Quick Overview

  • According to a presentation at Gartner's 2026 CFO & Finance Executive Conference/Xpo, Coca-Cola is using AI and scenario modeling tools to support marketing and business investment decisions, as part of the company's broader finance transformation initiatives.
  • The speaker said at the conference held on May 29 in National Harbor, Maryland, that past investment decisions were often hindered by fragmented analysis, with different teams interpreting the same data differently, leading to lengthy discussion cycles before decisions and delaying responses to market changes.
  • Meetings often focused on "coordinating follow-ups, more analysis, deeper dives... and by the time teams arrived at answers, the market had already changed," said Shelley Kench, Coca-Cola's global head of resource allocation. She was joined on stage by Noah Museles, a partner at Bain & Company, which supported the transformation.

Deep Insights

This effort reflects Coca-Cola CFO John Murphy's broader focus on tightening management of resource allocation across the company.

"Resource allocation is not a new concept... but we believe there is still potential to gain greater leverage from it—I see it as our potential 'new secret formula,'" Murphy said at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference in February (according to meeting transcripts).

The consumer goods industry is facing an increasingly complex and volatile marketing environment, due to economic uncertainty, weak consumer demand, and what Boston Consulting Group (BCG) described in a February report as the "explosive growth of media touchpoints and purchase paths."

The consultancy reported in early 2025 that three-quarters of marketing leaders at consumer goods companies consider omnichannel investment allocation and activation their biggest challenge. Among them, 68% of respondents pointed to organizational silos and poor internal collaboration as particularly prominent obstacles.

At the core of Coca-Cola's push is its proprietary platform "Fuel Light 360," designed to help teams across the company evaluate potential marketing and business investments.

Murphy highlighted the tool in his CAGNY remarks, saying it enables Coca-Cola to "precisely focus on areas that deliver the most value returns, and allows us to collectively think about how to optimize capital allocation over time to support the business."

At the Gartner event, Kench described a scenario where the company faced increased advertising pressure from competitors in the zero-sugar soda category. In the past, teams might have debated whether to respond by increasing spending on TV, digital media, or in-store promotions, often lacking a common framework to evaluate trade-offs.

She said Fuel Light 360 allows teams to simulate different investment scenarios in real time, helping shift discussions from conflicting interpretations of data to decisions on how to respond.

"We truly achieved a shift: meetings are no longer about reconciling and arguing over whose data is right, but about making choices," Kench said.

Museles said the effort ultimately is about reshaping decision-making processes, not just deploying new technology. The result: what previously required up to two weeks of follow-up analysis can now be completed in a single meeting.

"We redesigned the meetings, designed tools based on what users needed in those meetings, and launched both simultaneously," Museles said. The company's "decision cycle went from two weeks to one hour."