TimeXtender Enables Pally Biscuits to Produce Smarter

“Looking at the investment in TimeXtender, the ROI is huge. You’ll have earned your investment back within a year, while building a much stronger foundation.”

– Jorren Schauwaert , S&OP Manager, Pally Biscuits

Jorren Schauwaert is responsible for Sales & Operations Planning at Pally Biscuits. He is one of the change managers within the organization who initiated the journey towards a data-driven organization: “If you want to take a smarter approach to business, everyone – from CEO to production line operator – needs to have access to management information. And quickly, too. An operator can’t wait around for an official report. A purchaser should be able to take action based on today’s prices, not the prices from last week. If you wait until you have a customer forecast, you’ll often be too late. It is much better to have access to your own forecast compiled from historical data. In short, you can’t manage the business using a data-driven approach if the information you have at your disposal isn’t complete, on time and accurate.”

The first steps towards a data-driven organization were taken in 2019 with the rollout of Qlik Sense: visualization software that simplifies data analysis with interactive reports and dashboards. “Like most companies, we started with a couple of dashboards at the management level,” Jorren says. “We filled them with data from Navision, our ERP system. In no time, the data became increasingly important; the organization discovered more and more possibilities. This included analyzing data from our Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), data from our Warehouse Management System (WMS), external data from customers and suppliers, and so on. Although we made rapid strides forward and extracted more and more value from the data, we ran into bottlenecks. The massive volume of data in Qlik Sense undermined its performance, despite the vital importance of managing on a minute-by-minute basis, rather than hours or days. There was also no documentation of what was done with which data. The arrival of a new version of Navision was accompanied by the introduction of reporting options using Power BI, a different analysis tool than Qlik Sense, that added the risk of creating ‘two versions of the truth’. In short, we had to adopt a smarter approach.”

Since the organization had great confidence in Provelu, the company that had rolled out Qlik Sense at Pally Biscuits, they started discussing options with them. Yorrick Esser, Business Manager at Provelu, explains, “At Pally Biscuits, we were seeing a trend that we had encountered before with customers in manufacturing. Pressured margins and increasing competition made it increasingly important to operate as efficiently as possible. This requires an enormous amount of management information, derived from different sources and systems, which we needed to be able to access from various BI self-service tools, predictive analytics solutions, or directly from customers. A single central data warehouse, a data estate, offered the solution to give everyone in the organization access to relevant data at all times and in a secure manner, in a way that is relevant to them.”

Provelu suggested opting for TimeXtender’s data management platform. Jorren says, “TimeXtender was one of the possible options, and we had already established a good working relationship with Provelu. However, we still wanted to work out the costs and possibilities of other solutions ourselves. Our research also indicated that TimeXtender was the best solution. The data is well documented, which is also important for our organization, for instance in compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). What especially stood out was the manageability, quality, simplicity and quick ROI that TimeXtender offered us. This solution would make an actual strategic contribution to our goal of becoming a fully data-driven organization at every level, from procurement to logistics and from strategy to operations. We moved from accessing data using a manual ad-hoc method to automatically accessing and documenting all necessary data from a single, central location.” 

In just a few months, the way data is accessed has been completely transformed with TimeXtender. All data from a wide variety of systems, from ERP to WMS, from time registration to MES, as well as data from external data sources provided by customers and suppliers, is now centralized in TimeXtender. Using SCRUM methods, the dashboards and reports in Qlik Sense have been redesigned – with the data now fully extracted from TimeXtender – for better alignment with the needs of the individual users and increased adoption of the solution. “The cooperation with both TimeXtender and Provelu in this process was very positive. Provelu kept us on our toes, with best practices from other parties, and TimeXtender actually reserves additional time for migrations, to ensure that the business remains provided with information throughout the transition.”

“TimeXtender leads the way in manageability, quality, simplicity and quick ROI. The solution contributes strategically to our goal of becoming a fully data-driven organization.”
– Jorren Schauwaert, S&OP Manager, Pally Biscuits

Numerous benefits of creating a data estate with TimeXtender at Pally Biscuits have already become apparent, only months after development started. Jorren explains, “Where we used to use data to look back to the past, we are now looking to the future, and are able to optimally combine our data. Based on sales forecasts, we calculate the expected consumption of raw materials, using that information to engage in contracts when the price is right. From CEO to operator, everyone has access to the information they need to make smart decisions. Pally is not a big company, but we are able to switch gears very quickly – and because we now have insight into the business and can immediately identify exceptions, we benefit twice over. Our time is spent on analysis and discussion, not on searching for information. We have also made progress on compliance. We now know exactly what happens with what data from which source. We have an overview of the entire flow; the data lineage is displayed neatly. So, if someone asks what data is stored where and what exactly happens to that data, you can make that very transparent.”

There is a strong foundation in place now, but the organization remains ambitious. After all, a data-driven organization not only requires the right tools; it also requires increased awareness and training, especially in the field of storytelling. Jorren adds, “If you do not have a strong narrative, people will see what is happening, but they may sometimes find it difficult to use the data to make changes. If you teach people how to use data to tell the story, it results in real organizational change. That is what we are working on right now: to eventually create an organization where our information systems, the data estate and our Qlik Sense environment enable every employee at Pally Biscuits to make a proactive and independent transition to the future.”