Mars savors success with digital innovation

Mars, Incorporated is a multinational confectionery, pet care, and food conglomerate
founded in 1911.

Known for brands like Mars, Snickers, and Pedigree, their vision
centers on creating a better world for tomorrow through innovation, quality products,
and a commitment to societal and environmental well-being.

Mars is mobilizing citizen developers with Power Apps to build for the future. The
result: 5000 apps that are now boosting productivity and fueling innovation across
offices and factories around the world.

• Digital transformation for innovation: Mars creates an ‘App Factory’ to transform ideas into tangible, functional applications that deliver value to their customers.
• Citizen developers get creative: 45,000 staff created over 5,200 Power Apps and 150 enterprise-grade apps.
• Use cases for everyone: Factories, QC, legal, HR – the use cases for digitization span business units and involve both technical and non-technical staff.

A bold idea for an impactful journey

Over 100 years of history have seen Mars transform into a global manufacturer of confectionery, food and beverage products with 130,000 employees. Their vision for innovation and technology is clear: enable the world they want tomorrow by creating bold, innovative and evidence-based business solutions and contributing to solving global challenges.

To bring this vision to life, this confectionery giant has set out on an exciting journey—the creation of an ‘App Factory.’ It was a strategic move to cultivate a culture where technology empowers every employee to be an innovator. They aimed to transform ideas into tangible, functional applications—apps that could revolutionize how they operated, interacted, and delivered value to their customers.

They choose Microsoft Power Platform and SharePoint to fuel the innovation engine; and found the right partner in Sogeti to strengthen their digital capabilities and help adopt it across the organization.

Digital transformation with a strong foundation

Sogeti laid the groundwork for digital transformation at Mars by implementing a
comprehensive governance strategy.

This involved defining clear processes, guidelines, and controls to ensure efficient development, deployment, and management of solutions built on Microsoft Power Platform and SharePoint.

The team played a key role in creating advanced solutions that worked seamlessly with the existing on-site systems. They established a Center of Excellence to ensure effective governance, administration, and platform monitoring, guaranteeing optimal performance and adherence to industry best practices.

Citizen developers opening up a world of ideas

Sogeti quickly assembled a project team of experts from both France and India, which enabled a game-changing development of automation apps that charted the course for the new Citizen Developer program.

Integrating the Microsoft Power Platform into the Mars environment helped the team digitize a wide range of paper-based processes. Ideas that once remained stored away in physical files could now be visualized easily, which accelerated the transition to digital workflows. This
solution became the gateway to automation app creation at Mars, and the results were
staggering.

The Power Platform empowered over 45,000 staff to be more productive and innovative in their roles. It breathed life into countless ideas, and the citizen developers created over 5,200 Power Apps that enhanced key business processes. More than 150 of these became enterprise-grade apps, steering Mars into a new era of efficiency and competitiveness.

Key use cases powering the future

The newly minted innovation engine resulted in several compelling use cases that demonstrated the profound impact of Power App implementation:

Prototyping for continuous innovation

Sogeti’s implementation plan included guidance and support to help Mars scale their
operations effectively. They ran the Citizen Developer program, providing coaching and
assistance to both technical and non-technical team members so that they could utilize the
Power Platform optimally and make necessary changes to reduce inefficient processes.

The team members were able to harness their creativity to confidently develop prototypes
and proof-of-concepts (POCs) to create business cases for broader implementation.
The acceleration of innovative projects is resulting in a continuous stream of scalable
solutions, helping Mars remain competitive and agile in its operations.

This digital transformation has become an impetus for growth and will go a long way towards Mars adapting effectively to market dynamics and consumer preferences.