Happiest Minds Partners With Coca Cola Bottling Company United In Their Robotic Automation Journey

Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a ‘Born Digital. Born Agile’, digital transformation and IT solutions company announced, it has successfully executed a digital transformation project for  Coca Cola Bottling Company United for streamlining its order management with RPA in Microsoft Power Automate.

Coca-Cola Bottling Company United (Coca-Cola United) has a long history of supplying Coca-Cola products directly to retailers and restaurants. But when Coca-Cola introduced its new Freestyle vending machine, Coca-Cola United, a privately owned company that isn’t owned by Coca-Cola, was challenged to streamline its order and invoicing procedures. It rose to the occasion quickly, using Microsoft Power Automate robotic process automation (RPA). Coca-Cola United is advancing the strategic Freestyle initiative with process automation that matches the individuality and innovation that the product represents.

“While building this solution, we resurrected high-value strategic projects that we couldn’t tackle before because of the constraints of legacy apps. We feel empowered to take advantage of any future opportunities that the business provides us.” Says Bob Means: Director of Business Solutions

Helping every customer with Power Automate RPA

The company faced two challenges as it explored solutions.                                

“It was too costly to create APIs for our legacy applications like SAP and others, and we also had to navigate a third-party website,” explains Allan McDaniel, Manager of Development for BI and Master Data at Coca-Cola Bottling Company United. “We used Power Automate RPA bots to fill these gaps and automate the process.”

Desktop flows in Power Automate automates repetitive processes in Windows and web applications—a perfect fit for high-volume but mundane data entry and transfer. Coca-Cola Bottling Company United collaborated with Happiest Minds to create a master automated service agent they’ve dubbed “Asa,” which consists of several bots. Built on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power Platform, “Asa” uses Azure Key Vault to help secure and control passwords and other sensitive data, and it relies on Azure DevOps for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).

The new, simplified process frees the dedicated CRM agent, allowing orders from all channels, such as inbound and outbound call center agents, field service sales representatives at customer sites, and via a customer self-service portal.

“We avoided having to hire 10 full-time employees. Better still, the existing CRM agent is now free to work on other projects.” - Allan McDaniel, Manager of Development for BI and Master Data, Coca-Cola Bottling Company United.

“Our team collaborated well, and the synergies led to the deployment of one of a kind solution, leading to realization of business benefits for our customers. We at Happiest Minds work as a partner with each of our customers in their digital journey and deliver solutions tailormade to the requirement of the respective customers.”  - Huzefa Saifee, Chief Technology Officer, Digital Business Services, Happiest Minds.

Using Power Virtual Agents,  Happiest Minds helped the company developed a bot that served as an intelligent front end to the new solution. Power Automate was used to drive the entire process. And by interoperating with other Azure services, such as Azure Key Vault, the system was able to securely access both internal and external systems and orchestrate the entire order process, from purchase order to reconciliation, in SAP.

Kaylan Cannon, Customer Service Manager, Coca-Cola Bottling Company United, is enthusiastic. “We are very excited about this solution,” she says. “It will dramatically reduce labor costs, minimize the various points of error in our current solution, and will allow us to rapidly expand the local Freestyle campaign to better support our customers.”

“It has been a very innovative and productive journey for us to work with Coca Cola Bottling Company United to automate their order management with RPA. Happiest Minds always strives to use technology as a tool to enable businesses to accelerate adaption of digital technologies and help modernize and transform their current environment.” – Rajiv Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Digital Business Services, Happiest Minds.

About Happiest Minds Technologies:

Happiest Minds Technologies Limited (NSE: HAPPSTMNDS), a Mindful IT Company, enables digital transformation for enterprises and technology providers by delivering seamless customer experiences, business efficiency and actionable insights. We do this by leveraging a spectrum of disruptive technologies such as: artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud, digital process automation, internet of things, robotics/drones, security, virtual/augmented reality, etc. Positioned as ‘Born Digital . Born Agile’, our capabilities span digital solutions, infrastructure, product engineering and security. We deliver these services across industry sectors such as automotive, BFSI, consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, edutech, engineering R&D, hi-tech, manufacturing, retail and travel/transportation/hospitality.

A Great Place to Work-Certified™ Company, Happiest Minds is headquartered in Bangalore, India with operations in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and Middle East.

About Coca Cola Bottling Company United

Founded in 1902 and headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, Coca Cola Bottling Company United is the third largest bottler of Coca-Cola products in the United States.  Our 10,000 associates located across the southeast are engaged in the production, marketing, sales and distribution of some of the world’s most refreshing and recognized beverages.

Coca-Cola UNITED is one of the largest bottlers and distributors of Coca-Cola products in the United States. It has also been one of the fastest growing. While the company has been around for almost 120 years, most of its growth has occurred within the span of just four years. Microsoft Power Platform has turned out to be a key tool in helping Coca-Cola UNITED navigate this amazing growth.