NextBestSKU© is projected to deliver $17mm revenue growth per year

February 22nd, 2019 in Innovation

The Innovation Council at CONA Services serves as a platform for Innovation efforts. Bringing together senior Business and IT Leaders from participating Bottlers, in collaboration with the North America Coca-Cola System, taking growth ideas from “concept” to “viable product”, with the purpose of delivering profitable growth.

This purpose has come to fruition with NextBestSKU^©, a solution that CONA’s Innovation Team built and implemented in close collaboration with our Bottlers. The CONA Solution helps bottlers run their daily business. The Innovation council came together to explore growth opportunities, to help sell more or improve operational efficiencies, where technology has a role to play.

Challenge: The convenience retail represents approximately 22% of bottle/can revenue in North America and is highly profitable. With changing consumer demand and growing product portfolio, it’s critical to segment customers and determine optimal product mix at outlet level.

Solution: NextBestSKU^© is CONA’s solution that segments customers to build “similar stores” and recommends outlet level assortment with sales predictions.

Benefit: Based on actual revenue growth (in millions) achieved to-date at two bottlers from market-wide testing, NextBestSKU^© is projected to deliver $17mm revenue growth per year from system wide adoption.

“Outlet level insights that are actionable and show the clear retailer benefit is a big win. Our field teams can quickly act on them. It has allowed us to take a more targeted and segmented approach with portfolio availability. Results from several divisions tests are encouraging with 83% repeat orders at 80-90% of predicted volume. We see this as a 2-3mm incremental revenue opportunity.”

– Beeland Nielsen, Sr. Director, Commercial, Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED