Cadbury Schweppes, based in the UK, is the world’s largest confectionery company and has a strong regional presence in beverages in North America and Australia. By the late-1990s, Cadbury Schweppes was maintaining 25 different SAP systems. Maintenance was expensive and integration was difficult. Around 2000, the company established a program to move to three regional SAP systems worldwide and standardize processes around those systems. However, the rollout of this solution proved to be difficult and risky. By the summer of 2004, the company needed an alternative that would be more flexible and involve less risk.
The Solution
Cadbury Schweppes selected Capgemini to help it deploy an approach based on the latter’s Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). As part of the program, the company defined and created its own Component Based Architecture (CBA), which it considers to be synonymous with SOA. Solutions can be designed and developed as components or services. New systems can be deployed in a much more gradual way than they were before. Cadbury Schweppes is committed to maximizing its use of packaged application solutions from vendors like SAP and Oracle/Siebel deployed as components. This new approach to solution delivery was adopted by Cadbury Schweppes through its own architecture office, which was set up with the help of Capgemini.
The Result
By taking an SOA approach, Cadbury Schweppes reduced the degree of risk generally associated with large rollouts and established greater flexibility and the ability to adapt more easily and quickly to change. The system also makes it possible for Cadbury Schweppes to track the number of services developed and the reusability of the services. In addition, the establishment of the architecture office enables the company to develop its own SOA capabilities as an ongoing process rather than as a one-time project.
How Cadbury Schweppes and Capgemini Worked Together
With origins stretching back over 200 years, Cadbury Schweppes’ products- including brands such as 7Up, Cadbury, Schweppes, Halls, Trident, Dr Pepper, Snapple, Trebor, Dentyne, Bubblicious and Bassett-are enjoyed in almost every country around the world. The Group employs over 55,000 people.
The IT department at Cadbury Schweppes comprised about 1,400 people, who had previously been responsible for maintaining the company’s 25 different SAP systems. When maintenance of those systems became too expensive the company opted instead for a wide-scale program consisting of three regional SAP systems worldwide. All processes would be standardized around these systems.
However, management of this large deployment proved to be difficult and risky. For example, the first regional deployment had a major impact on topline revenues in the first year of operation. The second and third deployments were less dramatic, but the company decided that the approach was unacceptable. According to the CIO, Christine Connelly, "The time had come for the IT function to stop playing an extreme sport at the expense of the business." So although the company had 8,000 people already on the new platform, a decision was made to find a more manageable approach to future systems deployment. Cadbury Schweppes needed more responsive, flexible and innovative IT solutions that could be deployed at greater pace with more control to support the rapid growth and constant change demanded by the business. The company also wanted to get better reuse from existing technology investments.
Cadbury Schweppes engaged Capgemini to help it develop a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach using Capgemini’s Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) as the base. As part of the program, the company defined and created its own Component Based Architecture (CBA), considered to be synonymous with SOA.
With this approach Cadbury Schweppes can view the business in terms of a collection of interrelated process steps or "services," such as check customer credit or authenticate user. An SOA/CBA approach will enable the company to arrange and rearrange these discrete services to fulfill business requirements and respond to changing conditions.
After the architecture design phase, Capgemini worked with Cadbury Schweppes to deploy several business-led pilot projects to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The aim of these pilots was to show how the functionality could be developed and deployed using SOA/CBA principles. Each pilot was developed in a rapid fashion and was built out of a number of services. The company is currently tracking how many of the services are reusable.
The learnings from the pilots are being used to develop further deployment programs in the different regions. In Australia, for example, Capgemini is helping with the delivery of one of these programs. In general, the programs are run by Cadbury Schweppes, using the competencies and capabilities that Capgemini helped them to develop through the architecture office. In this way, the company has adopted an SOA approach within its IT department as part of its corporate culture and way of working, rather than as a one-time project.
Cadbury Schweppes knows that SOA/CBA will change the way the company looks at the business and will transform the way that IT is delivered inside the company. The approach will make it possible for the company to move from its large, tightly integrated, end-to-end processes to a world in which they have business process divorced from the underlying data and applications as far as possible. SOA will enable Cadbury Schweppes to break projects into smaller, more manageable steps, which can be delivered incrementally. This will, in turn, reduce business risk and allow IT to respond to business-led change in a more flexible and timely way.
