The following abstract represents a summation of the work by SPAIPA SA, a Brazilian Beverage Bottler. The original academic whitepaper was published by our client and is also available. The case study was co-authored by the company CEO, an MIS professor, and an IT consulting company. Salient had no part in the original development of the whitepaper.

SPAIPA SA, one of the largest beverage bottlers in South America, employs approximately 1,800 people and serves a highly competitive soft drink market. Despite strong growth and operational success, leadership recognized a critical issue that the organization had optimized for volume, not profit.

Rather than treating this as a technology problem, SPAIPA approached it as a management and cultural challenge that required fundamental alignment across incentives, decision-making and accountability.

Over time, SPAIPA’s operating model created unintended tension between teams.

Sales teams were compensated on volume.

Management was accountable for profit.

Both groups performed well against their individual targets; however, the organization as a whole underperformed financially.

That misalignment cascaded across the business:

• Production over-produced to protect against demand surprises
• Sales teams under-forecasted to ensure goal attainment
• Managers used different calculations to measure results
• Discussions focused on defending numbers, not improving outcomes

Without a shared definition of performance, corrective action stalled.

SPAIPA’s leadership convened a cross-functional working group spanning production, sales, distribution and support to redefine how the organization should operate.

They sought to:

• Shift the company from a volume-first mindset to a profit-first culture
• Align incentives with margin and value creation
• Establish consistent definitions of performance
• Enable smarter pricing, discounting and route decisions

Technology would support the change, but culture would lead it.

To reinforce the new operating model, SPAIPA partnered with Salient to provide a shared performance foundation aligned to the organization’s redesigned incentives.

The goal wasn’t to add reporting. It was to:

• Balance pricing and volume decisions in real time
• Enable margin-aware discounting
• Map customers, products and routes with profitability in mind
• Give teams a common language for evaluating tradeoffs

Sales teams could now evaluate whether discounts made sense based on activity and return instead of simply by volume targets.

With consistent metrics and shared visibility, behavior began to change.

Forecasting improved as teams aligned on realistic demand signals.

Overproduction declined as buffers were replaced with accuracy.

Discussions moved from blame to action.

Profitability became something the organization managed, not something leadership reacted to.

Three years after implementing the new performance model:

• Operational margin increased by 3 percentage points
• Value share in the soft drink market grew by 4 percentage points
• Market share increased by 3 points in new products and beer
• Demand forecasting accuracy reached 98%, reducing inventory
• Revenue flow discipline improved by 99%

Growth didn’t slow. It became more profitable.

SPAIPA’s transformation demonstrates that sustainable performance doesn’t come from tools alone. It comes from aligning incentives, decisions and accountability around what truly matters.

When culture leads and systems support it, profitability follows.

As a result:

• New store growth no longer disrupted reporting or visibility
• Teams spent less time troubleshooting and more time managing performance
• Promotions and category performance could be evaluated with context
• Decision-making moved closer to the people responsible for outcomes