Husqvarna Group is a world-leading manufacturer with a rich 335-year history, offering outdoor products for forest, park and garden care, as well as machines and diamond tools for the light construction industry. Its portfolio includes well-known brands such as Husqvarna, Gardena, Flymo, McCulloch, Jonsered and Diamant Boart, serving professionals and consumers worldwide.
Operating across 40 countries with around 12,300 employees and net sales over $5 billion, the company serves customers in over 130 markets worldwide. This growth was driven in part by strategic acquisitions, each bringing its own unique data ecosystem. As a result, multiple ERPs, varied processes and siloed information made data management feel like solving a complex puzzle.
With such complexity, the company faced a critical challenge: transforming its fragmented data landscape into a unified, strategic asset through master data management (MDM).
Challenges
Leadership and strategic alignment
Getting MDM off the ground wasn't just about technology. Teams often found themselves battling for budget, with leaders struggling to see how better data management could help the business grow and work more smoothly.
"If you don't have top management buy-in, skip it. Don't do it. Even the most brilliant ideas will fall without support." - Gunnar Björk, Data Manager, Husqvarna Group
Data governance in a complex, diversified company
With product lines ranging from garden equipment to construction tools, keeping data consistent became a real challenge. Different teams tracked different types of information, creating a landscape where nobody could be totally sure who was responsible for what.
Fragmented data across acquired businesses
Years of growth through acquisitions had created a complicated information landscape.
Each new business brought its own way of tracking products, suppliers, locations and customers, leading to millions of database entries that didn't always make sense when put together.
Adoption and cultural resistance
Changing how people work with data isn't easy. Teams were comfortable with their existing systems and getting everyone to trust and use a new approach required significant effort.
Compliance and complexity
Operating across over 130 countries meant dealing with complex regulatory requirements. What worked in one region might be completely wrong in another, which made data management an intricate and critical business function.
Solutions
Implementing a single source of truth
Husqvarna chose Stibo Systems Platform for multidomain MDM, which enables the company to manage its product, customer, supplier, location and people data in one system, to create a unified data backbone.
Instead of replacing existing systems, it built a central hub that could connect and manage data across multiple domains.
That would give the organization the flexibility to keep its current infrastructure, but with a new, consistent data management layer.
"We said Stibo Systems Platform should be the Wikipedia of truth for data." - Gunnar Björk, Data Manager, Husqvarna Group
Strategic domain expansion
The team began with product and supplier data, then expanded into organizational business partner and location master data, including people, roles, organizational structures, and geographic hierarchies. They later incorporated supporting application reference data. This phased approach allowed them to demonstrate value early while building trust across the organization.
Creating a flexible data governance framework
With multiple business divisions, a one-size-fits-all governance approach was never going to work.
The organization split complex data objects into separate entities – technical product specs lived separately from marketing information. R&D, product management and marketing could work with data in ways that made sense for their specific needs.
Integration and data flow
Stibo Systems Platform became the central data foundation, feeding approximately 100 integrated applications and 250 consumer-facing websites, while receiving data from around 12 inbound systems across all domains. When a product was updated, the change would automatically be distributed across every relevant department and external system.
Compliance and change management
Beyond the technical implementation, Husqvarna knew it needed to bring its people along on the journey.
It established a dedicated compliance team to track global regulatory requirements and work closely with product management to make sure that any data changes could be implemented quickly and accurately.
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Summary
Building a strong data foundation
Husqvarna systematically transformed its data management approach. By carefully migrating over 1.5 million products into a unified system, the team standardized and enriched data that was collected across multiple business acquisitions.
“Trust in the data has fundamentally changed. What’s in the system is now accepted as the single source of truth.”- Gunnar Björk, Data Manager, Husqvarna Group
Real business results
The new multidomain MDM strategy dramatically changed how the business works.
Teams now spend less time chasing down correct information, make decisions faster and have reduced the endless back-and-forth of trying to verify product details.
Compliance and governance become easier
Tracking regulatory requirements across 40 countries and 130 global markets is a real challenge.
The new multidomain MDM platform helps address complex compliance requirements without creating mountains of administrative work. Product, supplier, location and customer data, as well as organizational changes can now be tracked transparently and efficiently.
“Governance is clear. Tasks are done once. We can even handle reorganizations without breaking our data framework.” - Gunnar Björk, Data Manager, Husqvarna Group
Smoother technology implementations
With a solid data foundation in place, it is much simpler to roll out complex systems like SAP S/4HANA and Siemens Teamcenter. The new Stibo Systems Platform gave the tech teams the flexibility they needed to adapt quickly.
A new way of thinking about data
What began as a multidomain MDM project gradually transformed into something more strategic.
People across the organization used to see data just as a technical requirement, but that is changing. More and more, they now see data as a key business asset that could unlock new opportunities across different parts of the organization.
