Mars and Microsoft are expanding their relationship with a new agreement to accelerate Mars’ digital transformation. The two companies will use the Microsoft Azure platform to optimise the operational speed and intelligent manufacturing supply chains of the Mars Company. 

Working with Accenture as a partner to Microsoft, the companies are expanding a unified cloud and data foundation across all Mars businesses on Microsoft Azure, helping Mars achieve its “cloud-first” strategy.

This digital infrastructure is aimed to provide Mars with the business insights needed to accelerate growth and profitability. The company is also putting a priority on improving trust with customers by offering more transparent experiences. An example is in the company’s pet food business where it is creating AI-powered applications to improve customers’ experience.

Mars is 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 optimise production is aiming to help Mars improve margins and reduce waste, and empower on-site associates to make real-time decisions. The company is hoping to scale out, using similar IoT technologies for optimising manufacturing across its business segments, including food and pet care, providing process control, consistency and uniformity across product lines.

In the future, Mars plans to use digital technologies to introduce 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.

“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 fulfil needs and expectations across every touch-point 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.”

“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 re-imagined 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.”

Microsoft’s commitments to sustainability 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 data centres 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 wastage of energy, raw materials and water across its production facilities around the world.