Ausnutria, part of the Chinese dairy giant Yili for several years, is a global leader in the development, production, and sale of goat’s milk-based baby and toddler nutrition. The Dutch company has nine production sites, six sales offices, and over 3,500 employees worldwide. Most of its products are shipped to the Chinese market.
To better support the company’s rapid growth, Ausnutria has standardized on SAP in the Netherlands over the past few years. This standardization aimed to harmonize processes across all locations, improve logistical integration, and significantly enhance integrated data exchange.
“The rollout of SAP across all production sites in the Netherlands is nearly complete,” says Wouter Engbers, Ausnutria's ICT Director. “But as we further expanded our SAP system, we saw a growing demand for reliable, up-to-date information. Users knew the data was there, but it needed to be more accessible for daily and strategic decision-making.”
Challenges in Data Insights
For data analyses, Ausnutria implemented SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and SAP Datasphere with partner Expertum, focusing on performance. Engbers explains, “Previously, reports were read directly from the SAP HANA database. Sometimes users did not set the right filters, causing performance issues across our SAP system and making it difficult to scan products in the warehouse.”
“We needed an environment outside the ERP where we could run reports securely and reliably,” continues the ICT Director. “This need was met with SAP Datasphere, giving us a data warehouse that structures data and makes it easy for internal users to use.”
“It was important to carefully determine in the ‘explore phase’ which solution would genuinely add value to Ausnutria’s business,” adds Chris van Gerven, CCO at Expertum. “By conducting a thorough proof of concept, we confirmed that SAP Datasphere was indeed the right tool to develop a mature BI environment.”
Accelerating and Deepening Insights
One of the first successes was achieving daily trend analyses of raw materials. “Previously, it took a technician two to three days to produce a report for a single ingredient. Now we have a real-time overview of all our raw materials daily,” says Engbers. “This allows us to respond much faster if a raw material is at risk of going out of spec.” This immediate insight helps Ausnutria not only to meet the strict Chinese quality standards but also to make production processes more efficient.
The successful application of BI goes beyond just production. Ausnutria has also started generating reports for areas such as purchasing, finance, and transportation. Additionally, data is unlocked in SAP Datasphere, combined with Power BI, to extract even more value from available data. “In this explore phase, we are discovering the possibilities and limitations of SAP Datasphere and SAC,” says Engbers.
Self-Service and Governance
A key pillar in Ausnutria’s BI journey is enabling self-service for internal users. “We deliberately chose a hybrid model,” Engbers explains. “On one hand, we offer standardized, validated reports. On the other, some users have the ability to retrieve data and conduct analyses on their own.” With SAP Datasphere, this is now possible in a structured way. “Our users now better understand the data they’re working with. The system makes it easy to find and use the correct information without risks to our ERP environment.”
The BI initiative is currently in an exploratory phase, focusing on further professionalizing the data model. “We want to ensure that all reports are processed through SAP Datasphere,” Engbers explains. “This also means migrating existing reports that were created in Business Objects (BO) to this platform.” Van Gerven adds, “As the demand for BI reports grows across the organization, it’s crucial that we also focus on strong governance.”
Confidence in the Future
With SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud, both part of SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP), Ausnutria has laid a solid foundation for continued growth and innovation. “We’ve taken an important step towards becoming a more data-driven organization,” says Engbers. “We have faster and better access to our data, enabling us to make better decisions.”
“The BI platform enables us to grow further and find new applications. A recent example is the exchange of supply chain data with other Ausnutria locations, providing global supply chain insight. This data exchange was relatively easy to achieve with SAP Datasphere,” says Engbers.
Van Gerven concludes, “The collaboration between Ausnutria, Expertum, and SAP shows the importance of viewing BI not just as an IT project, but as a way to optimize business processes and prepare for the future.”
Credits
This blog is written by Patricia Bueters and published by SAP Netherlands.
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