PepsiCo, a global food and beverage giant managing one billion daily consumer interactions, is undertaking a massive overhaul of its technology infrastructure. The company is consolidating a complex and fragmented landscape of localized applications and disparate systems into a single, unified global platform. This initiative aims to create a cohesive digital “backbone” to power its operations across more than 200 countries and support its vast product portfolio. The move represents a foundational shift in the company’s operational strategy, designed to accelerate innovation and enhance efficiency from agricultural sourcing to the final consumer purchase.
The transformation, driven by a “platform-first” philosophy, addresses the significant challenges posed by a legacy of siloed technology. For a company with a US$92 billion revenue stream, the previous environment of separate systems for each business sector was identified as a barrier to growth and agility. Under the leadership of Venkatesan (Venky) Santhirahasan, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Technology, the goal is to establish a digital foundation that can serve all markets universally while growing with the business. This strategic pivot relies on leveraging artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and strategic partnerships to modernize every facet of the company’s value chain, from manufacturing and sales to supply chain logistics and customer engagement.
Confronting a Legacy of Fragmentation
The catalyst for this global overhaul was the state of PepsiCo’s inherited technology environment. Operations were managed through a patchwork of custom-built, localized applications and backend systems that varied by region and business unit. This fragmentation created significant operational hurdles. Data was siloed, preventing a holistic view of the business and making it difficult to share best practices or deploy innovations rapidly across different markets. The lack of a unified system meant that simple tasks required navigating multiple platforms, reducing frontline productivity and slowing down decision-making.
This technological disarray posed a direct threat to the company’s ability to innovate at the pace of changing consumer demands and new retail models. For frontline sales teams, it meant wrestling with dozens of separate apps to plan routes, manage inventory, and process orders. In manufacturing, plant operators relied on institutional knowledge and manual adjustments to manage complex machinery, a practice vulnerable to inconsistencies. Recognizing these limitations, the leadership team initiated a fundamental shift away from project-based builds toward creating scalable, reusable platforms that could serve the entire organization.
Strategic Partnerships Drive Modernization
At the core of PepsiCo’s digital strategy are key collaborations with technology leaders to build specialized, AI-powered platforms that replace outdated systems. These partnerships are crucial for bringing world-class expertise to bear on specific operational challenges, particularly in sales and manufacturing.
The Global Sales Platform
In partnership with Infosys, PepsiCo launched Sales+, a unified mobile-first sales platform designed to modernize its massive direct-to-store delivery network. This single ecosystem replaced more than 40 legacy applications previously used by the 25,000-person field sales team in North America. The platform orchestrates over 500,000 store visits weekly, providing a guided experience for sales professionals. Features include digital planograms, paperless proof of delivery, asset tracking, and mobile banking, all with full offline functionality. Co-developed with Infosys, Sales+ digitizes in-store execution, reduces manual processes, and allows the sales team to focus more on customer service and selling. The system is a cornerstone of the company’s broader effort to infuse AI-driven decision-making into its frontline operations.
AI in Manufacturing and Operations
To revolutionize its manufacturing processes, PepsiCo partnered with Fractal, an enterprise AI company. This collaboration focuses on deploying AI and Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to create “smart manufacturing” capabilities, particularly for complex packaging lines. At many plants, operators had to manually adjust more than 300 parameters on a single packaging line, an approach that was difficult to scale and prone to error. The AI-powered system automates this process, enabling production lines to self-optimize and automatically adjust output in real time. This has been applied to ensure consistent quality in the production of snacks like Cheetos, where variations in raw materials and equipment can impact the final product. This initiative is unlocking new levels of efficiency and performance across PepsiCo’s hundreds of manufacturing sites.
Extending Intelligence Across the Supply Chain
PepsiCo’s digital transformation extends beyond sales and manufacturing to encompass its entire global supply chain. The company is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate applications to the cloud and enhance its internal generative AI platform, PepGenX. This collaboration aims to transform supply chain strategies by enabling predictive maintenance for manufacturing and logistics operations, thereby increasing efficiency and resiliency. AI is also being used to improve warehouse labor management, where experienced employees were once solely responsible for complex decisions about moving products. As the workforce changed, particularly during the pandemic, AI-driven systems were introduced to help guide these processes.
Furthermore, the company is deploying Salesforce’s Agentforce, an autonomous AI platform, to modernize its B2B commerce infrastructure. This AI integration spans customer service, inventory tracking, and trade promotions, making interactions with retailers and distributors faster and more intelligent. By linking AI systems with real-time product data, PepsiCo aims to make its digital catalog more dynamic on third-party ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Instacart, improving product discoverability and adapting pricing almost instantly.
Building a Unified and Agile Future
The move to a centralized digital backbone represents a new business reality for PepsiCo, where harmonized IT infrastructure is the key to agility. By establishing centralized capability centers, the company can eliminate redundancies and rapidly “lift and shift” successful innovations from one market to another. This platform-first approach allows developers and technical teams to build, test, and implement new technologies faster than ever before. The entire initiative is built on a cloud-first strategy, which provides the scalability and intelligence needed to support a global operation of this magnitude.
This transformation is not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental reengineering of the company’s processes. The objective is to create a more connected and intelligent organization capable of responding to market shifts with greater speed and precision. By leveraging AI for everything from supply chain forecasting to creating more personalized consumer experiences, PepsiCo is positioning itself for sustained growth. The long-term vision is an end-to-end digital operation that drives efficiency, fosters innovation, and enhances its ability to serve customers and consumers worldwide.
