CONA Services Refreshes Tax Processes for Coca-Cola Bottlers

CONA Services is the IT Platform for the North American Coca-Cola bottling business. They provide the tools and data standards for bottlers to be able to deliver, bottle, buy, sell, and do production and delivery in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

In this customer story, Susan Laughrey, Tax Process & Solutions Lead at CONA Services, illustrates what CONA did to enable more consistent rules and rates were being shared by bottlers, so that the organization could be in alignment with how standards should run across North America.

Identifying Gaps in Current Tax Processes

CONA needed a place where they could get all of their taxes from one, reliable source. It became clear that Vertex was the obvious choice because of our robust tax content and technology capabilities—for CONA Services, they needed a tax solution that could fully support soft drink taxes, sweetened beverage taxes, deposits, vending, and procurement.

Before switching to Vertex, the bottlers struggled with incorrect tax rates, incorrect product taxability, and incorrect accruals.

What CONA Services Did

All the tax nuances that CONA Services deals with are now fully supported by Vertex, and CONA's AP Processing is much faster than it was before. The bottlers are saving money and CONA saves time and minimizes risk. 

Helping CONA Services Grow

Like many of our customers, we help CONA Services grow with confidence. More Coca-Colas are in the hands of customers, distribution is increased, and costs are down because the organization is not accruing taxes when they shouldn't be, and they're paying the correct tax amounts.

Benefits Achieved

• Seamless integration into CONA Services' system
• Reduced costs
• Correct tax amounts accrued and paid
• Faster AP processing
• Better product taxability to enable confidence as they grow