The case
As the European market leader and supplier of exotic fruit and vegetables, Nature’s Pride faced the challenge of supporting rapid growth and increasingly complex data flows.
The supply chain for fresh produce is one in which every decision depends on information that is up-to-date. In order to facilitate the transition from Qlik to Power BI, as well as to meet the demands of growing data volumes and real-time requirements, Nature’s Pride selected TimeXtender as its central data integration and data warehouse platform. In collaboration with Bitmetric, the company has built a modern, streamlined data environment that supports hundreds of processes and decisions every day.
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.
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.
- Bronze: raw source data, fully traceable
- Silver: cleansed and standardized data
- Gold: business-ready datasets
Three separate environments
The setup includes development, acceptance, and production environments. This enables safe testing, controlled releases, and uninterrupted daily operations.
Ready for migration and growth
Because TimeXtender manages the data layer, the migration from Qlik to Power BI was smooth and controlled.
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.
TimeXtender
