KTEK Solutions Inc. helping Frito-Lay sell more chips!

You have probably seen the ads “buy a bag of large Lays and get a free dip”! These ads are a result of organized and calculated promotions negotiated between the Key Account Managers (KAM) of the Frito-Lay sales force and Frito-Lay retailers like Wal-Mart. These promotions are created for the purpose of generating more business and increased volume of a particular brand of potato chips.

Frito-Lay used a Desktop based software called a Global Promotions Systems (GPM) to create and maintain their Promotions. Also, they used this software to manage all the sales activities generated as a result of the Promotions. These promotions resided in a Database on the back-end. The key account Managers used a more flexible Internet based planning tool to layout the details of the anticipated promotion. Once the deal was finalized, the KAMs would manually feed the information directly into the back-end GPM database to create an operational Promotion. The GPM system was used to maintain any operational Promotions.

What Frito-Lay needed was an automated system that would link the planning system to the operational system. This would eliminate the manual step of feeding the planning data into the back-end database and remove any element of human error during the manual step. They wanted to connect the web based planning system to the back-end operational system via a controlled interface.

For this, KTek Solutions Inc. picked the best of its people with the System Integration and Promotions work experience.

Frito-Lay issued a requisition for this project opened solely to KTek Solutions Inc. due to KTek’s knowledge and expertise required to fulfill the requirements of this project.

KTek used Java and CORBA as the Technology of choice to create a new Volume Builder Planning interface on top of the existing Promotions System Services. KTek created new Java based Programming Interfaces that used CORBA to allow the Web based planning system to seamlessly connect with the Java based operational Promotions System. KTek utilized CORBA IDLs to publish this interface. The Web based Planning System just called these interface modules whenever they need to tap into the operational Promotional system. KTek implemented these interface modules on the back-end as services published by the interfaces in Java. The two systems were connected and data started to flow through the pipe between them. The planning system now had access to the operational system via a controlled and published interface.

THE PROBLEM

• Frito-Lay needed to connect the Web based planning system to the back-end operational system via a published and controlled interface.
• They wanted to allow data to flow through the system over HTTP and IIOP protocols.

THE SOLUTION

• KTek Solutions Inc. provided Frito-Lay with qualified people for this Project.
• KTek created a CORBA based interface to connect the Web based Planning system to the back-end operational system.
• KTek implemented the interface modules on the back-end as services published by the interfaces in Java.

THE BENEFITS

• The manual step of feeding the planning data into the operations system was replaced with an automated interface.
• A controlled interface was provided from the planning system to the operational system.
• Key Account Managers can now spend more time creating new Promotion deals than processing them.