# Reconcile orders between bottlers without weeks of back-and-forth

> CONA Services LLC, the shared IT provider of the twelve largest North American Coca-Cola bottlers, records cross-company orders on a Hyperledger Fabric ledger running on the SAP platform. The bottlers are legally independent franchisees with their own ERP systems, so reconciling open orders between them took around 50 days and tied up working capital. In the Coca-Cola Bottling Harbor extension, Provide Technologies and Unibright additionally synchronise the ERP systems via the Baseline Protocol on the public Ethereum network without exposing business data.

**Sector:** Secondary sector · **Industry:** Food and beverage industry · **Organisation:** CONA Services LLC · **Maturity level:** Production

Canonical URL: https://www.sapientblock.com/en/use-cases/cona-services-auftraege-zwischen-abfuellern-wochenlange-abstimmung-ausgleichen

## Documentation status

- **Project status:** Production
- **Evidence:** Evidence medium
- **Editorial review:** pending

## Description

CONA Services LLC, the joint IT service provider of the twelve largest North American Coca-Cola bottlers, manages cross-company orders on a distributed ledger. The bottlers are legally independent franchisees who exchange orders among themselves when one plant produces for another, each operating its own ERP system. Reconciling open orders between the companies took around 50 days this way, tying up capital in the process accordingly.

In 2019, the first North American Coca-Cola bottlers commissioned a ledger based on Hyperledger Fabric running on SAP’s Blockchain-as-a-Service platform. The operator is CONA Services, the joint IT service provider of the twelve largest bottlers, which creates the crucial prerequisite: no single franchisee hosts the data of the others. The aim and proof of the project is to shorten order reconciliation from around 50 days to a few days, improving productivity, cost structure and payment flow between franchisees. In a second expansion stage, CONA developed the so-called Coca-Cola Bottling Harbor together with Provide Technologies and Unibright, based on the Baseline Protocol. This method reconciles the ERP systems of the participants over the public Ethereum network without disclosing business data there, making the approach connectable for partners outside the internal network as well. The case is a reference example showing that a distributed ledger can support not only traceability but also commercial reconciliation between independent companies.

## Benefits

- Lower capital commitment through shorter coordination cycles.
- A transferable pattern for franchise systems, cooperatives and joint ventures.
- Order reconciliation between bottlers shortens from around 50 days to a few days.
- No single franchisee hosts the data of others because a joint IT service provider operates it.
- The Baseline extension reconciles ERP systems over a public network without disclosing business data.
- Faster reconciliation accelerates payment flow between franchisees.
- Significantly less bilateral clarification between the companies involved.
- A shared working status instead of conflicting ERP extracts.

## Challenges

- Without a joint IT service provider, the question of operation would be difficult to resolve among competing franchisees.
- Connecting independent ERP systems of multiple companies is technically complex.
- The companies involved must agree on which order data is shared and which remains confidential.
- The model requires a neutral operator trusted equally by all partners.
- Data quality and interface maintenance become ongoing tasks.

## Technology foundation

The first expansion stage uses Hyperledger Fabric as a permissioned ledger on SAP’s Blockchain-as-a-Service platform; the extension relies on the Baseline Protocol, which reconciles ERP systems over the public Ethereum network without disclosing business data. A distributed ledger is central here because twelve legally independent franchisees must maintain the same order inventory without any one of them hosting the others’ data.

## Sources

- [Coca-Cola bottlers adopt SAP blockchain for supply chain](https://www.ledgerinsights.com/coca-cola-sap-blockchain-bottling-supply-chain/)
- [How Coca-Cola Bottling is putting suppliers on the blockchain](https://ctmfile.com/story/how-coca-cola-bottling-is-putting-suppliers-on-the-blockchain)
- [Baselining the North America Coca-Cola Bottling Supply Chain](https://provide.network/news/baselining-the-north-america-coca-cola-bottling-supply-chain)