supply chain, sales, and financial planning. Building these capabilities in Anaplan enabled the company to improve financial and supply chain performance, increase alignment and agility company-wide, and elevate the role of finance in providing credible plans and forecasts — all to support continued growth.

With one bold acquisition in 2017, Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast tripled in revenue and headcount. “We went from $300 million in revenue to $1.2 billion,” recounts Justin Conroy, Vice President, Finance and Accounting at the company. “And we soon realized that we were no longer able to run the company using institutional memory and spreadsheets. We needed a more robust planning solution.”

In a beverage business like Coke Northeast, Conroy explains, success depends on having the right product mix available at the right place and the right time. This requires coordinated planning across multiple teams. “We need to make sure that the demand plan, the production plan, and the sales forecast are all aligned,” he explains. “If we don’t plan properly, we end up with out-of-stock situations and, ultimately, lost sales.”

Continued growth, greater accountability

To manage its expanded operations and continue growing, Coke Northeast selected the Anaplan platform and worked with Allitix to get the most from the solution. “We now use Anaplan across demand planning, sales forecasting, and financial planning and analysis,” Conroy says. “By connecting demand, sales, and FP&A, our overall planning is more smooth, balanced, and integrated across a much larger enterprise.”

“Justin and the Coke Northeast  team invested the time, and made their best resources available, to build a Connected Planning vision for the business,” says Russell Gummelt, Sales Performance Management Director at Allitix.  “Through an iterative process, involving quick yet informed decisions, we were able to help them stand up scalable models that will grow with the business into the future.”

And in fact, Coke Northeast’s newfound connectedness and agility with the Anaplan platform has coincided with continued business growth. “We were able to accelerate top-line revenue growth through dynamic, quick-moving changes,” Conroy says, noting that company revenue has grown to almost $1.7 billion since the 2017 acquisition.

Connectedness has also elevated the work of the finance team. “We've moved from strictly transactional [work] to more business partnership,” Conroy says. “Anaplan has really been at the crux and crossroads of that.” One example of that partnership: The finance team can now get better buy-in around OpEx spending. “The budget owners understand the implications of their decisions as they work through the planning and budgeting process,” Conroy says. “They can see their decisions — and their accountability for those decisions — and that's been transformational for the company.”

Greater accuracy, savings, and credibility

By planning for factors such as brand mix, customer mix, and production schedule, Coke Northeast has stayed ahead of the competition. “Anaplan helps us to have longer lead times to focus on these key elements,” Conroy explains. “We’re also able to pull data forward and allocate costs, which gives us a better downhill forecast for end-of-year financial planning.”

And because the sales and demand planning teams plan use shared numbers, the company sees practical supply chain benefits like fewer out-of-stock situations and less breakage, damage, and loss. “Ultimately, this helps us reduce inventory, working capital, and OpEx across the enterprise,” Conroy says.

Importantly, teams from supply chain, sales, and finance are now aligned on key metrics, which wasn’t possible before. “With Anaplan we all have an aligned unit case sales number,” Conroy explains. “That adds credibility to the planning and forecasting of our entire business.”