The multi-national food processing company used exMon to foster smarter, faster and more efficient data handling, ultimately, saving valuable time and money.

Marel has a 38-year history in the food processing industry, providing software, machinery systems, and solutions. Through its innovative use of ground-breaking technologies like digitization, automation, and robotics, they are providing its customers with a competitive edge in the market.

Given the scale of its operations, data quality and the flow of information have always been a focus area for Marel. Marel wanted to increase data quality and thereby enhance productivity, innovation, and customer service despite the different, often conflicting requirements of stakeholders within the business itself. This task was given to Elsa Gudbergsdottir when she joined the company in 2020.

“My first step was to understand what we mean when we talk about products at Marel – when somebody in Innovation talks about products they’re not talking about the same level of products as somebody in Global Supply Chain, or in Service, or Marketing.”

Another issue that Elsa and her team identified was redundant effort and lack of clear ownership in the way data was handled. Under legacy processes unsuited to modern data best practices, the company was reworking and manually handling the same data in up to 15 systems without any established accountability.

A single source of truth was required for all data, and systems and data flows needed to be interconnected.

During an audit of the data tools and software assets Marel had on hand, Elsa and her team discovered the company already had a limited license for exMon, the data quality management platform, and master and reference data management tool. Although the company was using it in a limited capacity for unrelated purposes, it was ideal for the task, and a tool Elsa had prior experience with.

Taking the initiative, she opened the company’s data warehouse – “We had the full license, so my first step was to implement it.”

With exMon in play, the team began moving away from the company’s legacy processes. Asked about its adoption and ever-increasing role in master data governance at Marel, Elsa responds

“In the first two or three months, my team got access to exMon and we moved away from using Excel. Within a very short time frame, we already had over 200 of the most important checks up and running. We have cross-system checks, and checks within each system. This was great news for the organization because they had never used a data quality tool before.” 

Marel has discovered that by adopting the exMon solution, it was helped to drive the company to be more data-driven.

• Redefining data culture: the company went on to hire a master data lead in four of its biggest locations and that local master data lead is responsible for the data in all locations in their region
• Establishing accountability: data stewards were put in place to establish accountability for data quality
• Gaining valuable insights: Marel has achieved effective data governance with the exMon platform, providing the company with a way to provide insights into the status of master data

For Marel, exMon provided the gateway to the information they needed to start streamlining processes.
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