Globally connected coolers for valuable insights

Atos becomes official IoT partner for Coca-Cola HBC

Source: The Coca-Cola Company

Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, today announces a new multi-national contract with the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (Coca-Cola HBC), one of the world’s largest bottlers for The Coca-Cola Company with operations in 28 countries in Europe, Russia & Nigeria serving approximately 595 million consumers.

Under the new contract, Atos will provide end-to-end IoT services for the Coca-Cola HBC Connected Cooler program. The program delivers valuable insight into consumer behavior and retail performance while helping to improve operational efficiency and increase sales revenue.

Connected Cooler data

Connecting assets, such as in-market cooler placement, is a cornerstone of The Coca-Cola System’s digital business enabling strategy. Coca-Cola HBC, with investment in a fleet of 1.6 million coolers in operation, is leading the way. Coca-Cola HBC is partnering with Atos to rollout the Atos Codex Connected Cooler solution and will have the first 300,000 coolers connected by the end of 2018.

This solution will enable Coca-Cola HBC to access huge amounts of point of sale data, including: in store cooler placement and availability, temperature, stock-level, product placement, customer behavior and trends. This end-toend solution will enable Coca-Cola HBC to connect, collect and manage data from connected coolers across the 28 countries where Coca-Cola Hellenic operates.

Smart coolers also enable proximity interaction with the use of mobile apps, enabling Coca-Cola HBC to engage with customers in real-time. This provides an added value with customized offers and near-me promotions, turning digital engagement into increased product sales.

Smart stores and intelligent devices in brick-and-mortar retail

Atos Codex Connected Cooler is an IoT solution. Using either existing cooler sensors or fitting new ones, the solution establishes secure network connections to a cloud-based IoT platform over which the data can be processed and analyzed.

Alain Brouhard, Group Business Solutions & Systems Director and CIO at Coca-Cola Hellenic HBC, comments “By connecting the coolers we are starting our journey towards digitizing the marketplace and establishing a connected environment with our customers and shoppers. Such an environment will allow us to accelerate time-to-market and increase operational efficiency, while at the same time gaining more insightful market analytics to engage better with our consumers.”

Peter Pluim, Executive Vice President, Infrastructure and Data Management at Atos says “Using Smart coolers is the first step in this journey towards a fully connected ecosystem. This end-to-end solution will not only enable Coca-Cola HBC to easily manage the data from millions of connected coolers, but also be the foundation in turning more assets such as shelves and vending machines into IoT devices. In addition, these connected assets will become an important touchpoint for consumer engagement.”

This contract with Coca-Cola HBC is a top priority for Atos Codex for Retail, as it connects all devices within the retail sales process. Based on a technology platform delivered by Microsoft, millions of different devices like shelves, vending machines or coffee machines can be connected, thus creating huge amounts of data on customer behavior, usage and state of operation.