Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is the business I've chosen. It is a business in the beverage sector that is engaged in the production of soft drinks. The company has branches in practically every nation on earth and is constantly expanding. It includes uniform codes that serve as a reference for all producers worldwide to ensure consistency in their goods. The organization has made significant investments in technology as a result of its rapid expansion to guarantee the smooth operation of all its programs. It has a beta coefficient of 0.66 as at 21st April, 4pm. In general, beta coefficient is a sensitivity measure of a share in terms of price, to the movements in market price. It can also be regarded as the security market line slope. If a company has a beta coefficient of 1, it would mean that the company's stock has equal risks to those in the overall market and its earnings will be market returns only. If a coefficient is below 1, then the risks and returns are below average and if it is above 1 then the risks and returns are above average. The beta of Coca Cola Company is 0.66 which means that it is below 1 hence there is lesser risks and lesser returns. This means that if I choose to invest in the company at the moment, I will be exposed to very little risks, that is, I will be having a higher degree of certainty. Following the little risk and the higher degree of certainty, I will have very little gains from the stock. This information shows that the company is stable in the share market.
Business analytics
The Coca Cola Company has leveraged the POS data of retailers, such as Walmart, with the mission of building an analytical snapshot of the customer. This includes iPad reporting and enabling the collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) supply chain process. Walmart accounts for more than $4 billion of the sales of the Coca Cola Company. When the data that is growing in the business processes gets the ability to outpace the ability of the people in their efforts to visualize, absorb or process new talent, there will have to be an emergence of business analytics (Bain&Kleinknect, p. 24). This means the demand for new workers who will play the roles of analytic savants, data scientists and Quant modelers. The demand for these workers will be to convert into actionable insights, the great data volumes. The data below is a representation of the above information.
Industry 4.0
The fourth face of industrial revolution is recognized as 'industry 4.0'. It spans every detail from that of the connected employees, connected logistics and supply chain to connected machinery. It also does the encompassing of developments in machine-to-machine communications, wearable technology, IoT and the use of artificial intelligence. Industry 4.0 development mostly focuses on data (Christensen, 2013, p. 12). Coca Cola has adapted this by the use of its campaign of personalized branded bottles. The campaign allowed the customers to place special orders of bottles and cans that featured the names of their friends and a short message. The campaign was so essential in attracting multiple sales for the company. The company is also able to connect its employees to the whole processing process and use their data for increasing on efficiency.
Smart factory
In the year 2015, n-Join was invited to play a role in 'The Bridge by Coca Cola'. The main role that the program was to play would be acceleration which introduced the company to a global coca cola world. Through a period of six months, the executives of n-Join travelled to London, Atlanta and Tel Aviv with the aim of presenting the unique IoT solution, meet industrial leaders around the world and also take part in workshops. There was a successful installation with the company's bottlers in a lot of countries after one year (Yang, 2013, p. 54). The Bridge offered the company a chance for a smart factory that would operate efficiently by introducing more technological innovations to help with the promotion of the same.
The Choice of AI
The Coca Cola Company is doing away with the creative minds of human beings and replacing them with software algorithms. They are still experimenting on whether the Al bots are capable of beating their masters, the humans. The move has greatly been criticized as it would see the loss of employment to thousands of employees around the world whose functions will be replaced by the bots. It is quite a creative move in terms of efficiency for the company but again it will really oppress the workforce. Coca Cola also went further and appointed its first digital marketing officer who is meant to propel the firm to the transformation to a digital company (Christensen, 2013, p. 43). This move means that the company is not reconsidering any move in the introduction of the Als in the company operations.
Internet of Things
The idea of Internet of Things is also a new concept that is being introduced to the company. To many, vending machines are just equipments but for Coca Cola Vending, it is a representation of the retail stores of the most loved brands of beverages all around the globe. Internet of Things is vast in the company due to the millions of locations situated all around the globe. The company vendors a total of more than 100 beverages each second due to its vastness in nature. Combining the great sales and Internet of Things is therefore very remarkable. Vending by Coca Cola has a good position in realizing the value of a connection between smart fleets which call home daily, delivering payments through mobile wallets, and a digital platform that delivers relevant messages (Yang, 2013, p. 90).
Technology in the Operations Sector
Technology in the operations sector is quite a vital tool. It is for this reason that all organizations that are interested in making profits should invest heavily in these projects. They are quite expensive to implement but once they are implemented, it becomes real easy to cover the returns on investment. A good investor would consider all these factors when wanting to improve on operations.
Bibliography
Bain, D. and Kleinknecht, A. eds., 2016. New concepts in innovation output measurement. Springer.
Christensen, C., 2013. The innovator’s dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
Yang, L., Yang, S.H. and Plotnick, L., 2013. How the internet of things technology enhances emergency response operations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 80(9), pp.1854-1867.
