Vieira de Campos explains that the Ipero company now has the advantage of accessing additional information about a specific client, such as their financial status, amounts ordered, and payment due dates, among other things. Using Palm handhelds has facilitated the gathering of orders and improved the work of the sales team. "After 4 P.M., they send the data from wherever they are, and we deliver the soft drinks shortly thereafter," says Vieira de Campos.

Coca-Cola Argentina
Sadly, we must now leave lovely Sao Paulo to visit our third beverage manufacturer. But fear not, for next we journey to the popular vacation destination of Buenos Aires, Argentina, pictured in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Argentina's capital is situated on the banks of the Rio de la Plata.

Buonos Aires is home to Coca-Cola Argentina (at http://www.coca-cola.com.ar), producer of such popular beverages as Coke, Fanta, Sprite, and Quatro, a grapefruit-flavored soft drink that Coca-Cola Argentina developed in 1994 especially for the local market.

Coca-Cola Argentina has three bottling and distribution companies, Grupo Yege, Reginald Lee, and Grupo Guerrero. The Reginald Lee plant is pictured in Figure D.

FIGURE D


The Reginald Lee Coca-Cola bottling plant was appointed the first distributor in December of 1942. Roll over picture for a larger image.

All three companies have implemented the corporate use of Palm devices in order to collect data in the sales process and to provide an easy business management tool (with surveys, sales statistics, sales force visit monitoring, and stock monitoring, etc.).

Palm Solutions, Inc. was in charge of system implementation and staff training to optimize the application's utilization.

Since Palm devices were implemented, distributors have increased the company's sales force efficiency, making the order taking process faster and more effective. At the same time, the paper used in the sales process has been eliminated, inventory time has been reduced, and the company's stock monitoring has improved.

"Since we integrated Palm devices at the Company, the sales force has been operating with excellent results, and at very affordable costs," said Jose E. Tagliarini, Gerente de Sistemas (CTO), Grupo Yege.

"Palm Solutions has made it possible for the 500 employees in the distributing companies to precisely monitor the sales process, through a simple application in their Palms, and has helped in identifying those key areas in the company which require the application the most to increase added value."

Conclusion
So ends our whirlwind tour of Latin America and some of the interesting uses beverage manufacturers are finding for Palm devices.

"The Palm solution allows any company, regardless of their industry, to use more and more solutions for Internet or mobile computing," says Claudio Bessa, marketing and alliances director at Microsiga. Not only can Palm solutions work for any company, they can work in any country, no matter what language is used. For more information on how Palm applications can be programmed for various languages, check out my article on localized applications elsewhere in this issue of PalmPower's Enterprise Edition. Then pop open a bottle of Coke, kick back, and think about how Palm technology can enhance your business, too.

Marie Braden is a writer based in Bitburg, Germany, and can be reached at mariebraden@onebox.com.