Beverage producer Coca-Cola Philippines has made its initial move to digitalize operations in making operations seamless and more efficient, powered by the latest technology to empower company associates to adapt to the changing business landscape during and post-COVID-19.
The company has been anticipating this development even before the pandemic turned everybody’s life upside-down, noting that the pandemic has not spared even the most adaptable and resilient businesses in the world.
“Internally, probably the big challenge for us was we were not so digitally enabled, I would say, but in the last two months, and over the next two months, all our sales representatives will be rolled out with tablets. They’ll have access to Microsoft Teams. They’ll have access to emails. We’ll be able to connect much more than we did,” said Coca-Cola Philippines president Gareth McGeown.
Growing the e-commerce space of the company, specifically CokeBeverages.ph and Happiness on Demand, is a path that the company pursues right now.
McGeown said the pandemic has accelerated company’s plans to innovate to cover advancements in dealing both with customers and aggregators.
“I think we’re making progress. We’re getting our people to have access on tools, and we’re learning how to do it moving forward. That’s the biggest learning of this crisis, to be able to operate a business our size remotely, virtually. People are working from home, working in the field. I think we still have a long way to go, but we’ve made a lot of progress in a short space of time,” McGeown said.
While productivity on WFH set-up has been a major challenge for a manufacturer of basic commodity, another daunting conundrum is the work-life-balance of employees.
Coca-Cola has spent billions and will continue to invest the same magnitude to cover all the expenses required to protect employees and their families at the height of quarantine restrictions and thereafter.
These learnings pointed to delivering and getting the job done. While innovating via digitalization, Coca-Cola advanced its expansion program in creating additional production capacities armed with the conviction that the crisis, too, shall pass, sooner if not later.
While the government is optimistic on making a rebound before 2020 is over, so has Coca-Cola concretized plans to expanding to the regions.
Davao, Misamis Oriental and Zamboanga have been identified as the new manufacturing sites in Mindanao.
Coca-Cola is expecting to gain traction on its expansion plans as work and travel restrictions were partly lifted under the general community quarantine status.
The company is excited to deliver the investment opportunities in Mindanao. “We’re really excited to be investing again in a massive facility down in Misamis Oriental and the for Santa Cruz plant,” McGeown said.
The projects in Mindanao are part of the $95-million investment package Coca-Cola announced in 2019. About $22 million or P1.1 billion was allocated for new production lines throughout the country and another P1 billion for a PET bottle recycling facility in General Trias, Cavite.
The facility will deploy cutting-edge technology and the best practices in the industry to establish the safest and most advances recycling process for plastic bottles.
Coca-Cola has devised special credit policies and incentives for partners particularly its more than 5,000 delivery partners and distributors across the Philippines.
These partners are integral to the company’s continuing operations. They help the company ensure that essential hydration needs are available in local communities, especially during quarantine when mobility is limited.
“We’ll get through this crisis and if anything I’m more convinced that better days and the best days are ahead of us, and we just need to hold hands and get through this. And I think 2021 will be even better, and we will look back at 2020 not as a crisis but an opportunity for us to all become a little bit better,” McGeown said.