Coca-Cola's bottlers expand blockchain pilot with SAP

Coke One North America (CONA), the firm that manages the North American IT operations of Coca-Cola's bottlers, is partnering with SAP to leverage blockchain technology to examine the supply chain processes of the soda giant's 70 bottling franchisees.

According to a report from Business Insider, CONA's clients manufacture and ship nearly 160,000 orders a day from Coca-Cola—making it difficult for CONA and bottlers to get visibility into their supply chains. CONA hopes its blockchain pilot program with SAP will enable it to increase efficiencies for its bottlers and lower costs.

"There are a number of transactions that are cross-companies and multiparty that are inefficient. They go through intermediaries; they are very slow. And we felt that we could improve this and save some money," Andrei Semenov, the senior manager at CONA tells Business Insider.

"What we achieved here with blockchain is creating a document flow across the supply chain," Torsten Zube, the head of the SAP Innovation Center Network, added.

CONA's initial pilot program with SAP started with two clients and will now expand to all 70 franchisees.