Confectioner Cloetta Enhances Data Strategies with Connected Data Group and TIBCO

Challenge

Cloetta had vast amounts of customer and product data that needed to be analyzed and used to make proposals for improvement. This was difficult to do because the data was unstructured and high volume. Reporting was manual, time-consuming, inefficient, and exposed to errors. The company understood it needed to make relevant data easily and unambiguously accessible through a central solution.

Transformation

Cloetta turned to TIBCO silver partner Connected Data Group, concluding that it needed to enrich its current solution with a data virtualization tool. It selected TIBCO Data Virtualization software to make its enterprise data warehouse (EDW) data easily available.

The confectioner’s internationally operating IT and business intelligence (BI) team worked to bring global, local, internal, and external data together from its EDW and other less structured data sources. By merging multiple sources in near real-time with TIBCO Data Virtualization solutions, Cloetta can avoid duplicating integrated data, which improves sales by increasing the accuracy of forecasting capabilities.

According to Han van Bijnen, senior IT manager of service delivery at Cloetta, “In our collaboration with Connected Data Group, two moments have been crucial to the success of our BI environment: the design of our data architecture and the implementation of TIBCO Data Virtualization software.”

The in-depth insights helped by TIBCO Data Virtualization data views strengthen the decision-making ability of sales and distribution. Cloetta’s enterprise-wide BI team makes the data available through this TIBCO platform, which helps speed supply chain insights and business recommendations and provide a clear picture of enterprise-wide data that inspires local and global growth.

Erik Fransen, co-founder of Connected Data Group adds, “Cloetta has been a long term customer that has embraced TIBCO Data Virtualization software as the core of its data delivery platform. We are proud to be a reseller and implementation partner and to regularly work with the Cloetta team to create true business value. Focusing on expert consultancy, implementation, and training for TIBCO Data Virtualization software, we maximize the value of integrated, up-to-date, and easy-to-use data for Cloetta sales teams.”

Benefits

The TIBCO Data Virtualization solution adds a new layer to Cloetta’s existing BI solution, making it possible to process local and external data faster. According to Sofie Nuyens-Hönen, senior IT manager of BI at Cloetta, “We can please our business consumers with BI solutions that would never have been feasible without TIBCO Data Virtualization software. We can work on fulfilling our BI strategy for the coming years and converge from a traditional to a logical data warehouse.”

By helping Cloetta better understand the dynamics of the whole supply chain, TIBCO Data Virtualization software helps improve forecast accuracy and optimizes campaigns, in-store sales, and inventory levels. The combined dataset serves more end-users across the company, enabling fact-based management and tactical and strategic decision-making. Managers can gain insight into the current state of affairs every day and make business reports more relevant to multiple stakeholders.

“Now we can combine new data that we make available through data virtualization with the data we had before in the enterprise data warehouse. It’s a strong combination,” says Nuyens-Hönen.

TIBCO Data Virtualization software saves Cloetta time and money. It helps create reports faster and more effectively, allowing employees to identify anomalies and take corrective action. “With the data, we have effective reporting, and it allows us to quickly discover deviations between plans and to take corrective proactive actions when needed,” says van Bijnen.

Cloetta can create quality analyses because its data is easier to access, analyze, and use. With the help of Connected Data Group and TIBCO, the confectionery validates and develops its product group and client strategies more systematically with point of sale data—creating sweet experiences for customers worldwide.

“Looking ahead, we see many more possibilities with TIBCO’s Data Virtualization solutions. Our next steps will combine and connect data rather than rely on stand alone solutions. We plan to add warehouse, store, and sales data to the Finnish field sales model and will apply the results from previous projects more widely,” says Nuyens-Hönen.

“With data virtualization, Cloetta delivers BI solutions that really make the difference and would never have been possible without TIBCO,” concludes van Bijnen.