Coca-Cola Hellenic

The Client

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company is one of the largest bottlers and vendors of The Coca-Cola Company’s products in the world, and the largest based in Europe, serving 589 million people in 28 countries. 

In the past, Melon developed for Coca-Cola Hellenic a .NET based scripting tool to speed up the learning curve of new employees and make the overall help desk process as efficient as possible. Also, we built intuitive Flash-based training solution for SAP transactions. 

However, the KnOWLedge Portal is the first SharePoint project Melon delivered for Coca-Cola Hellenic. At the beginning of 2015, after a three-stage tender, we were commissioned to develop knowledge management software to capture and maintain the BSO department’s business processes.

The Project

The company’s BSO department serves many internal units and is in charge of hundreds of business procedures. To facilitate the knowledge management process, the BSO department had introduced MS Excel Sheets to store business process details and steps. Also, as many others process management units do, the BSO leveraged the use of post-it notes on their monitors to describe execution-specific details, which could not be included in the official process documentation, and provided valuable insight and clarifications about certain process aspects. When someone had to be moved or left the company, these specifics were often lost. With the increasing number of processes the amount of data started to stack up and the diverse management practices proved to be inefficient to keep track of, transfer, and especially update the accumulated knowledge.

That’s why the BSO department needed a software tool to provide for structured data and robust change management system featuring a great user experience. Today, if an invoice arrives, The KnOWLedge Portal shows a process diagram that describes step by step what needs to be done. Coca-Cola Hellenic is a huge structure with a lot of new employees arriving each and every month. With the knowledge management system Melon delivered, the newcomers are easily and smoothly introduced to the business processes. Additionally, the senior staff can edit, add and approve processes to expand and develop further the data base.

The Approach

Coca-Cola Hellenic were already using SharePoint Online for user access, data and document management so the MS Platform was the logical choice for the new system as well. Also, they had already their work processes described in MS Visio Diagrams. Melon started with a detailed analysis of these diagrams and the Excel files. They were heavy, with diverse data structures and a lot of sheets. Based on our analysis and the requirements we gathered from the stakeholder, we came up with a unitary data structure to be employed by anybody within the department. Then we were given 15 processes following the suggested structure that served as pilots.

Melon developed a comprehensive functional specification and a detailed plan including status reports every two weeks that were discussed and revised with the client. We prepared wireframe prototypes, workflow and architecture diagrams. The software development work took about four months. Melon uploaded the given 15 pilot processes, and provided consultancy guidance to the BSO department on how to proceed with uploading the rest 500 processes they had. 

The Challenges

The most difficult part was coming up with the structure of the knowledge portal. The business processes at the BSO department can be rather complicated and the stages of approval of the updates are even more so. Besides the steps describing a process, there is a lot more content to each of them – attachments, metadata, Visio diagrams, etc. Some of these differ from country to country because of local legislation and other circumstances and such cases were handled by creating localizations items. To come up with the wireframes and the workflow and to put it all in a user-friendly software with a responsive design was the biggest challenge.

The Results

• Accessible and easy-to-use web-based knowledge management system
• Smooth user experience and non- SharePoint look and feel;
• Smart search-based navigation using metadata refiners and free text search;
• Improved control mechanism, based on employees' roles in the company;
• Subscribtion based email notifications;
• Adnaced and user-friendly filters;
• A design solution that improved the usability of the KnOWLedge Portal;
• Smooth and fast access to the everyday work procedures with minimum logistics involved;
• Eased and speeded the daily work; 
•  Only 8 change requests indicating that the delivered product serves the purposes they have envisioned.

Testimonial

“Having a software development project with Melon is like driving a Mercedes: You can just sit back and relax. They will take care to identify the smallest processes and technical details you were not aware that you should care about, propose the most optimized route and will deliver you in full comfort to your endpoint on time.” 

Gergana Bozhilova

Team Leader

BSS Information Management Team