News
Celebrating and planning for the future after 10 years in Bulgaria
12/07/2023
While Coca-Cola Europacific Partners doesn’t manufacture or distribute in Bulgaria, our colleagues based there are vital to our business.
Having recently celebrated 10 years in the country, and the grand opening of a new office, our team in Bulgaria are reflecting on their journey and focusing on their long-term role and vision.
The team in Bulgaria provide centralised support and expertise to better enable efficient ways of working and processes across CCEP. In the coming years they will expand their existing services and capabilities while also placing key emphasis on their talent pipeline and the skills needed for the future.
What better time to learn more about this team!
Our CCEP Bulgaria team
Our CCEP Bulgaria team, have a shared passion for supporting our customers, colleagues and communities, working closely with our European Business Units.
The team will further expand their support to our markets in Australia and New Zealand later this year.
The team began as a Shared Services Centre in 2013 with just 135 people focused on finance activities.
Since then, the team have grown in scope, size and capability, supporting our business across a number of areas.
Having recently moved to a modern new office, over 1,000 CCEP colleagues are now based in Garitage Park in Sofia.
Another 180 colleagues are based in Varna.
Employees in Sofia
Employees in Varna
A diverse team
The team collectively speak at least 18 languages including the languages of all the CCEP countries that they support.
Women represent 68% of our Bulgarian team, and hold around 65% of positions at senior manager level and above.
Team responsibilities
The CCEP Bulgaria team provide a full range of services from traditional transactional finance activities such as billing and invoicing our customers and paying our suppliers, to value-driving capabilities that can be leveraged company-wide.
This includes data analytics and insights and robotic process automation.
There are many areas of finance that the team support the business with:
A dedicated team provides end-to-end services – from customer and product set-up to billing and collecting cash, in partnership with our commercial teams (customer-to-cash).
A second team are focused on recording and reporting on our financial information (record-to-report) while another area of focus sees our colleagues take responsibility for all the activities required to ensure we pay our suppliers on time. They also support our colleagues by managing corporate cards and travel and expenses (source-to-pay).
It’s critical that we continually streamline and improve our processes. The service management team are focused on activities such as reporting, operational excellence and robotic process automation.
The new product introduction team lead business administrative activities related to the commercialisation of our products including costing, data, digital and sustainability.
The final main area of activity is the planning and performance management centre of expertise. This team drive business insights via reporting, analysis and business partnering.
Overall, our team in Bulgaria are in a unique position to have a global view of our activities and our territories, a position which makes the team well-placed to help drive change, innovation and process improvements across CCEP.
Supporting the local community
The team also have a number of annual donation and charity programmes in place. They regularly join forces with the wider Coca-Cola system (Coca-Cola Hellenic and The Coca-Cola Company) for local volunteering opportunities, including the My Green City initiative which has seen over 1,000 Coca-Cola system colleagues contribute to the protection of the local environment and it’s varied wildlife.
As part of the move to the new office in Garitage Park, Sofia this year, over 1,400 furniture items were sold, raising over €31,000 for charity. Over 1,000 pieces of IT equipment including laptops, monitors and docking stations were also donated to Close the Gap.
The team in photos
Our welcoming receptionists in Sofia
Our 10 year anniversary party
Celebrating our colleagues with 10 years of service
Volunteering in the My Green City initiative
The view from our office in Sofia
The team in Bulgaria have a key strategic role to play at CCEP, supporting critical Finance activities across all our business units, including from later this year Australia and New Zealand. We continue to embrace technology and digital innovation to fuel the growth of our business. With an operational excellence mindset we drive continuous improvement to unlock efficiency, effectiveness and user experience gains.
What a journey we’ve been on over the last 10 years growing our services and nurturing talent – and we’ll continue to develop the right skills for the future. I’m proud to lead such a passionate, engaged and energised team. It truly is great people delivering great service that adds the fizz, that magic sparkle to CCEP!