Mars Incorporated Case Study
Client Background
Mars, Inc. (Mars) is a global manufacturer of confectionery, pet food, and other food products with US$30 billion in annual sales (2012) and is the 3rd largest privately held company in the United States. A key division of Mars is Wrigley - the world’s largest manufacturer and marketer of chewing gum, employing over 1,700 associates with operations in 40 countries and distribution in over 180 countries.
Phase I: Understanding Wrigley's Needs
Wrigley (a division of Mars) approached Prescient for the redevelopment of their intranet in April 2012. Their present intranet (Wrigley WIN) was not sufficient to meet the needs of the Wrigley business. Prescient conducted an Assessment including 14 business requirement interviews, 3 user focus groups, a 1,366 response user survey (in 3 languages), and a heuristic and strategic site assessment. From this investigation it was concluded that the site sprawl, lack of personalization and customization, and a lack of collaboration and social elements have made the site ineffective at providing a platform for communication and efficiency.
Prescient worked with Wrigley to develop a plan that would address their needs in-line with Prescient’s Planning phase. This included the following components from Prescient’s methodology: strategy, governance, information architecture, wireframes, personas, content management plan, and intranet blueprint. Together, these plans provided a framework for Wrigley to begin implementing an intranet that effectively solves for their internal communication and efficiency challenges through improved business process and technology integration.
The Planning phase reaffirmed issues that were brought up within the initial Assessment phase, that an effective intranet for Wrigley needs to be a Mars initiative and cannot be the segment in isolation. Once the team came to this conclusion, the project morphed into a larger Mars initiative to build an intranet to address all aspects of the enterprise.
Phase I: Understanding Wrigley's Needs
Wrigley (a division of Mars) approached Prescient for the redevelopment of their intranet in April 2012. Their present intranet (Wrigley WIN) was not sufficient to meet the needs of the Wrigley business. Prescient conducted an Assessment including 14 business requirement interviews, 3 user focus groups, a 1,366 response user survey (in 3 languages), and a heuristic and strategic site assessment. From this investigation it was concluded that the site sprawl, lack of personalization and customization, and a lack of collaboration and social elements have made the site ineffective at providing a platform for communication and efficiency. Prescient worked with Wrigley to develop a plan that would address their needs in-line with Prescient’s Planning phase. This included the following components from Prescient’s methodology: strategy, governance, information architecture, wireframes, personas, content management plan, and intranet blueprint. Together, these plans provided a framework for Wrigley to begin implementing an intranet that effectively solves for their internal communication and efficiency challenges through improved business process and technology integration.
The Planning phase reaffirmed issues that were brought up within the initial Assessment phase, that an effective intranet for Wrigley needs to be a Mars initiative and cannot be the segment in isolation. Once the team came to this conclusion, the project morphed into a larger Mars initiative to build an intranet to address all aspects of the enterprise.
Phase II: Understanding Mars' Needs
Prescient consultants were able to leverage their deep dive into Wrigley as a benchmark to better understand the broader enterprise. However, this dataset needed to be tested across geographic regions (Global, North America, Europe, Middle East), segments (Wrigley, Chocolate, Drinks, Shared services, Nutro/Petcare, Banfield, Multi-sales), and organizational functions (sales, manufacturing, marketing, Innovation, Finance, etc.) to ensure that it held true and to find the uniqueness of each employee-group that needed to be addressed.
In late December 2012, exhaustive Assessment phase was launched across Mars’ Inc. including a total of 40 business requirement interviews, 9 user focus groups, a research review, and a heuristic and strategic site assessment. The requirements gathering included in-person meetings and interviews at offices across North America and Europe as well as video conferencing and phone calls with many of Mars’ global offices. The final dataset from this phase found common issues across all the organizations employees including issues around communication, finding documents and employees, accessibility, and collaboration and knowledge sharing.Solution
Working with senior cross-functional Mars’ employees, Prescient developed a strategy that addresses the needs surfaced through both the Wrigley and Mars’ Assessment. This process included multiple strategy interviews with key executives, and a strategic planning workshop. By the end of the workshop, the new intranet’s mission statement reflects the priorities of the enterprise:“To create a robust personalized intranet that informs, connects and inspires Associates to do their best every day.” together with key objectives, target audience, and other strategic decisions."
Prescient consultants then returned to the office with their direction in hand and began to compose the initial draft of the Unified Mars Intranet Strategy that would later be ratified by the strategy group. The strategy document was based on a solid foundation of research from both business leaders and end-users assisted Mars’ in reaching a strategy that addressed the real issues that were being faced by the employees.
The next step for Mars’ is to apply the strategy to complete a full plan and implement the solution. Prescient’s engagement prepared the team for the future intranet through education, best practices and a deeper understanding of the user needs. Through this training as well as the documentation, Mars had the foundation it needed to launch a successful intranet for the entire enterprise.
The next step for Mars’ is to apply the strategy to complete a full plan and implement the solution. Prescient’s engagement prepared the team for the future intranet through education, best practices and a deeper understanding of the user needs. Through this training as well as the documentation, Mars had the foundation it needed to launch a successful intranet for the entire enterprise.
