Comprehensive analytics and reporting solution developed for manufacturing company using Power BI

Client background

The client is a manufacturer of absorbent solutions for food, health and wellness. With around 750 employees, they are headquartered in the Midwest and use multiple U.S. manufacturing plants in their supply chain. They are an industry leader in quality and strive to create a more sustainable world and reduce food waste with their absorbent solutions. Their products range from protein, foodservice and produce solutions in the packaging industry to military, long-term and first responder care in the healthcare industry.

The business challenge

The client was utilizing Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS) as their ERP and required nightly refreshes of their data and a highly manual process to transform this data into useful information. They needed a solution that would reduce the number of manual processes and give them the ability to receive detailed and timely data insights into their operations. Ultimately, they chose Power BI to eliminate the spreadsheets that were populated by the IQMS server to give the organization’s end-users access to better information.

This vision led the client’s team to engage Baker Tilly, based on a referral given by Baker Tilly’s CFO advisory team. The client had an increased focus on metrics regarding customers, product/item, plant, vendor, date, raw materials, receipts, sales dollars and open orders. Baker Tilly collaborated with Baker Tilly’s robust manufacturing practice on this project, providing the client with both the right industry experience and technical skills and knowledge to implement a complete solution to fit their needs.

Strategy and solution

As a Microsoft alliance, Baker Tilly utilizes proven strategies and best practices to enable enhanced operational and analytical capabilities using the Microsoft backed tools that best fit the needs of each project and client. We partnered with stakeholders from across the client’s organization to develop a comprehensive analytics and reporting solution backed by a flexible enterprise data model. The products used to accomplish this were Power BI, an interactive data visualization software, BimlFlex, a data warehouse automation framework and Tabular Editor, a tool for analysis and Power BI Tabular modelling. The new reporting solution now enables the organization to:

• Recognize trends and patterns quickly and easily from sales and backlog data through Power BI, including key comparisons between budgeted and actual sales. The client is now able to filter their sales data by product, customer group and production plant, to address areas that require more attention from the leadership team.
• Visualize complex manufacturing data, providing a transparent view of production performance. This allows the client to identify areas of inefficiency and make more accurate forecasts incorporating future demand, and to adjust production strategies accordingly.
• Identify vendors and raw materials that had driven an increase in costs over the previous twelve months, allowing them to implement cost control measures and increase profitability.

Now that the Power BI implementation has been completed, the client has begun to take ownership of the solution. Baker Tilly plans to stay engaged on an ongoing and as-need basis to support the client as they continue to evolve and expand their Power BI enterprise data analytics solution.