Barges and freight cars and trucking . . .
(And So. Much. Ore.)
Oh my.
A digital transformation at Mosaic: Mastering the logistics that keep the world fed.
MOVING 25 MILLION TONNES
OF POTASH AND PHOSPHATE AROUND THE WORLD?
THAT’S ONE HEAVY SUPPLY CHAIN.
The Situation
Imagine a team loading thousands of tonnes of crushed rock onto a barge at a port in Brazil. Not just any rock—phosphate and potash ore, two of the three most important nutrients in agriculture. The delivery of that fertilizer is on a clock; if the farmers it is headed to don’t receive it at the right time in the growing cycle, that means lost crops. Lost food.
Now imagine part of that order gets canceled. But at the same time another order, from another part of the world, is increased. If the team loading that barge doesn’t have that information, if they can’t adjust the delivery and destination of that ore in real-time, you have waste. Serious waste. You have farmers turning fertilizer away (financial loss) and farmers not getting the fertilizer they need (food loss).
Now, multiply those challenges over thousands and thousands of shipping routes, mines, ports, and farmers across the globe, with 25 million tonnes of fertilizer in play.
Complicated, right?
For Mosaic, one of the world’s leading integrated producers of concentrated phosphate and potash, managing that complexity with the tools at hand—namely, a hodgepodge of local bespoke systems, largely leveraging Excel-based technology, and no central coordination—had become untenable. It was (past) time for a change. And not just any change—a comprehensive digital transformation that would incorporate supply chain, finance, HR . . . the entire global organization.
THE SOLVE
A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AFFECTING
EVERY CORNER OF THE BUSINESS—
ALL IN A DAY’S (WELL, MANY DAYS’) WORK
The Impact
Mosaic leveraged Deloitte’s FastForward™ Employee Service Center to establish a unified ServiceNow HR Portal that went live in July 2024. The initial design was completed within six months, including the redesign of more than 1,700 processes globally. For testing, more than 12,000 test cases have been executed. And employees all over the organization are adjusting to new and improved ways of doing things—for example, with all employees accessing a central Workday portal, technicians accessing a streamlined maintenance portal, and many, many more.
The system, once fully activated and functional, will encompass eight disparate and complex-in-their-own-right business areas at Mosaic—procurement, supply chain, maintenance, finance, product management and commercial, and human resources—across seven countries. And all accomplished in two years. All in a day’s work.
Now that the system has gone live, Deloitte and Mosaic will work together in an extended value capture period over several months, with expectations that, within a year, Mosaic could see savings captured representing a full recouping of its investment in the transformation.