Discover how global Food & Beverage (F&B) giant Mars — operating across diverse sectors and markets, with a wealth of consumer insights and data from various segments, including pet care, food, and confectionery — partnered with Market Logic Software, the market research and insights solutions provider.
Mars & Market Logic: A decade-long partnership driven by knowledge-management innovation
The global Food & Beverage (F&B) giant Mars operates across diverse sectors and markets. They have a wealth of consumer insights and data from various segments, including pet care, food, and confectionery. Mars partnered with Market Logic Software, the market research and insights solutions provider, to build a company-wide platform that addressed common consumer and market insights problems.
The core challenge that Mars’ insights team faced was one of “insights democratization”. They needed a way to seamlessly centralize their vast data libraries and $731 million knowledge asset so that they could easily be accessed by stakeholders across the organization, from marketing teams to Research and Development (R&D). Specifically, Mars wanted to ensure that their platform could deliver timely, relevant, and actionable insights to colleagues to foster more informed decision-making in everyday work.
At a time when the amount of consumer data Mars generated was skyrocketing, and the demands on their insights teams were growing, Mars’ partnership with Market Logic was essential to solving their Knowledge Management (KM) needs. This collaboration ultimately resulted in the enterprise-wide deployment of their knowledge management platform, known internally as Synapse.
Since Synapse initially launched in 2015, the partnership has continued to evolve. In 2021, Mars launched the “Zero Waste” initiative aimed at optimizing their marketing and insights function by extending the usability and accessibility of existing data. Most recently, Mars and Market Logic took this initiative one step further by launching the generative Al solution DeepSights within the Synapse platform in Q1 2023.
$731 million
worth of knowledge assets needed to be centralized by Mars
Implementing Al for insights at Mars
User benefits
DeepSights™ is an award-winning Al-powered insights solution by Market Logic, designed to unlock and synthesize insights from proprietary research and trusted syndicated content. lts straightforward interface, integrated directly into the existing insights platform called Synapse, enables its users to:
- Ask natural language questions and receive synthesized answers from internal reports and studies
- Provide “watch-outs” and “further reading” to insights questions for added context and reliability
- Access insights from business applications such as Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, and Slack
- Connect with other Al tools through APls, enabling cross-platform functionality.
Highlights
+60%
insights engagement score within the Mars’ Synapse platform since the release of DeepSights
Speed-to-insight
increase, by cutting down time spent on consumer insights retrieval
The implementation process
DeepSights proved tobe a powerful addition to Mars’ insights function. However, its implementation within Synapse did not occur overnight; its deployment underwent a rigorous eight-month approval process, which included:
1. Security and architecture reviews
As a first step, Mars conducted thorough security assessments to validate the infrastructure of DeepSights – specifically looking to see that the system could handle sensitive, proprietary data securely without the DeepSights Large Language Model (LLM) being trained on any data from Mars’ knowledge base.
2. Project charter and approval
Mars’ champion team then crafted a project charter detailing the project’s scope, business
value, resource estimates, and success metrics. 1 This step was crucial for securing buy-in from IT, 1 legal, and procurement departments at Mars.
3. IT, Legal & Procurement alignment
Stakeholders from all three teams were brought in to ensure that all paperwork aligned with the security and legal needs related to enterprise procurement at Mars.
4. Responsible Al council
Lastly, all of DeepSights’ procurement materials were carefully vetting by the Mars’ Responsible Al Council to ensure they met Mars’ ethical and security requirements, relating to the usage of Al within the organization.
After this careful internal evaluation, DeepSights was officially launched at Mars in February, 2024. Since its launch, DeepSights has undergone further updates and enhancements to keep pace with Mars’ evolving requirements and the rapid progress in Al technology.
Key results
Since deploying trusted Al-powered insights solution DeepSights, Mars has seen transformative changes in its knowledge management and data utilization capabilities:
1. Enhanced knowledge accessibility and democratization
DeepSights broke down data silos within Mars, making insights accessible beyond specialized teams. Employees across departments can now access DeepSights within the Synapse platform – which opens insights to users in Marketing, Finance, Sales, and R&D who may not have traditionally been able to access such data. DeepSights empowers these teams to ask targeted questions, such as identifying emerging consumer trends or market gaps, without needing deep technical knowledge of data management. lnsights engagement score increased by 60% within the Mars’ Synapse platform since the release of DeepSights.
2. Efficient insight delivery
DeepSights has increased “speed-to-insight”, significantly cutting down the time needed to retrieve relevant consumer insights. lnstead of manually sifting through documents, employees can query the Al to retrieve insights from Mars’ vast knowledge base in seconds.
3. lmproved alignment on research redundancy
DeepSights improves on Mars’ longstanding “zero waste” initiative to ensure that insights are not lost or underutilized. Employees now benefit from a platform that synthesizes historical knowledge and uncovers previously hidden insights. This continuity helps advance Mars’ strategic goals by ensuring that data-driven decision-making is the norm.
4. Support for knowledge champions and change management
By embedding DeepSights into everyday workflows, Mars has been able to support its “knowledge champions” – employees who advocate for knowledge sharing and insight-driven practices. DeepSights has facilitated change management efforts by making insights an integral part of decision-making, rather than an afterthought.
Future outlook
Mars anticipates that the role of Al in insights will continue to grow as DeepSights evolves. Mars understands Synapse to be an essential platform for storytelling and data curation within the organization, and the deployment of DeepSights further enhances its usability.
As Al technology improves, Mars experts even greater precision in insights and an enhanced capacity for strategic forecasting, allowing its insights teams to draft narratives that shape the company’s long-term strategy.
The success of DeepSights at Mars underscores the value of partnering with a trusted partner and purpose-built specialized tool rather than building an in-house solution. By collaborating with Market Logic, Mars can leverage cutting-edge developments in Al while focusing on its core business priorities.
Mars’ journey with Market Logic’s DeepSights has transformed the organization’s approach to market insights and knowledge management, making data-driven decision-making the standard across their teams and sectors.
By embracing AI-powered insights, Mars has enhanced its strategic alignments, knowledge-sharing culture, and operational efficiency, all while upholding ethical standards through its Responsible Al Council.
This partnership reflects Mars’ commitment to innovation and sets a precedent for the future of Al insights-driven enterprises.
To learn more about how Market Logic has partnered with other global CPG industry leaders for driving success with Al for insights, visit marketlogicsoftware.com.
To see what DeepSights can do for your organization, book a demo today.
Dive in deeper. Watch the webinar
Listen to Matthew Blacknell, Global DComm Customer and Shopper Insights at Mars, speak about how Mars is supercharging market insights with AI on the enterprise level, by deploying Market Logic’s gen-AI solution DeepSights. Hear our partners’ perspectives on the key use cases, present challenges, and future potential for this game-changing technology.
