Teamwork for success

Building quality and productive relationships with our customers is at the heart of our strategy because they are the intermediaries through whom shoppers make their purchasing decisions.
In 2008, we won the Grand Prize for the Best Supplier in fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) category by Romanian retail tracking company MEMRB and around 1,000 of its direct business partners for the third consecutive year.
14 Coca-Cola Hellenic

By striving to achieve a closer partnership with our customers we can drive sustainable growth of our business.
Preferred partner for our customers
One of our key strengths is our ability to achieve quality in-store execution by having over 17,000 highly trained sales representatives regularly serving approximately 1.5 million outlets. We believe this direct interaction with our customers gives us a competitive advantage in activating points of purchase and creating value for both our customers and our business. We recognise the importance of continually building world-class capabilities across our entire value chain and to that effect we have developed a groupwide framework for our commercial function. Within this framework, we have implemented guidelines based on proven best practices that are followed by all our country commercial teams. However, rather than adopting a one size fits all approach, we maintain sufficient flexibility for tailored strategies that address market-specific needs. Our goal is to be the preferred partner of our customers. In furtherance of this goal, we have focused on further building customer-centric capabilities that encompass both the supply chain and commercial functions. Closer crossfunctional alignment has resulted in higher levels of service and increased profitability for both us and our customers. In 2008, we continued to invest in the SAP technology platform and implemented its customer interfacing modules in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The roll-out of SAP across our territories is expected to yield significant benefits by helping us better understand our customer, shopper and consumer needs. For example, better demand forecasting and access to real-time inventory data at the stock keeping unit (SKU) level in our outlets and warehouses, enable us to reduce stock shortages in the marketplace and decrease inventory writeoffs. Furthermore, we are better able to manage the sales order and route planning processes to optimise overall sales efficiency and effectiveness, while improving our ability to forecast, plan and execute.

convenience stores, hotels, restaurants, cafs, bars and petrol stations. With such a diverse customer base our sales force has to be highly specialised to understand how to best fulfil our customers needs. In our pursuit of excellence in marketplace execution, we have been implementing a programme we call Right Execution Daily (RED). This programme monitors, at the individual outlet level, how well we implement and maintain our merchandising standards. Furthermore, it helps us identify opportunities to make immediate improvements that support growth for our customers and us. RED is just one part of our efforts to enhance revenue growth opportunities by optimising the combination of brand, package and price for each consumption occasion. Working together with our customers as one team translates into higher customer satisfaction and measurably improved performance. Our training programme for independent grocery stores in Poland is a small but telling example of this effort. We conducted an independent market survey and provided store owners with data on current shopping trends. An analysis of the results helped us identify key factors that affect shopping preferences and habits. Focusing on these factors, we crafted a set of solutions such as repositioning the products on display or remodelling the entire store, which resulted in better business and increased sales for the customers participating in the programme. Improving in-store execution requires the right number of sales people with superior capabilities. We support such capabilities by implementing training plans and on-the-job coaching for both our sales people and their managers. We have also implemented a specialised curriculum focused on capability building for individual areas of our commercial function. Market visits, workshops, presentations, conferences and other communication opportunities enable our employees from different countries to share experiences, learnings and best practices. Finally, training platforms, including our Juice University in Serbia, take such training efforts a step further and focus on turning our sales people into beverage category experts.

Right execution daily

One of our key strengths is our ability to directly reach our customers regularly. Our sales people are dedicated to building strong and constructive relationships with every one of our various customers, including kiosks, grocery stores,

Avra Herbal won the Silver Award in the Best Enhanced Water category at Zenith International Publishings Water Innovation Awards in Germany among 201 entries from 40 countries
Annual report 2008 15