Inside SevenUp Bottling Company’s Digital Transformation
As the exclusive bottler for Pepsi in Nigeria, SevenUp Bottling Company puts products in the hands of millions of Nigerians every year. Nigeria represents one of the largest markets for Pepsi globally, with SevenUp Bottling often vying neck-and-neck with Coca-Cola for market dominance. The company bottles a wide range of non-alcoholic beverages including Pepsi, 7UP, Mirinda, Mountain Dew and Teem.
Over the past few years, SevenUp Bottling has embarked on a comprehensive modernisation journey, navigating unique market challenges and leveraging technology to develop its offering.
Established in 1960, SevenUp Bottling Company has grown to encompass nine factories, one head office and several co-packing operations, employing approximately 5,000 people.
By 2018 however, the company found that its IT infrastructure had fallen behind global industry standards and was hindering operational efficiency and market responsiveness.
The journey to modernisation and digitisation
Under the leadership of Vasco Gonçalves, who was appointed the company’s Chief Information Officer in 2018, and Ibidapo Ibrahim, Head of IT, SevenUp Bottling embarked on an ambitious digital transformation. The overhaul aimed not only to modernise the company's technological capabilities but also to redefine its processes, culture and business model. From upgrading basic IT services to implementing advanced ERP systems and exploring innovative sales channels, the company's journey illuminates the multifaceted nature of digital transformation in a complex market environment.
Vasco explains: “As the innovation lead at the time, I modernised our aging network infrastructure, replacing standalone switches and access points with centralised network management. Now, our WiFi SSID is unified nationwide, allowing seamless, password-free connectivity across all sites.”
The company's IT infrastructure was severely outdated, with the last major technology update occurring around 2001. This lag extended beyond hardware to processes and systems.
"Even in the instances where the ERP version was upgraded, the process was not upgraded,” Vasco continues. “We still kept all processes centralised in our core accounting, not going to other functions. It was mainly a posting system."
This limited technological footprint hampered the company's ability to operate efficiently and compete effectively.
Starting from scratch
The first step in SevenUp Bottling's digital transformation was to expand its IT service catalogue and upgrade its infrastructure. This included democratising internet access, implementing security services and firewalls and overhauling the company's hardware and networking capabilities.
"We had to change everything,” Vasco emphasises. “We started by expanding our service catalogue, offering more services and changing the hardware, democratising the internet, bringing firewalls, bringing security services along with them. We had to do everything from scratch.”
This comprehensive overhaul was necessary due to the outdated state of the existing infrastructure, and the process involved not just updating technology, but also rethinking the entire IT service model for the company.
Bolstering infrastructure
“Today we've grown to having close to 50 services that we provide to the organisation,” says Ibidapo. “Part of our journey was moving to a third party data centre within Nigeria, which is part of our new hybrid cloud strategy where we leverage on different cloud providers including our private cloud on-premise to improve the services we provide.”
The upgrade has also improved internal communications at SevenUp Bottling.
“As we continue to grow as a country and more services become available from our partners, we are leveraging some of those services and improving overall connectivity and the availability of collaborative solutions.”
SevenUp Bottling has entered a contract with Google to become one of very few organisations in Nigeria that is leveraging Google's technology. Thanks to the attention to infrastructure developments and some well placed partnerships, SevenUp Bottling has achieved full national connectivity across its sites.
“We no longer have to worry about connectivity across our business locations," Ibidapo explains. “Regardless of where you are in Nigeria, you can easily function in any of our business locations like you are sitting in our head office.”
ERP transformation
A critical component of SevenUp Bottling's modernisation efforts was the upgrade of its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Initially, the company explored simpler solutions, but ultimately decided to implement SAP, a comprehensive business software suite.
"As of now, we have half of our factories in SAP and the other half will soon be there," Vasco says. "This has led to a massive process of re-engineering. We took a strategy of using what SAP offers as standard where we can, and changing our processes to match SAP processes whilst still leaving room to accommodate changes because we have uniquenesses in our market, country and industry that cannot fully adopt the standards of SAP."
This shift to SAP represents a significant leap forward for SevenUp Bottling, moving from a system that was primarily used for record-keeping to one that can support real-time operational decision-making.
SevenUp Bottling's partnership with Descasio
SevenUp Bottling Company's digital transformation journey has been significantly bolstered by its strategic partnership with Descasio, a technology solutions provider.
"I didn't want to depend on vendors,” Vasco shares. “I wanted to depend on partners."
Descasio has proven to be a reliable ally for SevenUp Bottling, offering support that extends beyond typical vendor services.
“With Decasio, I know I can pick up the phone and ask for help," Vasco says. This level of trust and responsiveness has been crucial in navigating the complex challenges of digital transformation.
The partnership began with Descasio implementing software solutions such as Google and Microsoft licensing for SevenUp Bottling and, over time, it has evolved to include Descasio's own in-house solutions.
“Descasio didn’t just sell us solutions; they partnered with us strategically, leveraging our combined technical expertise to explore various options and identify the best approach for our business,” Ibidapo explains.
“We are currently working closely with them for process digitisation and automation, using their home grown solution called plug.”
The partnership with Descasio has also helped SevenUp Bottling navigate the challenges posed by Nigeria's economic conditions, particularly currency devaluation.
Ibidapo explains: "The devaluation of the currency has allowed us to innovate."
Operational innovations enhancing customer experience
Alongside the ERP transformation, SevenUp Bottling has introduced a range of supporting solutions to enhance operational efficiency.
“This customer-facing application is called Beta Padi—a Nigerian term that means a very good friend,” Ibidapo explains. “When someone refers to you as their "Beta Padi," they are expressing trust, loyalty and deep friendship.”
The mobile application enables activities such as production declarations and gate management to be performed on-site. As well as being used internally, the application supports customer experience too.
“We created our own mobile application for our customers where they can see their own account, raise their invoices, make their payments, see what's going on with their account and help us reduce the overhead of having to maintain their accounts,” Vasco explains.
These mobile solutions represent a significant shift from the previous manual processes, allowing for real-time data entry in the factories and improved accuracy in production reporting and inventory management. This customer-facing application not only improves the customer experience but also reduces the operational burden on SevenUp Bottling. While the customer — and head office — benefits from live updates from within the factory, SevenUp Bottling also receives live data from its customers.
"Instead of having to rely on our own controls, we leverage on putting the information at the ends of our customers for them to be able to do that account reconciliation and keep their accounts in view,” Vasco says. “We sometimes even hear from them before our own team detects the problems."
“We also have an app called Plant Automation, which streamlines plant control,” Ibidapo expands. “Using a QR code on the PET pallet, we track products across our systems to the warehouse, providing the security team with the data needed to monitor outgoing goods.”
Exploring IoT technology for operational efficiency
SevenUp Bottling Company is actively exploring the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) technology to enhance its operational efficiency.
“We are exploring IoT for truck tracking and diesel monitoring, which will remain work in progress for now. Currently, we use IoT to track the temperature of critical IT equipment locations across Nigeria,” Ibidapo says.
“We've integrated AI into our workflow, leveraging Google Gemini AI within our Google Workspace plan. The Gemini Notetaker in Google Meet enhances requirement gathering and stakeholder alignment, while Google Microphone Sync revolutionizes in-room meetings, allowing seamless participation from individual laptops.
“Gemini in Sheets helps us analyse data quickly, and NotebookLM accelerates data consumption by enabling instant queries—especially useful for reviewing terms and conditions of online products.”
One primary focus is asset tracking, particularly for the company's truck fleet. IoT sensors could provide real-time location data and performance metrics, potentially improving logistics and fleet management.
“We've looked into IoT, and now we can use IoT to improve our asset tracking in most of our locations, particularly our trucks,” Ibidapo explains. “We’re also looking at how we can implement IoT to track how we consume diesel, for example, which is one of our main uses of energy.”
SevenUp Bottling is also exploring using IoT to count items on its production line, which would increase data-driven sales and boost accuracy.
However, Ibidapo notes that implementing these technologies presents unique challenges in Nigeria: “One major factor about this is we can use most of the standard solutions out of the box,” he explains. “We need to develop very innovative, cost effective solutions that allow us to explore IoT during the microeconomic difficulties that are currently facing Nigeria.”
Using technology to boost sales
In a bid to gain greater visibility into market demand and behaviour, SevenUp Bottling has begun piloting online sales channels. This initiative aims to provide insights into the relationship between distributors and retailers.
"We started running several initiatives that allow us to get that line of sight into what the market is demanding and how the market is behaving in real time – not by sending a sales team on the ground to assess how the shops look like, what's the stock count in the shops, but by controlling the transactions in real time,” Vasco says.
One innovative approach involves using WhatsApp as an ordering and payment platform.
Vasco says: "As it's fully integrated into a payment system, people who order on WhatsApp can pay online and we get line of sight into how our retail market is behaving."
This digital sales channel not only provides valuable market insights but also opens up new avenues for growth and customer engagement.
Cultural and portfolio innovation
SevenUp Bottling's transformation extends beyond technology to encompass cultural change and product innovation. It has also expanded its product portfolio beyond Pepsi-branded beverages to include its own brands and been responsive to market needs.
Vasco notes: "We stop being just Pepsi bottlers to create our own products. We bottle our own drinks, our own brands and they're pretty successful."
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company demonstrated its agility by quickly entering the hand sanitiser market.
"When there was a need for hand sanitisers that were not available in Nigeria during Covid, we quickly launched the only hand sanitiser made in Nigeria. We used an old bottled water preform, put a sprayer and we made it available,” says Vasco.
"We democratised it and we made the hand sanitiser available pretty much anywhere in Nigeria."
Unique market challenges
SevenUp Bottling operates in a market with unique challenges, and for much of its history, the company has faced a situation where demand exceeded production capacity.
"The majority of the time I spent with our business was always handicapped in capacity,” Vasco says. “The demand exceeded the capacity, which was a constant for the industry in Nigeria up until very recently."
This situation of excess demand created a set of challenges that are uncommon in many other markets.
"Nothing gets you ready for not having enough capacity for what you can sell,” Vasco continues. “It's a good problem that everybody would love to have, but it's quite a unique problem."
However, the market dynamics are shifting.
"We're now reaching a stage where the players have more capacity than the market demands, which causes some pretty unique challenges that you don't face in other parts of the world," he says.
The future of SevenUp Bottling's technological advancements
As SevenUp Bottling Company continues its digital transformation journey, the focus is shifting towards leveraging its newfound technological capabilities to drive further innovation and market responsiveness. The company's recent experiences, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, have demonstrated its ability to rapidly adapt to changing market conditions and consumer needs.
“We took that appetite for innovation during the pandemic and that segment became a line of home products. So right now we have bar soap, hand wash, general soap, multipurpose use soap,” Vasco says.
The product innovation has promoted and supported the company’s technological advancements.
“In the last few years, the company has gone through a massive transformation in all aspects and of course it demanded also for the procedures and the IT solutions to cope up with the business.”
Looking ahead, SevenUp Bottling Company will continue exploring new digital channels and leveraging data insights to drive decision-making. The company's experience with capacity constraints and the recent shift to a market with more supply than demand presents unique challenges. As SevenUp Bottling continues to refine its digital capabilities, it is well-positioned to navigate these new challenges and maintain its competitive edge in Nigeria's evolving beverage market.
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