The CIO Assistant's Blog

This summer, Coca-Cola launches a new product. No, it’s not another new Coke to compete or cannibalize the Coke “Classic”. It’s a Coke vending machine. It’s called the Freestyle.

Coca-Cola Freestyle dispenser

So what’s exciting about that? According to Coca-Cola press release it’s the “next generation fountain beverage dispenser“. What is remarkable is that it represents a rare breakthrough in market research and product development (for more details, see Mary Hayes Weier’s article in InformationWeek). What is even more remarkable, to me, was the successful collaboration between the IT department and other business functions to produce a complete and comprehensive business product/tool, not just a supporting application as usual. This collaboration perfectly illustrates the 3 practical Alignment actions that I have suggested in my previous post Business-IT, Aligned? Let’s take a look at them:

Apparently, Coca-Cola’s IT did it this time in collaboration with R&D. The remarkable fact, according to Bob Evans at InformationWeek, is that this is the first time ever that these 2 teams worked closely on a project, “a shocking revelation when you consider that Coca-Cola company has been around for about a century.” Undoubtedly, Coca-Cola’s CIO must spent considerable time with the head of R&D to come to a meeting of the minds about who’s responsible for what to ensure that neither gap nor duplication occurred in the work of both parties.

2. The “Wow” Factor – “IT people, at least those who worked for me in the past, are proud of their work but they are even prouder if that work is recognized, either explicitly by a Thank You note or implicitly by sharing the spotlight with another team. Find your “WOW” examples. Carefully select those that scream Alignment. Make they hugely visible.”

There is no finer example of the “Wow” factor than this Freestyle dispenser. It’s a multi-function machine that can serve the customers on demand, while acting as a data collection device to feed inventory management, product development and customer preference analysis. Mary Hayes Weier called it “Coke’s front-line robotic army for business intelligence”. It deploys multiple technologies, ranging from Microsoft’s Windows CE and System Center Configuration Manager for Mobile Devices, to SAP’s Point-of-Sales Management and Business Warehouse, to RFID readers and sensors, to Verizon’s virtual private wireless network. It took four years to make it works.

I suspect that many hours or weeks of these 4 years were spent at the intersection between technologies, not just information ones. There is nothing uncertain about its “Wow” factor and its visibility. And Coca-Cola’s IT is sharing the spotlight with R&D for this innovative product.

3. Make Alignment your Guiding Principle – “Sprinkle your talks, your plans, your reports, your blogs and tweets (if you are the social media-savvy type) with Alignment terminology.”

Less known to the public is the collaborative process that Coca-Cola used in this product development. It’s called the Common Innovation Framework. Let’s hear from InformationWeek who profiled Coca-Cola’s CIO, Jean-Michel Arès in its Global CIO 50 list:

“Arès has led a push to let employees collaborating among themselves as well as with bottlers and customers. And this effort has become central to Coke’s broader effort to remake its business.
For internal collaboration, the company has implemented what it calls the Common Innovation Framework, a system that combines project management and business intelligence capabilities. The framework lets operating units in 50 countries search for and borrow approaches used in developing and marketing any of 2,800 beverages that Coke produces. When a product like Coke Zero launches in the United States, the next countries doing rollouts can then borrow what worked.”

Collaboration. Common. These are Alignment terms that were sprinkled in all Coca-Cola IT talks, across 50 countries. Successfully creating an innovative product out of that is called “walking the talk”.

Do you have another example of successful Business-IT Alignment? How about your own? Please share with us.

Photo by Timo Elliott - Freestyle is a trademark of Coca-Cola

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