Nature’s Pride

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Nature’s Pride is the European market leader in exotic fruit and vegetables, operating in a supply chain where speed, accuracy, and insight are critical. As the organisation continued to grow, so did the complexity of its data landscape.

To support the transition from Qlik to Power BI and meet increasing real time and data volume demands, Nature’s Pride chose TimeXtender as its central data integration and data warehouse platform. In collaboration with Bitmetric, this resulted in a modern data environment that enables hundreds of data driven decisions every day.

“I would definitely recommend TimeXtender to my peers. The platform is highly intuitive and has a clear visual design, and saves us a considerable amount of time. And whatever steps we take in the future, on-premise or in the cloud, Bitmetric and TimeXtender provide a solid foundation we can continue to build on.” – Thijs van Alebeek

The Challenges

Growth and complex data flows

Nature’s Pride uses a variety of systems, including ERP, AFAS, quality control (QC) systems, sorting machines, OutSystems and Excel. As the volume and variety of data continued to grow, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a central overview and process data efficiently.

Limitations of Qlik as a data layer

For many years, Qlik served two purposes: data preparation and data visualisation. However, this setup did not scale with the company’s growth. Data loading took too long and required extensive manual optimisation.

The wish to migrate to Power BI

Nature’s Pride aspired to migrate from Qlik to Power BI. Without a central data layer, this would have meant rebuilding models. It would also have meant rewriting logic. And it would have meant duplicating source connections. This would have taken months whilst introducing significant risk.

The need for real-time data

In the supply chain for fresh produce, information is always changing. Inventory, quality and sales data must be updated within minutes to prevent waste and seize opportunities. The existing environment could not deliver this level of speed.

The Solution

TimeXtender became the new central data layer at Nature’s Pride. With TimeXtender, Bitmetric automated the entire data processing pipeline and created a scalable data foundation that grows with the business.

Central data warehouse

Bitmetric built a central data warehouse in TimeXtender, bringing together all critical data sources into one single source of truth.

Ready for migration and growth

Because TimeXtender manages the data layer, the migration from Qlik to Power BI was smooth and controlled.

Three separate environments

The setup includes development, acceptance, and production environments. This enables safe testing, controlled releases, and uninterrupted daily operations.

Bronze–Silver–Gold architecture

TimeXtender uses a metadata-driven approach and structures data across three layers, making it easy to understand data origins, transformations, and applied logic.

Gold: business-ready datasetsx

Bronze: raw source data, fully traceable

Silver: cleansed and standardized data

The Results

Faster and more stable data processes

Critical data is now processed and made available every five minutes, ensuring planning, sales, and operations always work with current information.

A future-proof data foundation

TimeXtender supports both on-premise and cloud environments and scales effortlessly with new data sources and reporting needs.

Less manual work

Automatic scheduling, dependency management, and deployments significantly reduce manual effort. The BI team saves hundreds of hours each year through full automation of repetitive tasks.

One reliable source of truth for all departments

Planning, finance, sales, quality control, and logistics now work with the same consistent, reliable datasets, automatically delivered by TimeXtender.

Context

Sector: Fresh produce supply chain, Exotic fruit and vegetables.
Source system(s): ERP Systems, AFAS, Quality control systems, Sorting Systems & Excel
Users: Planning, Finance, Sales, Quality Control, Logistics, BI & Data Teams.
Business focus: Supporting rapid business growth, Handling increasing data volumes and complexity, Enabling real time decision making, Reducing waste in a fast moving fresh produce supply chain, and Creating a single reliable source of truth across departments.

Technology

Analytics platform: Power BI

How can we help?

Barry has over 20 years experience as a Data & Analytics architect, developer, trainer and author. He will gladly help you with any questions you may have.

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