 And I've got Madhav Mikhala here with me, Commerce Architect at PepsiCo. Madhav, welcome to the program. Thank you, Lisa. So we're going to be talking about the solution that you implemented that helped with the global supply chain. So let's talk, though, first about your role, Commerce Architect. Help me understand that a little bit better. So FreeTool, PepsiCo is pretty big. It's a conglomerate of multiple product lines. So I work for FreeTool, which is basically all the salty snacks, and then we have the quicker products as well in our portfolio. So I oversee all the architecture for all the commercial IT solutions in the EFNA portfolio. Got it, all the commercial lines. So we all know in the last 18 months, major challenges with the global supply chain, component shortages, we've seen the huge increase in the cost of raw materials, limited labor, but you guys actually started to tackle this challenge before the pandemic happened. So talk to me about the catalyst that PepsiCo, what you saw to modernize field service and supply chain application. Yeah, so we have a pretty old system that our field force, the current frontline users are using. So we have a world-class supply chain system where we go into the stores and place orders and deliver products throughout the US. And then we penetrate, I think more than 95% of the households with our products. So we need to have a robust supply chain as well as a good frontline sales application to be able to manage the orders and be able to deliver the products, right? So the system that we have is almost 20-year-old system running on a very outdated technology. It had been trying to replace that for a while now. And finally, we started this early last year to completely replace the solution with a brand-new iPhone-based app. And then that gives our frontline the ability to go place orders, do deliveries, do retail execution in the store, like checking, checkout, build displays. There are so much functionality that our source or frontline users do in the stores. And this app enables them to do much more efficiently. We're going to break into that, but you mentioned you had a 20-year-old technology. Talk to me about some of the challenges that that likely presented to those frontline workers. Yeah, I mean, there are multiple challenges. For one, we cannot enable new business models. So business wants to come up with new ideas to be able to implement in the field. But with our system being so old, it's so hard to implement anything on that one. And then even the physical device is not scaling. It had a lot of memory issues. So it's time for it to kind of retire. And also the technology we use, the 3G technology is retiring pretty soon, early next year. So we were definitely need to move to a new solution. And this is one of the most things we have to do right away. So that's where we started the project and we are in pilot phase right now. What would have been some of those negative consequences had you not undertaken the effort, I imagine, from a competitive perspective, knowing how much competition's out there, what would some of those challenges have been if this had persisted? Yeah, so one is the stability of the application, right? So the frontline users have to spend more time because the app is not stable, the current one. So that reduces the efficiency of our sales force, right? And then on the other hand, we also are not able to put new features or new business models, enable new business models on top of the existing ones. So we are losing out on some of them because of our outdated system. So that's one thing we want to solve with the new one. So this is really critical to really evolve PepsiCo's business at its baseline, right? That's true, yeah. This is very critical application that we are building and this will enable us to do a lot more things in future and we can come up with new ideas, including like virtual reality or connecting to multiple systems. There are so many new ideas that we want to enable once we have this in place. Awesome, talk to me about why CouchBase and then tell us more about, you started to talk a little bit about the solution, but let's go ahead and dig in and unpack the actual solution that you implemented. Yeah, so this is a, we call it an ERP on a mobile device because it has so much functionality. As a company, Fritole, we have been over a hundred years in this business, right? We have so many optimized process that we have that kind of led to some rigidity in the system because we want to do it in a particular way because that's the best way to do it as part of our business process. So what we're trying to do here is take that business process and also provide an app that will enhance it and then connect to more systems. So that's what we're trying to do here. And then on top of that one, we will replace all the existing peripherals that we use with the new technology like Bluetooth and all so that they're much more faster and it's a lot more productive for our front line force. Sounds like a lot of sales folks are going to be a lot more productive. Talk to me about where couch base is as an integral component to this new system. Yeah, so one of the key requirements for this app is an offline mode. What that means is one of our sales force who go from our system, from our DC to all the stores should be able to run the whole day without any major deception, even if they're not connected. Let's say because when they go into big stores, typically there's no connection, they're all metal boxes. So the seller reception is not there. But most of our work that we do from our front line is within the store. So it has to be a full offline where we have to have all the data within the device and we should be able to place orders, create inventory records or adjust inventory and then create invoices. All the majority of the things that we do are in the store and they should be able to do without the connection. So that's where we explored multiple options and kind of zeroed in on couch base where we bring all the data into a couch base database on the device and then sync it when there is connection but if there's no connection, we still have all the data on the device and we can go do all of our duties in the stores without any issues, even if it is not connected. So the sales folks can be in the stores with their mobile device doing all of the transactions that they need to do with the stores regardless of if there's connectivity. Talk to me about what happens when they get back to connectivity and the couch base database sync. Yeah, and the other big thing we want is instant, I mean, when there's connectivity we want instant sync with the backend, right? If there's new data that comes, we need that in the device. At the same time, if I place an order, I want to send it back immediately to our backend systems so that our fulfillment starts for those. So that's very critical. We have a lot of cutoff times for our orders. So we need orders as soon as we place to be going into the backend systems. So what happens when it gets connected as soon as the sales folks come out of the store or within the store if they get connectivity? The couch base technology that we are using using the sync gateway immediately syncs the data back and forth if there's any new data that's available. So that is key for us in this particular app. So are transactions happening in real time or new real time? Yeah, so the data flow happens in real time when there's connectivity. But when it is not connected, still it doesn't have any issue with the actual transactions with the RSS can go complete anything that they want. Got it. Okay, so there's no impediment there. In fact, it's a productivity enhancer. It sounds like for all of those sales folks out on the front line. So millions of documents go through the system. Tens of billions of dollars. Talk to me about the volume of data and the actual monetary value that's traversing the system. Yeah, it's huge. Again, this is kind of the lifeline of the company. The sales are always the life of any company, right? So most of the sales for Critole goes through our system and we're talking anywhere between hundreds of clients and thousands of documents that flow through back and forth between the devices and the server. So there's a lot of master data that comes like products, pricing, customer solid information that comes from the back end to the device and all the orders inventory and everything that gets created on the device gets flown sink back to the server. So yeah, I mean, it's a very complex system and also from the volume perspective, it's huge. So we had to build a massive infrastructure on the back end to be able to handle all this. One of the key features is again, we have this massive data that we need to sink to the devices, but each device should only get the portion of the data that they want because a particular sales force only goes to a small set of 20 stores, let's say. So the data that we see into that device is only for those 20 stores. So that's the key here. So coach base allows us to do that. The coach base sink where we can subset the data into different portions and only send the data that is relevant for a particular device. So then from a latency perspective, it must be pretty low latency, pretty fast to be able to get this data back to the device and to the sales person that is in the middle of a transaction. Yes, I mean, it's pretty, the sink is very fast. The coach base sink, especially it uses web sockets and we do continuous replicators where if I complete an order, the next instant it's on the server. So it's, we observed the speeds improved a lot. So the technology that we are using uses sinks for a long, long time compared to coach base and that's another productivity game for our sales force. What were some of the differences? You mentioned some of the technology requirements that PepsiCo had in re-architecting the infrastructure, but what were some of the key technology differentiators that really made coach base stand out as the obvious choice? Yeah, so we, when we started this project, we all know the sink is the key for this whole project because without the data going back and forth, we cannot really build a robust offline app. So we looked at multiple options, other providers that are doing the sink and we also looked at building our own sink in-house using APIs. But then we did lots of performance testing across all the options that we had at that time. And then our coach base came above all of them pretty handily. So obviously we can, coach base takes care of the sink and then we can focus on our business process. So we can go build all the business process and not worry about, oh, how to build a sink engine and then that is itself a big effort. So that's what coach base provided us saying a instant sink engine and then we were able to focus more on our application, the frontline application, the sales application. And those business processes, let's talk about some of the business outcomes. We've mentioned a few already in our conversation, increased in productivity, the sales forces increased in that as well. But I imagine there's a lot of benefits for the end user customer in terms of being able to get the transactions completed faster. What are some of those positive business outcomes that PepsiCo is seeing as a result of implementing coach base? Yeah, so you hit on a couple of them, right? The sink times are definitely a big factor where that will directly give more time for the sales folks to go either go to more stores or even if they go to the existing stores they can spend more time with the customer merchandising and making sure everything is correct. So that's one. Also, the new app uses connectivity to a lot of new peripherals that are not available on the previous platform. Also, our folks are very enthusiastic about using a new app, right? So it's like coming into the 21st century for them using such an old app for a long time. So a lot of things that they see, they can see the images of the bags while ordering, which was not a feature earlier. Some of them are small, but they make a huge impact on our users. So yeah, I mean, and then this is just a start that we are doing. And then once we are able to completely implement this one, we have a lot more going into in future. I was just talking about we can do virtual reality or show them how to sell using virtual reality. We can show a display to a store manager saying, hey, I want to put a display here and this is how it looks. You can show it on the phone directly, then just explaining and showing some paper images. So there's a lot of possibilities. A lot of improvements to the customer experience. It sounds like it sounds like adoption is quite high for your folks who are used to 20 year old technology probably being very excited that they have a modern app. But talk to me a little bit about the appetite of the organization to continue modernizing the application infrastructure and presuming going from older technology to that 21st century like you talked about. Yeah, so in other parts, we are already modernized some of these. So we have been on this journey for the last four, five years building multiple digital platforms. So one of the example I can give you is when COVID hit, there's a lot of disruption for everybody, for the consumers. So they're not able to find the products in the stores. A lot of people are afraid to go to the stores to even buy products. So we reacted very quickly and opened a consumer website called Snacks.com which Pepsi never sold it to a consumer directly. We always go through our stores. But the first time we opened a consumer channel and Coachbase powered some of it for the backend purpose. So this is not a mobile app, it's just a desktop app. But we already have been on the digital transformation journey even before we quickly turned in the COVID for the Snacks.com. And similarly, we are doing this for our retail execution portion of it using this project. So, and then we'll be continuing to do this going forward to enable a lot of functionality for, I mean, for all of our sales as well as supply chain and other systems so that we can be more efficient, we can be more elastic saying if there is more demand our backend should be able to handle all that which was not the case before. So now we built a state of the art backend system on cloud. So there's a lot of transformation, digital transformation going on within PepsiCo and I'm really proud to be part of this project so that we took this to the next level and then this is just a start, we can do a lot more. Right, this is just the beginning. It sounds like a great transformation for a history company that we, everybody knows PepsiCo and all of its products but it sounds like when the pandemic hit you had the infrastructure in place to be able to pivot quickly, to launch that direct to consumer which of course consumers patience has been quite thin in the last year and a half. Talk to me a little bit about the impact to the overall organization as a result of being able to get more direct with those consumers. Yeah, so till now again, the business model is we sell to the stores and then go to customers. So we never get a direct sense of what consumer liking is. I mean we get through some surveys and stuff but we don't have a direct channel with the consumer which this particular project enabled the snacks.com. So we know the consumer behavior, how they buying patterns, browsing patterns, which ones they like and including with geography and also we learned a lot from a consumer behavior point of view for that project. And then we kept on enhancing. So one new thing we introduced was called multi-pack where the consumers can come and make their own multi-pack basically. They can say, okay, I need this many of this particular product this project product and make their multi-pack and we ship them that customized multi-pack. And it was such a huge hit that we are not able to even fulfill them so much demand was there for that one. So we had to revamp and then get back and now it's a huge thing on our snacks.com platform. So all of this is possible because we had a digital platform underneath that supports this kind of innovation. So the new business models are just coming to life in within weeks or even few months. And that's what we will be trying to do with the new platform that we're building for this app as well where we'll bring in a lot of new business models on top of what we have. Excellent. A lot of transformation it sounds like at PepsiCo in the last couple of years. I love the customization, that personalization route that you're going. I think that's going to be a huge hit for consumers. And as you said, there's a lot of demand. Madhav, thank you for joining me today, talking about how you are modernizing the field service and supply chain application, the impact it's making for end users, for your customers and for the sales folks. We appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Lisa. For Madhav Makala, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this CUBE conversation.