MCLEAN, Va. and REDMOND, Wash., May 13,
2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mars and Microsoft Corp. on
Thursday announced that the companies are expanding their long-term
relationship with a new agreement to accelerate Mars' digital
transformation by leveraging the Microsoft Azure platform to
optimize its operational speed and intelligent manufacturing supply
chains. Together, the companies are working to integrate
transparent and responsible data, AI and digital technologies into
Mars' global portfolio of confectionery, petcare, pet services and
food businesses. This work positions Mars to further embrace
market-leading digital technologies and capabilities, intelligent
manufacturing and personalized customer engagement, and improved
digital skills training for Associates.
Working with Accenture as a partner to Microsoft, the companies
are further expanding a unified cloud and data foundation across
all Mars businesses on Microsoft Azure, helping Mars achieve its
"cloud-first" strategy and significantly fast-tracking its cloud
journey as well as the realization of business growth. This digital
infrastructure is providing Mars with the business insights needed
to accelerate growth, profitability, speed, resiliency,
sustainability and, most importantly, build and develop trust with
customers and consumers by offering more responsible, transparent
and compelling experiences. For example, as one of the world's
largest petcare companies, Mars is driven to make a better world
for pets. The company has leveraged the Azure platform to create
AI-powered applications and services to support its business.
"Our relationship with Microsoft is helping transform how data
and technology are used to continue ensuring compliant customer
solutions and build trusted brand and consumer experiences. It will
change the relationship between our brands and consumers, deliver
hyper-relevant consumer experiences that include content and media,
and fulfill needs and expectations across every touchpoint in the
consumer's journey," said Sandeep
Dadlani, chief digital officer, Mars. "After evaluating all
the platforms on the market, we chose Microsoft as our primary Mars
platform because of its rich portfolio of features, engineering
partner ecosystem, talent availability, focus on data privacy, and
security and similar cultural values and principles."
Microsoft Azure's AI and IoT solutions provide Mars with the
tools and capabilities to digitize its supply chain at scale —
including manufacturing — while enhancing the collective digital
skills of Mars Associates globally. Mars has already made progress
to enable this digitization, working with digital manufacturing and
operations experts from Accenture's Industry X group to deploy the
Azure Digital Twins IoT platform in its manufacturing facilities.
Using Digital Twins to optimize production will help Mars improve
margins and reduce waste, and empower on-site associates to make
real-time decisions. Based on this use case, Mars will be able to
quickly scale to use similar IoT technologies for optimizing
manufacturing across its business segments, including food
and petcare, providing process control, consistency and uniformity
across product lines and helping to give the company a competitive
advantage by increasing speed and capacity, and reducing
operational costs. In the future, Mars plans to use digital
technologies to introduce even more intelligence into the
end-to-end supply-chain processes, including identifying the
optimal way to create products through digital simulations that
take into account climate and other situational considerations, as
well as creating greater transparency and visibility into its
supply chain from the point of origin all the way to the
consumer.
"Through our expanded relationship, we're harnessing the
expertise and insights Mars has gained from more than a century of
producing some of the world's most loved brands to create a layer
of intelligence that will drive reimagined experiences for
Associates and consumers," said Judson
Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide
Commercial Business. "Together, we will create a foundation for
cloud, data and AI that will allow Mars to grow faster and
transform how work gets done."
Mars, Accenture and Microsoft share similar ambitions around
sustainability, which was a key decision-making factor for Mars
choosing Azure. As Mars continues to migrate key infrastructure and
workloads to Azure, Microsoft's commitment to 100% renewable energy
in its datacenters by 2025 will help Mars reach its own goal to
reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain by
67% by 2050. The relationship is also helping Mars make progress
toward its other sustainability goals around environmental impact
by implementing technology solutions for reducing the waste of
energy, raw materials and water across its production facilities
around the world.
The new future of work
Mars has always been considered a forward-looking and modern
workplace, ranked fifth in the 2020 Fortune's Global Best Places to
Work List. Mars plans to continue incorporating digital
technologies to evolve and transform its workplaces, focusing on
increasing Associates' digital skills. To accomplish this, Mars,
Accenture and Microsoft will work together to establish an
Innovation Lab to collaborate on the use of advanced
technologies, to expedite time to market for new transformative use
cases, direct-to-consumer initiatives, sustainability efforts and
digitized product innovation. Through the Innovation Lab, Mars will
focus on the future of work and how technology from Microsoft can
help drive greater efficiency and effectiveness in the modern Mars
work environment.
Additionally, Mars is empowering its workforce with modern
workplace tools, such as Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva,
to drive tighter integration between its businesses and increase
productivity and collaboration for its Associates.
About Mars, Incorporated
For more than a century, Mars, Incorporated has been driven by
the belief that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do
business today. This idea is at the center of who we have always
been as a global, family-owned business. Today, Mars is
transforming, innovating and evolving in ways that affirm our
commitment to making a positive impact on the world around us.
Across our diverse and expanding portfolio of confectionery,
food, and Petcare products and services, we employ 133,000
dedicated Associates who are all moving in the same direction:
forward. With $40 billion in annual
sales, we produce some of the world's best-loved brands including
DOVE®, EXTRA®, M&M's®, MILKY
WAY®, SNICKERS®, TWIX®,
ORBIT®, PEDIGREE®, ROYAL CANIN®, SKITTLES®,
BEN'S ORIGINAL™, WHISKAS®, COCOAVIA®, and 5™;
and take care of half of the world's pets through our nutrition,
health and services businesses, including AniCura, Banfield Pet
Hospitals™, BluePearl®, Linnaeus, and VCA™.
We know we can only be truly successful if our suppliers
and the communities in which we operate prosper as well. The Mars
Five Principles – Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency
and Freedom – inspire our Associates to take action every day to
help create a world tomorrow in which the planet, its people and
pets can thrive.
For more information about Mars, please visit www.mars.com.
Join us
on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital
transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an
intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mars-and-microsoft-work-together-to-accelerate-mars-digital-transformation-and-reimagine-business-operations-associate-experience-and-consumer-engagement-301290925.html
SOURCE Microsoft Corporation