The Mars Petcare Data & Analytics team manages a platform of combined, anonymized data from across Mars Petcare, with the potential to provide insight into nearly 100M unique pets. But that’s just the beginning. The team also provides data solutions that transform legacy databases into fit-for-purpose technology solutions that provide faster, more reliable, and easier-to-use analytics.

One example is the “Petcare Science Engine”. At Mars’s Waltham Petcare Science Institutethe focus is on the nutritional and behavioural needs of pets, advancing pet health, and using science  to develop innovative products and services for pets and pet owners. The calibre of their work and the vast amount of pet data required to advance their research were quickly outgrowing a legacy system. Waltham scientists and the Data & Analytics team worked together to build a solution, the Petcare Science Engine, a more robust platform with the capability and capacity to combine new sources of data from across Mars Petcare and conduct robust, evidence-based data science at scale. The data had to be completely remodeled, not only to provide significantly faster analyses, but also to take advantage of the cloud-based technologies upon which it now sits. The Petcare Science Engine platform can pull data 3-10 times faster than its predecessor, and the data set it holds is completely unique. The result is a state-of-the-art data infrastructure, increasing efficiency and unlocking opportunities to advance pet health science.  

Now that this new platform is built, the work doesn’t stop and there’s still more we can do to further its huge potential. As we start to plug in deidentified data sources from across Mars Petcare, the platform will allow scientists to better understand the lives of pets, and the richness of the data will allow our health solutions to become more relevant to pets’ needs and pet owners’ individual preferences. 

We want to continue to build these capabilities for other areas of Mars Petcare and provide the Petcare divisions with which we collaborate with real insights to help focus their work on what will matter most to pet health. We have the expertise and knowledge to put ourselves at the service of our businesses and associates from across Mars Petcare, and ultimately at the service of pets and pet owners. 

So, all this work on a more capable and powerful platform allows us to ultimately deliver on our Purpose: A BETTER WORLD FOR PETS.

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This article was originally posted on: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/good-data-platform-improves-way-you-work-great-one-think-de-castro/  

Paulo de Castro is the CFO Global Petcare at Mars