Learning from the leaders: MARS’ digital transformation journey
Digital transformation is on everyone’s minds these days. It was certainly a top discussion area in our conversations at NRF 2017 last month. But the focus of the conversations is shifting. The retail industry is moving from what is meant by digital transformation to the practical details of how to achieve its benefits.
In my role, I am committed to helping retailers and brands understand how best to do that.
There are many ways to go about taking advantage of today’s technology innovations—from creating new and personalized customer experiences that drive brand loyalty, to enhancing the way your employees and business operates, to the transformation of your business models and the very products and services you offer.
One of the things I always find helpful is learning through real-world examples, and there are some great industry leaders forging ahead. MARS Incorporated is one such leader we can all learn from as it embarks on its journey to digital transformation.
MARS is an iconic company I greatly admire, with its emphasis on sustainable business practices and long-term commitment to product, technology, and workplace innovation. With 60 brands across six segments from food, drinks, chocolate, confectionary, pet care and biomedical research, the company has made $35 billion in global sales by putting people first in everything they do.
With its broad expansion goals that include 100 percent growth in 10 years, the company is committed to adopting new digital capabilities to accelerate and achieve its business objectives. As MARS CIO Vittorio Cretella recently said, “through digital innovation, our business has the fantastic opportunity to get closer to our consumers and provide an even better value proposition.”
One of the first key initiatives it embarked on is improving their already collaborative work environment.
There are so many key benefits to building a modern, digital workplace. In addition to giving employees ways that enable them to do their job better in the field and on the go, and better communicate across geographically-dispersed teams, MARS is also saving on travel costs, giving its employees better work/life balance, and retaining existing employees and attracting the next generation of workers through the experience it offers.
In addition to modern productivity tools, MARS is making a number of other technology system enhancements to perform more effectively and innovate.
This includes an update-to-date operating system; new mobile devices; a new security solution and other measures to safeguard its company devices and data; and aggressively expanding many line-of-business and other workloads to the cloud. By eliminating future full-scale upgrades alone, MARS will save millions of dollars that it can spend to transform its Information Services department into a strategic center of innovation and business value.
All these things are ultimately transforming the way people work at MARS and enabling the company to deliver continuous innovation and meet its business objectives.
To learn more about how MARS is achieving these things including the specific technologies it’s using, you can watch the video and read the case study here.
I plan to share more of these examples and success stories in the coming months as we all experience what’s possible in this exciting world of digital transformation.
LinkedIn: Tracy Issel
