Microsoft Customer Stories
G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, Inc.
Transforming in-store merchandising and auditing to achieve targeted business goals
The field teams at G&J Pepsi have always embraced technology on behalf of their customers. When the IT department was tasked with delivering more on-the-go services for the company, they embraced the opportunities and challenges. By using Microsoft PowerApps, Power BI, and Microsoft Flow, the seven-person team created custom applications to automate the company’s store audit and merchandising process. They were able to build, deploy, and manage this scalable end-to-end solution without previous app development experience.
Delivering a better experience
G&J Pepsi, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, has more than 1,600 employees focused on manufacturing, distributing, and marketing the full line of Pepsi-Cola products. Most of their staff spend their time in the field managing their retail accounts.
As the industry is becoming more reliant on mobile phones and tablets for business, Eric McKinney, Cloud Services Manager, was tasked with delivering more on-the-go services for the company. With a goal of becoming more efficient, gaining new insights, and keeping the company better connected with its customers, he set out to create a better experience.
IT is delivering more
The IT department at G&J Pepsi consists of seven technology professionals capable of handling any problem that comes their way. Each team member knows a lot about networking, databases, leveraging applications, and more, but none of them class themselves as being a developer.
The team has worked in Microsoft Office 365 for a while as they dove headfirst into a cloud-first world. They successfully integrated Exchange Online, Yammer, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint Online into the organization. So when McKinney learned about Microsoft PowerApps, he thought it could be a great fit for simplifying and mobilizing processes for G&J Pepsi’s field workers.
His team was already comfortable using cloud-based applications, and with PowerApps, they could create custom web and mobile apps without writing any code. McKinney hoped to create a rich mobile experience that matched what users were accustomed to on their personal devices.
“It was a no-brainer,” says McKinney. “We didn’t even need to look at anything other than Microsoft. It comes from our philosophy of integration, and we already had the authentication, data sources, and licensing place. So there was no need to get buy-in from the organization.”
Building the Store Audit app
The G&J Pepsi IT team used PowerApps to create Store Audit, an app that enables better mobility and flexibility for field personnel. Previously, they’d record key information from a store audit on a piece of paper, then, place it in a tray with little accountability and often no resolution. Now those in the field can inspect stores, collect data, provide an aggregated view to leadership, and better ensure customer satisfaction.
Similarly, they created a merchandiser app for better store tracking. If, for example, delivery personnel see displays that need to be fixed, they now know submitting this information will trigger alerts to the supervisor and upwards. Previously, their only course of action was to email the salesperson, with no assurance the salesperson would be available to respond. “That email could just go in a black hole,” summarizes McKinney.
With both apps, information is now captured in real-time. Power BI dashboards visualize the data for quick overviews and deep dives into the numbers, and Microsoft Flow—another cloud-based service—triggers alerts to the relevant teams.
As McKinney explains, “Just reading between the lines for our organization, I knew the final piece of this puzzle was a vision for the end product’s capabilities. Even though we weren’t a team of coding experts, we knew what we needed to accomplish.”
Creating in PowerApps helped the team steer clear of hurdles that could occur when developing without professional developers. With cloud systems already in place, they’ve been able to primarily lean on just two team members who can build applications. Even without scaling up staff, the apps were up and running in a matter of weeks.
Building the right answer
By learning while creating their key LOB apps, the team has already built eight applications ranging from time trackers and driver notifications to sales operations requests. They continue to evolve the applications and identify new application opportunities in order to address challenges that IT teams without application development capabilities face.
G&J Pepsi field reps have already submitted more than 15,000 surveys via the store audit module. The enthusiasm about this new way of collecting and aggregating information, and ultimately creating meaningful and actionable insights, has started what McKinney calls an “app revolution.”
According to McKinney, “PowerApps was the only way we could overcome the big swirl of challenges that we face day in and day out.” Plus, improved communication and the ease of accessing data have empowered the field team and sales personnel to accomplish more.
The leadership team that gave the initial directive is appreciating the positive effect on their bottom line. The apps saved the organization about USD500,000 in just the first year. Much of the savings come from McKinney’s team being able to avoid outsourcing another vendor’s merchandising app, at a cost of USD240,000 for the first year. And most importantly, this simplified—and more efficient—customer experience is already impacting G&J Pepsi’s customers via better communication and faster turnarounds on requests.
“I’m proud of the way this team was able to unlock new insights and deliver these new mobile services to more than 900 field personnel, all without a professional developer on staff,” according to McKinney. “The expectation was to deliver good apps quickly at a low cost. PowerApps gave me the confidence that we could accomplish this in-house.”
Find out more about G&J Pepsi on LinkedIn.