In beverage and FMCG operations, delivering the perfect batch requires precision – ingredient consistency, water quality, temperature control, filtration, and more. Yet many bottlers still run their business on fragmented systems that don’t communicate. When your Human Capital Management (HCM) system can’t talk to your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, the result is a costly “Silo Tax”: delayed analytics, inefficient labor planning, errors, rising costs, and reduced margins.

Water is the highest‑volume ingredient in most beverage recipes – and increasingly scarce in many regions. Inefficient water use is not only an operational cost but a sustainability concern, aligning closely with broader environmental commitments.

The Vision: Moving Beyond the Spreadsheet

Today’s beverage market shifts quickly – seasonal fluctuations, competitive promotions, changing consumer tastes, and evolving supply constraints. Bottlers often plug gaps with manual workarounds or standalone point solutions, which worsens fragmentation.

To compete, FMCG firms are moving toward a centralized, data‑first operating model where:

• Data is accessible across all corporate systems
• Predictive analytics replace guesswork
• AI‑driven insights enable faster decisions
• Leaders have real‑time visibility across the value chain

A unified data model delivers the “single source of truth” needed to eliminate inconsistent records, reduce errors, and ensure compliance.

The Power of Integration: Dayforce + Dynamics 365

Labor data is one of the strongest drivers of operational performance, but at many companies it lives in a silo. Integrating Dayforce HCM with Microsoft Dynamics 365 closes the gap between HR and Operations, enabling faster, more informed decision‑making.

Integrated Scheduling & Operations

Workforce management data from Dayforce can directly support warehouse efficiency and sales operations in Dynamics – ensuring the right labor is aligned to the right tasks at the right time.

Real‑Time Impact

With shared, real‑time analytics, managers can immediately identify labor gaps, overtime risks, or shift adjustments – reducing costs before they occur, not after.

Modern Employee Experience

Automation and digital tools reduce manual tasks, simplify workflows, and improve the employee experience – all of which strengthen retention and support long‑term operational stability.

Streamlined Processes & Automation

An integrated ecosystem eliminates repetitive work by automating data flows such as:

• New hires automatically created in ERP
• Salary changes synced for payroll and financial planning
• Terminations instantly reflected for costing and access control

Leveraging Industry Enhancements

By enhancing Microsoft Dynamics 365 with specialized FMCG and beverage capabilities (including TPM, DSD, and route management), bottlers gain deeper end‑to‑end visibility. This enables:

• Better promotional planning
• Clear profit tracking on trade promotions
• Faster forecasting
• Linked financial + operational insights

The Roadmap to Growth

Modernization doesn’t happen overnight—but standing still is no longer a viable strategy. With experts who understand both Microsoft Dynamics and Dayforce, bottlers can build a scalable roadmap that:

• Eliminates siloed systems
• Reduces operational waste
• Improves employee experience
• Strengthens financial performance

Eliminate the Silo Tax today!

Watch our recent webinar on-demand, diving deeper into strategies for a unified, data-driven FMCG operation.

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Coca-Cola Burkina Bottling Company Modernizes Operations with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and OnActuate’s Bev365 Solution

Modernizing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems – especially across multiple countries – demands more than just the right technology. It requires experienced teams, strong leadership, thoughtful planning, and a solid support structure. At OnActuate, we’ve helped many organizations navigate this kind of complex transformation.

Here are six real-world lessons to help your organization plan, lead, and execute a successful global ERP rollout.

1. Secure Executive Buy-In Early – and Sustain It

ERP modernization impacts the entire organization, which is why executive sponsorship isn’t just helpful – it’s critical. Leadership must not only support the investment but also connect the project to broader strategic goals, such as growth, compliance, or operational excellence. 

Sustained engagement is also essential. Leaders need to stay involved beyond the kickoff meeting, reinforcing priorities and helping to clear roadblocks when they inevitably arise.

This thought leadership article was originally posted on LinkedIn by Dennis Lacey, VP, Business Development at OnActuate.

May 8 is National Have a Coke Day. For the past 100 years, Coca-Cola has made products that consumers love while focusing on building a more sustainable future.  

Consumers are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of the products they purchase. Beverage bottlers must take steps to reduce their carbon footprint, minimize waste, and use sustainable materials to meet environmental regulations and shifting consumer habits. In fact, a recent study revealed that 66% of consumers said they consider sustainability when making a purchase. 

Reducing your environmental impact involves looking at all your operations and finding opportunities to improve sustainability while gaining other benefits. Microsoft Azure Cloud Services supports sustainability by unifying data intelligence, and building a sustainable infrastructure that serves to reduce the environmental impact of multiple systems operating on separate instances globally. OnActuate has partnered with some of the world’s biggest brands to migrate to the cloud, allowing them to meet their project objectives while gaining sustainability benefits.   

The role of technology in sustainable bottling practices 

Technology has been leveraged to drive environmental initiatives for many years such as eliminating the need for physical paper and storage through methods like e-signatures and digital barcodes. New technologies have made access to data even easier to help drive sustainability through:

• Transportation optimization. Transportation automation optimizes the routing and delivery by fleet or carrier. This allows bottlers to find the best possible routing to reduce fuel consumption, thus decreasing their carbon footprint. 
• Azure Cloud Services and analytics. Unifying data across the business by leveraging Azure Cloud Services allows you to consolidate all systems. This provides efficiencies including reducing resource consumption. Enhanced data analytics can help better manage inventory and raw materials by providing advanced, comprehensive analytics on current usage as well as insights on predictive factors.  
• Supply chain process automation. Lean optimization from demand planning, through production, inventory and logistics/shipping serves further to reduce waste from ‘rush’ orders and carrying excess inventory. This drives sustainability because of transportation cost, leading to less fuel and reduced carbon footprint.

Sustainability in action

Coca-Cola bottlers utilizing our Microsoft Dynamics 365 extended solution have reaped the benefits of automation and data to drive sustainability. Here’s a snapshot at how these organizations are making an impact: 

• Diamond Beverages (DBPL) has been optimizing operations through lowering raw material inputs, thus reducing transportation, waste, and carbon emissions. This has been effective by removing the excess from the packaging while adhering to more stringent design guidelines. Through their automation and related initiatives, DBPL was able to carry a lower-than-average direct goods inventory, reducing the need for raw materials such as sugar cane. This decreases fuel consumption used to grow and transport these products. 
• Ludhiana Beverages (LBPL) unified all their systems by moving to Azure Cloud. The move eliminated the need for multiple systems in several locations. This reduced their carbon footprint by reducing consumption of energy and less need of physical space. 

Promoting sustainability supports positive change

Consumers are supporting companies that make real positive changes to combat climate change. Companies that meet or go above the regulatory requirements are winning over governments and consumers. This change is going to take a collective effort from individuals, small businesses, and large corporations to change the world – so we can continue to celebrate fun holidays like Have a Coke Day for decades to come.

Since the company’s founding in 1892, Coca-Cola has grown to a $275 billion company. In 2020 Coca-Cola announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to standardize operations on Microsoft’s cloud. Here at OnActuate, we’ve had the privilege to work with some of the biggest bottlers in India for Coca-Cola. Discover the rich history of the popular soft drink and learn how OnActuate helped to enhance the bottling process with our innovative technology.

Founding of Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola was first created in 1886 in Atlanta, Georgia by John Pemberton. Before his passing, Pemberton sold the recipe and brand in 1892 which resulted in the founding of the Coca-Cola Organization. Throughout the decades that followed the creation of the beverage, Coca-Cola skyrocketed in popularity and cultural relevance all around the world.

Cultural Relevance

From iconic commercials such as 1993’s “Northern Lights” that solidified the polar bear as an official mascot for the brand for years; to famous K-pop boy group, BTS as official ambassadors, references to Coca-Cola can be seen throughout pop culture, ensuring the company’s status as a global megabrand.

Innovative technology

It is not just advertisements that make Coca-Cola successful, but the company’s constant commitment to be where the consumer is and staying on top of the latest technology to further the brand.

For example, on the consumer front, Coca-Cola’s national Sip & Scan campaign utilizes the latest in modern technology to encourage consumers to connect with the brand and earn rewards.

On the business side, Coca-Cola understood the need to modernize its business processes by moving to the cloud. It partnered with Microsoft for a cloud-based digital transformation to unify its many dispersed systems and bring its technology under one powerful platform.

Coca-Cola bottlers

Nowadays, Coca-Cola operates by working with over 225 bottling partners through more than 900 bottling plants worldwide to manufacture and distribute their beverages.

Coca-Cola bottling partners work closely with local vendors, such as grocery stores, restaurants and movie theaters, to execute localized strategies. These vendors then sell Coca-Cola products to consumers at a rate of 1.9 billion servings a day. That’s why it’s important to ensure that every bottler representing Coca-Cola stays up-to-date on the latest technology to optimize business processes.

The OnActuate Bottling Solution

Coca-Cola has had an over 130-year-old journey from soft drink company to cultural icon. OnActuate may only be a decade old but has had an important relationship with Coca-Cola and its bottling partners over the years. We have had the opportunity to work with some of Coca-Cola’s biggest bottlers in India on digital transformation projects utilizing the power of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.

It all started with Coca-Cola India themselves, who needed a technology partner to produce complex Power BI reports quickly for them.

OnActuate then partnered with Ludhiana Beverages Pvt. Ltd. (LBPL) on a digital transformation project, originally migrating its highly customized Dynamics AX 2012 to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. The project eventually evolved into a full-blown implementation across all functions. The result helped reduce LBPL’s customized system that was burdening the company’s processes by 17%.

We then partnered with other huge Coca-Cola bottlers from Moon Beverages Limited and Diamond Beverages (P) Limited (DBPL), allowing OnActuate to naturally develop a process that could be replicated. This led to our innovative bottling solution that leverages the power of Dynamics 365, developing industry-specific solutions, and offering expert services.

Learn more about the OnActuate Bottling Solution and how it utilizes powerful cloud-technology to keep bottlers innovative, connected, and competitive.

The future of bottling

Despite global supply chain issues such as labour, transportation and container shortages, affecting many industries, consumers still desire for the same great products. OnActuate continues to support the bottling industry with our innovative solution so they can better serve their customers.

We recently partnered with Bisleri International Pvt. Ltd, India’s largest bottled mineral water manufacturer, on a digital transformation implementing of Dynamics 365 and our bottling solution. This partnership attests to the success of OnActuate’s bottling solution that can easily be replicated for other bottlers beyond Coca-Cola products.

OnActuate will continue to partner with bottlers around the world, improving the industry’s technology one partnership at a time.

Contact us

OnActuate’s global team has extensive knowledge and experience in the bottling industry, making us a premier tech partner. Our trusted team of experts are available to walk your business through the entire process, keeping your objectives and goals in mind.

If your bottling operation is experiencing a bottleneck, contact us to discuss a digital transformation.

Improve the operational efficiency of your manufacturing business with a light-weight digital solution  

The challenges of the world today 

Did you know that 64% of manufacturing workers have cumbersome manual processes or don’t have the right technology to help them succeed? Now just think about navigating all those challenges, while also dealing with supply chain issues and worldwide inflation. 

A survey of nearly 100 executives working in manufacturing and distribution stated that the industry was facing labor market, supply chain and cybersecurity challenges. The survey also found that 69% of the executives want to upgrade facilities, while 22% plan to expand existing facilities.  

If you are one of these manufacturers who are looking to upgrade or expand, but also know that your current processes and IT systems would not be able to keep up with your growth, then you might just need to find an implementation partner to help you before you begin your journey. Check out our blog on how to find the right implementation partner here. 

Common challenges before the pandemic 

Manufacturing businesses often focus on the bottom line and maintaining stability, with the pandemic creating a sense of urgency and greater emphasis on these concerns. We believe it is crucial to implement solutions to address business challenges head-on, especially in today’s current economic climate. 

The top 5 typical challenges we’ve seen include: 

1. A lack of automation, leading to lengthy manual processes
2. Difficulty managing the physical storage of designs and version control 
3. Absence of a collaborative digital solution to address changes on a real-time basis in a manufacturing set up 
4. Paper-based approvals which are difficult to keep updated, organized, and properly filed 
5. Numerous primitive applications, creating complex IT landscape 

OnActuate solutions are designed to address these common challenges by leveraging the Microsoft Power Platform. 

OnActuate Power Apps in-a-box for Manufacturing Solution 

At OnActuate, we’ve been building custom apps for as long as we’ve been in business. Our solutions are built using Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Automate.  

Power Apps is a platform specifically designed to facilitate business app development. The OnActuate Power Apps in-a-box for Manufacturing Solution is a collaborative platform with apps designed specifically to carry out day-to-day operations for a manufacturing organization. Driven by the specific needs of our global customer base, this simple, light weight digital solution can be customized to meet any pre-production or production needs.  

Benefits include: 

• Engineering change orders  
• Deviation control 
• Equipment maintenance  
• Digital mockup creation 

Real-life benefits your peers experience with this solution 

We’ve implemented and designed apps for purchase requisition, timesheet approval, and expense management for many of our global enterprise customers to enable total mobility across their entire business. Customizing apps to meet the unique needs of your business can quickly boost efficiency, employee productivity, and market share. OnActuate has developed several custom apps that are available for download on Microsoft AppSource. 

OnActuate’s Power Apps in a Box for Manufacturing meets the needs of a global leader in the capital goods sector, CNH Industrial. A key feature for them is the ability to respond to design changes in an agile manner. In addition, we are working with CNHi to implement demand forecasting and planning. 

We also custom-build apps based on customer needs. For example, after implementing OnActuate’s Field Force Manager (FFM) app, India’s largest interior infrastructure company Greenply saw improvements in both internal operations and customer experience with the help of Field Force Manager (FFM), a mobile app that was developed by our team. FFM is a mobile field service management solution designed to increase communication between your field service workforce and improve how they interact and serve your customers.

Start your Power Apps in-a-box journey

Finding ways to stay innovative, while mitigating risks during unprecedented times of great uncertainty can be challenging. However, the businesses that understand the need to always be steps ahead and prepared for anything (as the many disruptions from the global pandemic has shown us) are the ones who continue to be successful throughout. 

Download our no-cost informative handout to learn more about OnActuate’s Power Apps in-a-box for Manufacturing solution, comprised of custom apps that were designed specifically to meet the evolving needs of manufacturing organizations like yours.