In 2016, Coke One North America Services, LLC (CONA) was launched as an initiative to unite Coca-Cola bottling refranchising in North America for the purpose of strengthening their overall business model by integrating their information technology services. In 2018, the continuation of this initiative led CONA to pursue a new supply chain management platform, and SAP was strongly represented. SCMO2 actively worked beside SAP to not only help steer the package selection, but in demonstrating the performance of IBP in specific CONA applications.
Developing a Package Selection RFP
Of course, it’s always desirable to avoid going to a package selection ‘bake-off’ but oftentimes it cannot be avoided. CONA brought in SCMO2 to assess their business requirements across all planning functions, and help write the RFP and selection criteria to drive a package selection. CONA distributed this request to more than five software providers. Because of our deep experience and strong relationship with SAP IBP, SCMO2 was able to write a package RFP that steered the selection process toward SAP IBP which was clearly the right solution for this client.
Building a Custom Demo Day
After developing the RFP and selection criteria, SCMO2 worked alongside SAP planners to build a customized, full-day IBP demo for CONA. Our ability to create fully functional and custom-tailored platform demonstrations adds a significantly convincing element to present in response to package selection requests. In this case, SCMO2 and SAP were able to build a demo that tightly followed the specific requirements in the RFP, thus showing how IBP can perform exactly to the specifications desired by CONA. In situations where SAP is asked to compete with other software providers, creating a customized platform demo is effectively differentiating.
Directing the Final Outcome to SAP
All of our efforts in the CONA platform selection were done with the intent of driving the decision-making process towards SAP, and in this specific use-case, the IBP package. SCMO2 brings value to our partners and clients not just in the implementation and post-install support phases, but during the selection process as well. By conducting in-depth roadmap assessments and process evaluations, we can effectively develop strong business cases for choosing SAP and create powerful hands-on demonstrations that convince both executive stakeholders as well as planners who will use the tools. This not only helps direct the final outcome to SAP, but ensures a broad buy-in from all potential users.
