Driving Strategic Innovation: Insights from Zema Global CEO Andrea Remyn Stone on Carve-Outs and Transformation

While every industry is rushing to become data-driven, not many face as much pressure to transform as the energy and commodities sectors. There’s a huge push underway to harness the power of data and AI to manage the increasing complexity brought on by new energy sources, as well as the sky-rocketing volume of data that enterprises are gathering.

To help enterprises navigate this shifting landscape, few technology providers are as well-positioned as Zema Global – a company that itself recently embarked on a major transformation. Following a significant financial investment from FTV last year, alongside the appointment of Andrea Remyn Stone as CEO, ZE Power, a family-run business based in Vancouver, combined with Morningstar Commodity Data (MCD), the commodities and data analytics arm of Morningstar (NASDAQ: MORN), to form Zema Global.

The business combination cemented Zema Global’s position as the global leader in offering high-quality enterprise data management and analytics for the energy and commodities sectors, serving over 200 enterprises around the world. And while the process of building a singular global company tackling a data-heavy, highly fragmented market in the midst of major upheaval is still ongoing, the progress that Andrea and her team have made in just a few months is remarkable.

In fact, last month Zema Global acquired cQuant.io, a leading portfolio analytics provider for the energy industry. According to Andrea, cQuant.io will “align data and analytics infrastructures to move together in real time, providing unparalleled accuracy, speed and insight required to make mission-critical decisions in highly volatile markets.”

We spoke with Andrea to learn about why the opportunity to build Zema Global came at just the right time, the unique challenges to a carve-out deal, driving and managing rapid change, and how she’s successfully blending the cultures of both organizations by instilling a sense of shared purpose for employees around the world.

QUESTION 1

What excites you about the data and analytics space, particularly in the energy and commodities industries?

I’ve spent 25 years in data and analytics, working for public, private and private equity-backed companies. I’m a big fan of the creativity and power of data. It’s been an inspiration to me throughout my career, in terms of how it can unlock value and make things happen.

For the energy and commodities industries specifically, the amount of information needed to make decisions is massive, covering operational, transactional, geospatial and weather data. It’s an incredible big data challenge. On top of that, new data is coming in all the time. Both the frequency of data and the number of sources are exploding. And more and more, organizations need to access this data immediately to drive real-time insights and decisions.

That’s what’s so powerful about Zema Global: we combined the best aggregated data provider in commodities and energy, MCD, with ZE Power Group, the best enterprise data management solution in the industry. We gather all of the customer’s data into our platform to create an enterprise golden copy that becomes the single source of truth for the enterprise. Then, we operate like a vascular system, delivering the data throughout the company to help with operational, trading and risk decisions.

QUESTION 2

What were some of the unique challenges to building Zema Global?

While carve-outs are great for value creation, they’re extremely complex and difficult. MCD was a business unit in a huge public company. We received a strong product and operational team but had to stand up corporate systems and processes that had previously been operated by the parent company. We also had to expand the capacity of Zema Global’s leadership team as Morningstar retained much of the functional management, finance, HR, tech and business leaders. And all of the transformation had to happen in a really tightly-managed way, under intense time pressure, which is actually a great environment for rapid change.

We were upfront with employees and told them that, effectively, every two months they’d be working for a different company. Now, several months into these two businesses coming together, most people acknowledge and accept they are in a high-change environment. We’re not 100 percent there yet, people still think of what heritage organization they are from, but we are well on the way to becoming one unified company.

QUESTION 3

How did you lay the foundation for this rapid change, and where have you drawn support?

It really helped that we set a crystal-clear mission and vision, centered around five value creation pillars developed as part of our value creation plan with FTV: become one company, grow the business, be more commercial, expand into new markets and achieve operational excellence. We repeat them constantly, and all 300 employees know how what they do connects to these pillars.

And the FTV team has really been a critical partner throughout the whole journey. The breadth of their network has been indispensable. In fact, it was through FTV’s connections that we were able to arrange a meeting with Morningstar CEO Kunal Kapoor to arrange the MCD carve out last year.

The FTV team has also been realistic about the complexity of the undertaking and the time it will take, and they’re quick to provide help whenever they can — whether that’s connecting us with another portfolio company or giving us the critical guidance we need to scale to revenue of $200 million and beyond.

QUESTION 4

How did you form your leadership team? And how did you decide when to promote internally, and when to seek external hires?

Where we needed to drive fast change, I brought in people who have proven playbooks, knew how to work with private equity and have driven great change in the past. In nine months, I’ve hired 21 people at the top two levels of leadership, including a new CFO, CRO and CMO.

I also took senior leaders from MCD and ZE Power with invaluable institutional knowledge and a strong sense of each organization’s cultural DNA, and promoted them up to both executive and senior leadership. We reshuffled responsibilities between the new leadership team. We introduced a new way of working and new operating models, and we spent a lot of time describing what each function does to make sure everyone knew who was responsible for what.

Now, my leadership team at the top two levels is split by thirds between outside hires, executives from ZE Power and leaders from MCD.

QUESTION 5

What’s something you learned from the last six months of building Zema Global?

People have deep emotional attachments to the places they work. We’re a bit unique in that the companies we combined used to compete with each other. Naturally, each team thought their products were better. It took a lot of work to get everyone on the same team.

People also hate uncertainty. They want to know exactly what and when something is going to happen. The key is to over-communicate. We have monthly town halls, for example, and alert employees to key dates in the ongoing effort to combine the two companies, so they know when the stakes are highest.

And from a culture perspective, you cannot know your future if you do not know your past. Early on, we identified who our culture carriers were, listened to them and put them in leadership roles.

We also made sure to create a shared sense of purpose and comradery. For example, shortly after the transaction closed in October 2024, 40 leaders got together for three days of planning, adventures and experiences, including five hours whale watching. It was exciting, dramatic and more intense than we all thought it would be – an exercise where we all got to see each other as people. Building those common bonds is crucial so everyone knows they are on the same team.