Coca-Cola Amatil Business Environment and Case Study Free Solution

Introduction

With increasing competition in the business environment, it becomes important for the business organizations to efficiently design and align its objectives and strategies in order to achieve enhanced performance and competitive advantage (Cherunilam, 2010).

 Thus on the basis of the above aspects the report strives towards identifying the business objectives and strategies in the context of Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) which is the one of the largest bottlers of non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages in the Asia-Pacific region (Ccamatil, 2016). The company is characterized with a diversified portfolio of products that include the carbonated soft drinks, fruit juices, sports and energy drinks, coffee, iced tea, spring water, SPC Ardmona and Goulburn packaged ready to eat snacks, vegetables and products. The report also strives towards identifying the performance objectives of the company and its internal consistency that contribute towards its competitive advantages. It also analyzes the challenges faced by the company in its operations management. Finally the report provides conclusion as the summary of the findings and suggestions regarding how to overcome operations challenges.

Business Objectives and Strategies of Coca-Cola Amatil

Coca-Cola Amatil operates with a mission of keeping the consumers hydrated and refreshed by offering them an extensive range of beverages. Thus from the mission statement o

Coca-Cola is not only committed towards its customers and employees, but also committed towards its shareholders and thus strive towards generating attractive and sustainable shareholder returns. Thus the company has built a string and sustainable business with the help of its following strategies:

Strengthening Leadership

• The company has placed a leading brand in each NARTD category in every market.
• The company has increased the range of affordable packs in the market.
• The company has up weighted the innovative marketing levels for strengthening its brand equity.
• Continuously evolve its portfolio as per the changing preferences of the customers (Floyd and Wooldridge, 2007).

Change in Producvity and Execution

• The company emphasizes upon achieving world class customer service capability.
• Route to market facilitates the company with diversified customers and competitive advantage (Hubbard and Seet, 2006)s.
• The company efficiently leverages its large scale, low cost manufacturing sales and distribution capability.

In addition to the above strategies, Coca-Cola Amatil operates with a shared vision and aligned objectives of its brand partners like Coca Cola together with developing joint plans for growth system profitability and shares risk and reward with its brand partners.

Operations Strategy of Coca-Cola Amatil in terms of Structure and Infrastructure

Analyzing the organizational structure of Coca-Cola Amatil, it is observed that the company strives towards adopting the tall organizational structure. Thus there exist a narrow span of control and each manager has small number of employees under their control and the employees are closely supervised. The lines of responsibility and control is also clear and there exist clear opportunities of progression and promotion for the lower level of employees (TheOfficialBoard, 2016). The organizational structure of the company can be illustrated with the help of the following figure:

[Source: TheOfficialBoard, 2016]

The organizational team at the top of the company is passionate role models of behaviors that exhibit the company’s values and deliver an organizational culture that leads the company towards success. The leaders set the direction and translate the strategy into clear standards of performance and behavior together what is expected from the team members. They are responsible for delivering the work by motivating and engaging the team members so that the objectives are achieved and value is delivered to the customers, shareholders and team members of CCA.

On the other hand analyzing the operations strategy in terms of the infrastructure of Coca-Cola Amatil, it can be said that the demand for beverage products of the company is significantly influenced by factors like hot or cold weather and conduct of major events. So these fluctuations prove to be costly for the company to own and manage its own infrastructure and this created a demand on the part of the company to invest in capital infrastructure for highest potential demand (ibm, 2015). As a result the company has signed a five year deal with the tech giant IBM for the development of private cloud computing environment and this has proved to be beneficial in automating its core technology operations in the Asia-Pacific region. The company in order to achieve operational efficiency also invested in developing a core systems replacement program named as OAisys (One Amatil Information System) in the year 2012 and thus adopted the SAP technology. Moreover as per the deal, the SAP platform moved into IBM’s private cloud and thus the SAP infrastructure is being managed the IBM (ibm, 2015). So it also facilitated the company in achieving cost efficiency in its operations.

In addition the company also operates with the help of the mobile workers. More than 50% of the workers of the company are mobile and the company is also aiming to facilitate its equipment maintenance workers, the sales staff, the office staff and delivery fleet, the access to the internal system from anywhere and so this cloud based solution would prove to be beneficial in this strive.

Operations Performance Objectives of Coca-Cola Amatil

Cost

Coca-Cola Amatil aims to minimize the cost of operation through infrastructure development and maintaining a base of skilled, knowledgeable and dedicated employees (Greasley, 2008). For example, The Company has entered into five year multi-million dollar deal with IBM on cloud agreement.

Quality

The Company is aimed at achieving efficiency in its operations and maintaining quality through their strict manufacturing and distribution policies and the quality and safety of all the system wide operations of the company is monitored and measured against rigorous standards.

Speed

The company strives towards achieving speed for on time delivery of the products at the right place and this maintained through the development and implementation of a national strategy that covers the industrial automation and electrical systems and also by maintaining an integrated supply chain management system (Krajewski, Ritzman and Krajewski, 2008)s.

Dependability

The company aims to become the most dependable organization for its customers and this is achieved through its effective strategies designed and implemented by its leaders, its operational efficiency and its efficient supply chain. These factors facilitate in catering as per the specific customers demand and also deliver the right products to the right customers at the right time and in right quantity.

Flexibility

The company also responds to the flexibility of the market and this is the reason why the company is characterized with a diversified portfolio of products top suit the varied needs of the customers (Waters, 2006).

Competitive Priorities of Coca-Cola Amatil

Analyzing the competitive priorities, it is observed that Coca-Cola Amatil strives towards maintaining efficiency in its operations through its infrastructure development by entering into cloud agreement with IBM, expanding its brand portfolio to serve the varied needs and preferences of the customers, transforming the logistics operations by making it more flexible for efficiently managing different product types with more complex delivery combinations, cost reduction and maintaining quality standards.

Internal Consistency and its Contribution to Competitive Advantage

The internal consistencies and its contribution towards competitive advantage can be illustrated as follows:

Experienced management and company team

Coca Cola Amatil is led by passionate role models that bring insight and inspiration for team members. The employees are valued and engaged and are allowed to be innovative and creative in their approach (Cokegrads.com.au, 2011). This has led to dedicated talent and skill pool that drives the organization towards achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

Good Infrastructure

The company has invested in its infrastructure development to achieve automation of the operations that enhances operational efficiency and entered into deal with IBM to achieve IT infrastructure development to support the workload and develop mobile workers. It also maintains efficient supply chain to achieve flexibility in managing complex delivery combination due to different product types. These factors has facilitated the company in achieving minimized operational cost, high quality, enhanced flexibility and dependability and high speed delivery required to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Operations Management Challenges

Coca-Cola Amatil is the manufacturer and the distributor operator of Coca-Cola in Australia and its products are delivered from 24 warehouses and 15 production facilities to more than 116,000 customers every day across Australia. Thus the major operational challenges that the company faces include the following:

• To efficiently maintain occupational Health and Safety
• To meet the specific delivery time for diversified portfolio of products (Reuters, 2009).
• To efficiently manage the order and delivery cycle.

Suggestions for Operating Strategy to overcome Challenges

Taking into consideration the above operational challenges, it can be suggested that Coca Cola Amatil should scale its logistics operations in order to accommodate the rapidly expanding brand portfolio. This can be achieved by implementing SAP and ERP in its supply chain management. This would make the logistics system more flexible. Moreover these software developments would prove to be beneficial in optimizing the ways in which the orders would be stacked on the pallets together with managing the schedule of delivery and the size and the weight of the package resulting into a fully automated system which would reduce the chances of mistakes thereby enhancing efficiency. The SAP ERP software would also prove to be beneficial in planning the loading of the containers and would be optimized for removal in the particular sequence at the customers thus reducing time in loading and unloading and achieving efficiency in the delivery system.

So these aspects would not prove to be beneficial for the company in delivering the right products to the right customers at the right time and in the right quantity but would also increase the operational efficiency which would enhance customer satisfaction and reputation of the company in the market.

Conclusion

Thus from the above discussions, it is observed that even though Coca-Cola Amatil has managed to efficiently conduct its operations in manufacturing and delivering the products to the customers, following the suggestions might drive the company towards investments but it would prove to be beneficial and profitable in the long run.

References

Ccamatil. (2016). Coca-Cola Amatil: Business and its Operations. [online] Available at: https://www.ccamatil.com [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016].

Ccamatil. (2016). Our Vision and Values: Coca-Cola Amatil and its Mission and Strategies. [online] Available at: https://www.ccamatil.com/en/our-company/our-vision-and-values [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016].

Cherunilam, F. (2010). Business environment. Mumbai [India]: Himalaya Pub. House.

Cokegrads.com.au. (2011). About Coca-Cola Amatil: The Company and its Competitve Priorities. [online] Available at: https://cokegrads.com.au/about-cca [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016].

Floyd, S. and Wooldridge, B. (2007). Building stratgey from the middle. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE.

Greasley, A. (2008). Operations management. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications.

Hubbard, G. and Seet, P. (2006). Where culture meets strategy. Lindfield, NSW: Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management.

ibm. (2015). Coca-Cola Amatil Improves Customer Experience with IBM Cloud: Move to SoftLayer will significantly reduce IT costs and provide greater customer engagement. [online] Available at: https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/46507.wss [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016].

Krajewski, L., Ritzman, L. and Krajewski, L. (2008). Operations management. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Reuters. (2009). How Coca-Cola Amatil aimed to optimize: Challenges faced and Ways to Overcome. [online] Available at: https://www.reuters.com [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016].

TheOfficialBoard. (2016). Org Chart Coca-Cola Amatil. [online] Available at: https://www.theofficialboard.com/org-chart/coca-cola-amatil [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016].

Waters, C. (2006). Operations management. 3rd ed. London: Kogan Page.