The Coca-Cola Company has aligned its growth strategy with several key initiatives, including revenue growth management (RGM). Alex Durham, The Coca-Cola Company’s Director of RGM System Enablement, describes his work as “finding the right products, getting them to the right consumers’ hands, at the right price point,” with the ultimate goal of having consumers choose the company’s beverages throughout the day.
RGM at any company is challenging, and at The Coca-Cola Company, it’s complicated by two things: The company’s large portfolio of products, including waters, sports drinks, dairy products, plant-based beverages, and the ubiquitous flagship soft drinks; and the many independent bottling partners The Coca-Cola Company works with in North America. Each bottler serves unique geographies with differing consumer priorities and preferences. They’re independent companies, but for RGM to succeed, they need to work in concert for the good of all.
Raising the collaborative planning bar
RGM at The Coca-Cola Company is, essentially, a multidimensional planning puzzle that requires input from many geographically dispersed contributors. “We have to figure out how to align [plans] across our 67 bottlers in the United States,” Durham explains. “Anaplan’s been a great solution for us in that regard. We can collaborate effectively [and] contribute to this aligned plan that we come up with together.”
The results have been substantial, even in the face of global economic headwinds. In an earnings release, The Coca-Cola Company announced that excellence in RGM helped it build “a competitive edge” and that the company “continues to raise the bar in integrated execution [with bottlers] to deliver value to its customers and consumers in an inflationary environment.”
