Coca-Cola Bottling’s CIO decided to arm sales reps with iPads after he observed one fumbling through his folder and losing the attention of a customer in the process.

The result was “a significant uptick in sales and on-premises business as a result of putting iPads out there,” says Onyeka Nchege, Coca-Cola Bottling VP and CIO, in TabTimes’ first Strategy Guide, "How to deploy tablets in your organization."

In addition to revenue gains, the deployment created improvements in other productivity measures, such as reducing the number of out-of-stock cases with customers, the Strategy Guide reports. This has been a direct result of field reps being able to enter in orders and other data instantly via their iPads.

“Doing paperwork is the biggest drudgery, and we’ve helped remove that roadblock,” says Nchege. The efficiencies created through tablets lets workers at 5 pm “hit the door as a husband and dad, rather than have to be on the job after they get home.”

An additional innovative step Coca-Cola Bottling took was take a contrarian view of videogames. Video games are traditionally thought of as a scourge to productivity, an enabler for procrastinating workers. Not to Nchege, who saw the consumer-friendliness of the iPad as a plus, not a minus. “We encouraged [our reps] to put a game or two on  there, to play Angry Birds,” he said, as a relaxing break.

Coca-Cola Bottling has deployed over 700 tablets in total. This includes 500 iPads used by field sales representatives, executives and other senior corporate workers, and 200 Panasonic tablets.

Four deploying tablets case studies

The Coca-Cola Bottling deployment is covered in more detail along with three other case studies in TabTimes’ first Strategy Guide, "How to deploy tablets in your organization." The eguide follows the strategies of four major corporations that realized they needed to add tablet programs in order to stay competitive.

This Strategy Guide offers practical, strategic advice, to organization managers on how to best plan their tablet implementations. TabTimes Strategy Guide “How to deploy tablets in your organization" is available for download now.