PepsiCo’ s Direct-to-Store Delivery( DSD) model is a logistical marvel— powering over 500,000 weekly store visits supported by a field sales force of more than 25,000 professionals and generating multi-billion in annual revenue through its PepsiCo Foods North America( PFNA) business alone. Behind this scale lies a complex, high-velocity operation that demands precision, agility, and relentless execution. To sustain and amplify this scale, PepsiCo embarked on a planned, strategic modernization as part of its broader digital transformation— an evolution designed to empower frontline teams, enhance customer-centricity, and futureproof operations. PepsiCo entrusted Infosys, a strategic partner with co-engineering this transformation.
“ At its core, we set out to infuse agility and adaptability into a system purpose-built and refined over decades- enabling the organization to react rapidly to shifting market conditions and new business models.” says Karthik Sankaran, Vice President Information Technology – Global Sales Transformation at PepsiCo.
The transformation saw a move from a rigid, closed architecture to a flexible digital platform, amid rising consumer expectations and ongoing disruption across established channels – including e-commerce models such as click-and-collect and dark stores.
Infosys alliance enabled scalable digital architecture
Infosys played a key role in PepsiCo delivering a two phased-transformation, the initial phase focused on modernization, consolidating numerous workflows and systems into a suite of unified, cloud-native, mobile-first Sales + platforms. This was followed by the second phase introduced“ Smart” intelligence and automation. AI-driven capabilities were embedded to deliver real-time insights, predictive recommendations, and smarter execution across the Go-To-Market value chain to deliver extreme productivity and enable faster, smarter decisions at every level.
“ Our greatest delivery challenge was shaping nextgeneration niche technologies for a programme of this size and scale: most notably, delivering the world’ s largest implementation of Xamarin mobile applications, essentially constructing ERP like capabilities on-the-go with full offline functionality,” says Mayank Ranjan, SVP & Regional Head – Consumer, Retail & Logistics at Infosys.
The project required integration with several programmes, including a large-scale ERP transformation: all at a time where legacy systems were rapidly becoming obsolete and incompatible. Infosys brought a deep understanding of PepsiCo’ s business operations, having supported many applications across PepsiCo Foods North America’ s Make, Move and Sell value chain.
“ This was a complex and ambitious initiative by PepsiCo, making it both challenging and exciting for our teams,” Mayank says.“ From day one, Infosys and PepsiCo worked as one unified team: sharing knowledge, aligning on priorities and removing barriers to progress.”
PepsiCo Sales + platform consolidates frontline operations
Today, the Sales + platform has replaced more than 40 standalone applications with a connected ecosystem running on consumer-grade iOS devices, eliminating fragmented user experiences that had accumulated over time across frontline operations.
“ We’ ve replaced more than 40 standalone apps with a connected ecosystem of role-based tools,” Karthik says.“ This ecosystem offers guided experience that helps frontline leaders plan more effectively, frontline users execute more efficiently, and sales professionals focus on what matters most: selling and serving our customers.”
The platform incorporates features including digital planograms, digital asset management, proactive notifications, paperless proof of delivery and mobile banking capabilities: reducing manual coordination requirements and enabling real-time insights.
Gen AI integration drives engineering efficiency
AI integration within the platform delivers measurable business impact through automated processes and predictive capabilities.“ Delivering real business value with new technologies meant ensuring reliability, scalability and measurable impact,” Mayank says.“ Gen AI-based interventions helped us address tech debt and optimize engineering effort, significantly improving developer productivity.” The 25-year alliance between the companies provided a foundational understanding of PepsiCo’ s business operations across development, testing and ongoing support functions. Today, Infosys supports the majority of applications across PepsiCo Foods North America Make, Move and Sell value chain.
Sustainability benefits include elimination of paper-based processes through digital proof of delivery, mobile banking and digital planograms, reducing waste whilst improving operational speed.“ The future of our collaboration is incredibly exciting, with GenAI shaping every step of this journey,” Mayank says. He adds,“ By embedding Gen AI – powered by Infosys Topaz – into core business processes, we’ ve not only accelerated transformation but also unlocked new levels of agility and intelligence across PepsiCo’ s digital ecosystem.”