Paynesville – As part of its effort in improving its business engagement, the Liberia Coca Cola Bottling Company (LCCBC), over the weekend launched an online business platform, MySmartCoke to afford customers and consumers easy access to purchase and book their products via the internet.
Report by Augustine T. Tweh – [email protected]
The platform also provides customers and consumers the opportunity to benefit from one of the three packages, Platinum, Gold and Bronze depending on the customers or consumers purchasing power via the internet.
The launch took place on Friday, November 24, in the compound of the LCCBC in Paynesville.
Speaking during the launch, the Commercial Manager of LCCBC, Kwadwo Appiah, said the online campaign was a full grown initiative developed to enhance the purchasing power of customers and consumers via the Internet and it’s the first of its kind in the business circle of the LCCBC in Liberia.
“We are here this afternoon to launch one of our services in serving customers and consumers. “
“This is the first of its kind that we are doing this as part of the business unit and it is a full grown initiative developed in this country by our technology guys.”
He continued: “We observed that we had a gap with respect to serving events like parties, funerals, weddings and anything that brings people together; we have that challenge of providing the service. So to this end, we have developed this exercise to ensure that people are able to buy our products, have a unique service without necessarily having to walk to our facility or distributors to have it,” he said.
Kwadwo further stated: “In addition to providing some our unique premium products to enhance your events, this exercise, in a nutshell, is to ensure that when you have an event, you have one stop shop and not only buy our products but you are going to have other goodies that will help smooth out your event and we want it to be a system that will cause less stress and will make your event easy to accomplish.”
“There are prospects to extend this technology to our sister companies in West Africa,” he said.
Doing a live demonstration of website, the Business Intelligence Supervisor, David Mayson stated that the web-based application is used for events booking, like parties, wedding among others.
In order to smoothen some of the rough edges for their customers, the LCCBC has also introduced providing party chairs and table on gratis, depending on the quantity of drinks and event.
Mayson added: “So what we are saying in a nutshell is that you don’t have to come to our office, and you don’t have to rent the chairs and the tables. All you have to do is to just buy certain quantity of our products and then we can give you chairs, tables and ice for your events.
We will transport them to your program location and then back to our plant after the program.”
The price for its bronze package is US$250. For this purchase, they will provide 20 chairs, 5 tables and 5 Ice blocks. He further stated that for this package, depending on the distance, the customer might pay a “minimum service charge.”
He didn’t say that charge will be nor the distance.
However for start, they are targeting three major locations, Monrovia areas, Kakata and Harbel in Margibi County. He added: “Anywhere within these three locations, we can serve you. Depending on the distance, we will apply the service charge of 20 percent,” he said.
“The gold package is for USD$400; you get 61 cases of the assorted products along with 48 chairs, 12 tables, 5 ice chests and 10 serving trays for your event. You don’t have to rent them or pay extra money, just pay for the package.
The highest package is platinum, which is for USD$600. The package includes 92 cases along with 80 chairs, 20 tables, 8 ice chests and a standby generator.”
Edwina Vakun, a businesswoman, entity Green Oceans is a partner of the LCCBC MySmartCoke project. She is one of first business houses to begin implementation of the MySmartCoke project.
“We have already started the distribution of the Coco Cola products particularly the PET and so this time around is just been launched but we are taking it to another level,” she noted.