Coca-Cola's Strategic Information Management

This assignment tasks students with analyzing the strategic use of information systems by The Coca-Cola Company. It requires an examination of how Coca-Cola leverages IT to support its global operations, drive innovation (e.g., through technology partnerships and 'Cool Hunting'), ensure product quality and safety, and achieve sustainability objectives. Students are expected to draw upon relevant frameworks and theories from information systems management literature to provide a comprehensive assessment of Coca-Cola's IT strategy.

Running head: STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Strategic Information Systems
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature Review............................................................................................................................2
Identification of Company...........................................................................................................2
Operations and Functionality.......................................................................................................3
Current Process........................................................................................................................3
Any Gaps existing....................................................................................................................3
Specific issues the new System will fix...................................................................................4
Criteria to meet requirements..................................................................................................5
Information Systems Strategy and its need.................................................................................5
Difficulties in Information Systems Strategy and suggestions....................................................6
Problems in Information Systems project....................................................................................8
Recommendations....................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

2STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Introduction
The Strategic Information Systems are developed to help Organization’s business to
compete and provide business initiatives. The Strategic Information System helps Organization
to achieve better efficiency, control and effectiveness to grow economically (Cassidy 2016). The
Strategic Information System is a type of Information System. The chosen Organization for
Strategic Information System is Coca Cola Company. Coca Cola Company is a well-known and
established beverage industry in the market. Coca Cola has high market share and it tops the list
of popular beverages. The report focuses on the strategic goals that Coca Cola Company wants to
include and their current and future prospective. The purpose of this report is to analyze the gaps
between strategic goals, and current and present IT infrastructure of Coca Cola Company
respectively.
The outline of this literature review report is to discuss Coca Cola Company in details,
operations and functionality, Information Systems Strategy. The other inclusions are difficulties
and problems of Information Strategy Systems with recommendations.
Literature Review
Identification of Company
The chosen Company for Strategic Information Strategy is Coca Cola Company. Coca
Cola Company is an American multinational beverage industry which is a manufacturer, retailer
and marketer of beverages. The Coca Cola Company’s structure is huge as it has large number of
employees. There are various hierarchical levels at the corporate level in the Coca Cola
Company. Coca Cola is a manufacturing company which manufactures non-alcoholic soft drinks

3STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
and other beverages and sells them in the market. The operating segments of Coca Cola
Company are Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Bottling Investments and Corporate segments
(Company 2018). The products of Coca Cola Company are soft drinks and juices including Coca
Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Dr Peeper, Appletiser. The services provided by Coca Cola Company are
manufacturing and distributing of soft drinks across the world.
Operations and Functionality
The operation and functionality of Coca Cola Company is described through the terms
given below.
Current Process
The current process of Coca Cola Company is to improve their bottling footprint in
several regions. They are currently investing on bottling manufacturing. The Coca Cola
Company is restructuring their organization structure to improve their business functions. The
current five processes of quality checks in Coca Cola Company are Bottle Inspectors, Filled
Bottle Inspection Technology. The other three are COBRIX Analyzer, Flow Diverter Valve and
Interlocks (Overview 2017). These quality-checks processes provide full proof of quality checks
from packaging to bottling. The current manufacturing processes are production of beverages
through consumption of less sugar and bottling process through Coca Cola’s own production
unit. The next process is to produce glass bottles and inspect it to check for any dirt or crack.
Finally the Coca Cola is distributed in the market. The Coca Cola Company current departments
are Finance, Human Resource, marketing, Innovation and Planning departments respectively.

4STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Any Gaps existing
The gap existing are production of beverages that are carbonated and can severely affect
people’s health. The healthy lifestyle of people has contributed to less revenue as people want to
have healthy drinks rather than carbonated drinks. The increased demand of healthy drinks
among people has become a concern for Coca Cola Company. The distribution of only beverages
is also a gap as their competitors like Pepsi has entered into the snacks segment. The Coca Cola
Company still lags behind due to only core business in beverages. The introduction of some
products such as Georgia is not well known to customers. (Paré et al. 2015) This product is not
working properly in the market due to less advertisement and marketing. These are the gaps
which exist in the current process and areas which are not working properly.
Specific issues the new System will fix
The specific issues of Coca Cola Company that the new system will fix are given as
follows. The technology is considered to be an important aspect of Coca Cola Company due to
potential it provides to make the business process simpler. The technologies have been adopted
by Coca Cola Company and they are continuously trying to adopt new technologies. The
technologies are driving the businesses of Coca Cola Company in several ways (Bravo, Santana
and Rodon 2016). They have introduced their own bottle manufacturing machines. The bottling
machines have made it easier for Coca Cola Company to reduce their cost of bottle
manufacturing process. The machine has also reduced the labor work reducing the total time of
manufacturing of bottles. The new business strategy also manufactured healthy drinks such as
Honest to introduce in the market (Company 2017). This healthy drink will drive the Coca Cola
Company’s businesses as people are preferring healthy drinks in the current scenario. The Coca

5STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Cola Company’s Research and Development team has done innovations which help the
Company to expand their business unit and supply chain (Company 2014).
Criteria to meet requirements
The criteria which will be used to prove the proposed system meets the requirements are
given as follows. The first criterion is checking of concentrations of carbonated mixture. This
will help to prove the quality of soft drinks that are fit or not for consumption. The second
criterion is proper functioning and maintenance of bottling machines. This will help to check
whether the bottles manufactured are fit for packaging or not (Olins 2017). The other help it will
provide is that bottles are not damaged. The third criterion is testing of innovations to check
whether the developed innovations will contribute in business growth or not. The fourth criterion
is to enter into the snacks segment for better revenue growth in the market.
Information Systems Strategy and its need
The constituents of Information System Strategy are Financial, Operational and Strategic
(Laudon and Laudon 2015). The Financial systems are the basic systems where there are
inclusions of accounting, budgeting and finance operation of particular Organizations (Revell
2016). The Operational systems are the basic systems where there are inclusions of business
operations and its basic concern is managing details of the Organization (Yeoh and Popovič
2016). The Strategic systems are the basic systems where there are inclusions of business and
computer strategies link (Galliers and Leidner 2014). This is the major system for an
Organization as this is the system where business strategies are developed to be realized using
Information Technology systems. The Information System Strategy has characteristics which
include linkage of Information Technology with business strategy and to analyze competitive
advantage.

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The need of Information Systems Strategy is necessary to manage and improve the
quality and quantity of an Organization (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The need here is described
from the perspective of each Information System exist in an Orgaization. The Financial System
is needed for controlled measurement of all business operations and projects successfully. The
Operational System is needed as it controls the details of business and help the Organization to
manage the business operations (Liao et al. 2015). The Strategic information Systems are
important as they are intended to give competitive advantage to the Organization’s business. The
Strategic Information system uses Porter’s Model to define the rivalry pf competitors.
The need of Information System Strategy for overall Organizational Strategy is that it
provides better communication among the systems within the Organization. The communication
helps to achieve better results with quick and effective collaboration. The other benefit it
provides is decision making facility for the Organization (Whittington 2014). The Information
System Strategy helps to facilitate the better decision making ability to improve sales, costs and
profits. The decision making becomes hassle free due to concise form of all data aggregated
through Information Strategy system. The data are recorded through Information System
Strategy to be used for enhancing future prospective of business operations. The recorded data
are helpful in assessing the overall performance of Organization’s business operations.
Difficulties in Information Systems Strategy and suggestions
The difficulties in developing an Information System Strategy in an Organization are
given below (Almalki, Al-fleit and Zafar 2017). The challenges are related to management,
human, technical, environmental and time aspects respectively of an Organization.

7STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
 Management Challenges- The challenges faced by Organizations today are
alignment of Information strategy and business strategy. The difficulties that an
Organization can face are budgeting, personnel and general management while
implementing Information Strategy. The other difficulties are lack of internal
interaction and weak manager support. Therefore, the recommendations for
management challenges is to build effective relation with executive and senior
executives. The replacement of management will help to achieve the
implementation of Information System Strategy.
 Human Challenges- The challenges in lack of workforce, inability in recruitment
of suitable staff and lack of Information Technology expert in an Organization.
Lack of computer knowledge among employees poses difficulty in development
of Information System Strategy. The negligence of workforce from learning
computer skills poses a challenge for an Organization. Therefore, the
recommendations for human challenges are that they should encourage existing
workforce to learn computer skills. The Organization should employ Information
Technology expert and provide training to entire employees of an Organization.
 Technical Challenges- The technical challenges are the basic difficulty in an
Organization which include hardware and software tools. The other challenges are
telecommunications issues such as cables and devices and infrastructure for
Information Technologies. The other difficulties are migration from old system to
new system in an Organization. Therefore, the recommendations for technical
challenges are to maintain stable network and proper infrastructure. The backup

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for database of old system is also necessary to retrieve the data further in new
system.
 Environmental Challenges- The environmental challenges are the factors which
influence an Organization externally and internally such as work culture, change,
behavior, poor coordination and others. The other less important environmental
challenges are political conflicts in an Organization and misunderstanding among
management and employees. Therefore, recommendations for environmental
challenges are changing of attitude in office premises and improvement in
coordination will help in better interaction and management.
 Time Challenges- The time challenges are the factors such as lack of proper time
management. The time is an important factor for an Organization. The extension
of time for developing Information System Strategy poses a challenge for an
Organization. Therefore, recommendations for time challenges are time
management and developing the Information System Strategy at right time to
avoid any glitches.
Problems in Information Systems project
The study of the two cases given below will help to understand the problem due to
Information System failure in an Organization. The typical problems that might be expected to
arise within an Information System projects are given in the following paragraphs. The
The study on information systems in hospital shows the problems that raised were human
cultural and environmental factors. The failure factors are unclear goals, absence of a project
champion, poor health resignation, time, poor technical assistance and insufficient technical staff
(Verbeke, Karara and Nyssen 2015). Another other study on United States Healthcare

9STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Government website shows the failure factors as follows. The first issue is interaction among
sub-contracts working on different segments of the Information System projects. The second
issue is lack of leadership while working on Information Systems project (Anthopoulos et al.
2016). The third issue is lack of testing of Information Systems project aspects. The fourth issue
is choice of unusual and unfamiliar databases for Information Systems project.
Recommendations
The recommendations for the problems of Information Systems project in the case studies
given above, are suggested in the following paragraphs.
 Realization of human systems- The realization of human systems and systems
engineering completely. The human resources contribute a major part in resolving
the problems.
 Providing Information Infrastructure- The recommendation of providing proper
and effective information infrastructure for every problems of Information
System.
 Time Management- The time management is necessary to outperform the
associated problems of development of Information System and its failures.
 Stable network- The stable network is necessary for communication and
management of Information System and its failures.
 Coordination and communication- The coordination and communication among
employees is necessary for better improvement of Information System functions
and operations.

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Conclusion
The discussion conclude that Information System is an essential part of an Organization.
The report shows that Coca Cola Company’s current process and their strategic goals has huge
differences which is fixed by the Information System Strategy. The Coca Cola Company is taken
to analyze its aspects and operations. The Information Systems provides strategies for
Organization’s functions and operations. There are difficulties in Information System strategy
developments however they can be overcome through recommendations provide in the
discussions. The problems raised through Information Systems projects should be managed and
remedies should be suggested for better performance of Information Systems. Therefore, the
report shows the benefits that Strategic Information System provides analysis and alignment
between the strategic goals and present scenario of an Organization.

11STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS
References
Almalki, M., Al-fleit, S. and Zafar, A., 2017. Challenges in Implementation of Information
System Strategies in Saudi Business Environ-ment: A Case Study of aBank. International
Journal of Computer Trends and Technology, 43, pp.2231-28.
Anthopoulos, L., Reddick, C.G., Giannakidou, I. and Mavridis, N., 2016. Why e-government
projects fail? An analysis of the Healthcare. gov website. Government Information
Quarterly, 33(1), pp.161-173.
Bravo, E.R., Santana, M. and Rodon, J., 2016. Automating and informating: roles to examine
technology’s impact on performance. Behaviour & Information Technology, 35(7), pp.586-604.
Cassidy, A., 2016. A practical guide to information systems strategic planning. CRC press.
Company, O. (2014). How Coca-Cola Brings Outside Technology In. [online] The Coca-Cola
Company. Available at: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/cool-hunting-how-coca-
colas-shell-huang-and-team-find-new-tech [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].
Company, O. (2017). Coca-Cola and Honest Tea Team Up to Bring Healthy Tea Options to
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bottled-herbal-tea-brand [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].
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Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and
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Verbeke, F., Karara, G. and Nyssen, M., 2015. Human Factors Predicting Failure and Success in
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Whittington, R., 2014. Information systems strategy and strategy-as-practice: a joint agenda. The
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