These are just a few of the PepsiCo's products in its vast trunk of products. A judge recently handed a $1.26-billion judgment after PepsiCo's attorneys were a no-show in court. Attorneys didn't know to show for the court appearance because a document notifying the titan of the suit's filing was lost. The document would not have been lost had the juggernaut installed an Enterprise Content Management system.

There are so many ways I can begin this blog.
A: Save $1.26 billion in business today.
B: $1.26 billion, Pepsi and the lost paper – what they have in common.
C: An ROI of 1,260,000,000%!

In this economy when businesses around the world are trying to hold on to their bottom line and are faced with laying off employees, how would you like to learn there’s been a $1.26 BILLION-dollar judgment against you, and you didn’t even show up in court to defend yourself?

That’s exactly what happened to Pepsi.  We’re not talking about your local bottler or distribution center. We’re talking Pepsi Corporate – the owners of grocery giants like Tropicana, Frito-Lay, Gatorade and Quaker.

So here’s the skinny. Charles Joyce and James Voigt filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, Inc. in April of 2009 alleging that the conglomerate had stolen their intellectual property – their idea of bottling and selling purified water. The alleged “theft” happened after a conversation occurred during  discussions dating back to 1981. A letter notifying the soft drink titan of the suit was delivered to PepsiCo’s law department on Sept. 15.

Once routed to the corporate law office, a funny thing happened. (It was NOT funny “ha ha.”)

A PepsiCo employee put the letter aside to prepare for a board meeting. That critical piece of paper was never forwarded for action. I have no idea what happened to that critical correspondence. What I do know, though, is that PepsiCo attorneys were a no-show for the Oct. 5 court appearance. The Wisconsin judge banged his gavel resulting in a $1.26 billion default judgment.

What a pickle. Imagine how much cheaper it would have been if Pepsi had set up a workflow enabled ECM system. This is my ending to this story.

That document would have been scanned at the mail room or by someone with whom Pepsi contracts. The document preparation team would have opened the mail, scanned it into the system and indexed it as a legal notice. The letter would have entered a workflow, which would have routed it to the appropriate person or pool of people. If someone had not taken action within the required timeframe, notices would have been sent to other people who then would have intervened to make sure this letter did NOT fall through the cracks.

With my ending, PepsiCo could have saved itself a mint.

Well, gotta run, I’m gearing up for some cold calls into PepsiCo. I have an ROI I’d like to share with them.