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Levoplant Blooms With Jet Analytics

22 05 Cs Levoplant Case Study

One of the largest pot plant orchids growers in the Netherlands, Levoplant began in 1969 as a tomato production company. In the last few decades, it transitioned primarily to a potted plant company where it has developed into one of the largest suppliers of orchids in Europe. A high-volume supplier with a complete range tailored to exporters, wholesalers, garden centres, and florists, Levoplant inspires the industry with innovative technology, and its capacity to deliver high-quality plants all-year round.

Levoplant needed support to keep up with innovation

Innovation is in the DNA of Levoplant. Since its start, the company has prided itself on being on the cutting edge of technology. From advanced cultivating machinery in the greenhouse to methodical climate-controlled delivery, Levoplant has remained agile, adapting to the constantly changing demands of the market.

Ten years ago, Levoplant added automation to its reporting process, adopting Jet Reports to help improve reporting for the growing company. This meant easy self-service financial and operational reporting inside of Excel. Still, Frank van Holsteijn, Application Manager at Levoplant, and his team noticed they had lots of data they weren’t able to use. Levoplant’s sophisticated technology was getting ahead of its data. Like many orchids, it needed a strong stake (read: financial analytics tool) to support its rapid growth.

“We could track data for each of the three and a half million plants we grow in our main location. For each plant, we knew their temperature every five minutes for the last two years. We knew how many flowers each plant had, how big their leaves were, and at what price they were sold. But we couldn’t make a bigger narrative with the data,” said van Holsteijn.

Levoplant was trying to cobble together trends through a swath of disconnected Excel sheets, Jet Reports, and Power BI reports.

“We had so much data, but we didn’t know where to look for the information we needed. It wasn’t comprehensible anymore.”

Van Holsteijn knew he needed to put Levoplants data in a central place where it could increase data quality, enable self-service of analysis and solve performance problems.

De BI Controller B.V was the Perfect Implementation Partner

Levoplant found its data quality solution in Jet Analytics. After a quick implementation and a brief two-day training session with Erwin Staal from the insightsoftware partner ‘De BI Controller B.V.’, Levoplant was up and running. Supported by Jet Analytics, Levoplant could lean into its innovations confident it could handle the added data complexity.

“Levoplant wanted a solution it could maintain and adjust itself. We did a hands-off approach using Microsoft Azure and skipped the standard cubes to build awesome data models in Power BI. With low upfront investments, the flexibility of Azure and sparing consultancy here and there, Jet Analytics scored for Levoplant on all fronts,” said Staal.

Data Quality With Jet Analytics

There are a lot of variables that impact the quality of Levoplant’s crop. Right now, it monitors some of them, but Levoplant knows there are over one hundred variables that impact a plants growth. The more data Levoplant can visualise with Jet Analytics, the more efficiently it can grow flowers.

“We can see trends and opportunities and are no longer bogged down in tedious manual processes when we are looking for key information,” said van Holsteijn.

Jet Analytics offered Levoplant a single source of truth for all its financial and operational reporting. Levoplant gained control over its data with self-service reporting and analytics. Jet also enabled the team to report across multiple data sources and roll-out faster, easier BI dashboards.

Jet Analytics offered Levoplant the ability to:

  • Simplify Data Estate. Jet Analytics empowered Levoplant to harness multiple data sources for fast, reliable reporting and analytics. With an intuitive data preparation automation and data modelling solution, Levoplant had the tools to support its reporting and analytics needs. Through a modern datawarehouse and tabular models, Levoplant could easily report inside Excel or Power BI, with no coding and without requiring technical expertise.
  • Enable Self-Service Reporting and Analytics. With easy, quick self-service analytics and reporting, Levoplant could manage and create the reports it needed, without relying on IT to prepare its data. With a quick implementation and 2-day training session, Levoplant could focus on what the data was saying.  
  • Speed Up Reporting. Jet Analytics allowed Levoplant to combine multiple data sources into a modern data warehouse with customizable tabular models, on a platform that allows much faster configurations than manual coding. Now Levoplant can build and share dashboards within minutes and gain valuable business insights.
  • Decrease Cost of Ownership. By bringing custom reporting and analytics capabilities in-house, Levoplant got the self-sufficient tool it wanted and greatly reduced dependency on expensive technical experts. Jet Analytics is built to support rapid changes by simplifying the ETL process, with no coding required. Levoplant can now maximize productivity by centralizing data access rules, and by automating data refreshes.

Jet Analytics Ups Levoplant’s Performance

Seeing the Forest for the Trees

Not your traditional office setting, the heart of Levoplant is in the greenhouse. Jet Analytics offers simplified, precise data that speaks to both those handling the dirt and C-level executives.

“With so many moving hands in this business, it is important to be able to see the forest for the trees. We need the data to give us a big picture,’ said van Holsteijn.

Jet Analytics’ user-friendly drag-and-drop interfaces simplify data management and report creation that anyone in the company can use. Levoplant also established a system of record with historical data and multiple data sources that guarantees everyone is using the same information to run their reports. This way the right people can see trends and move with them.

And Levoplant’s stock is constantly growing to meet demand, meaning certain times of year require more stock. With Jet Analytics, Levoplant can now combine current data with historic sales trends to more accurately forecast supply and demand. This means more accurately quoting delivery time and cost to customers.

Visions of the Future

Levoplant is just getting started and knows there is a long way to go before maximizing the potential of its data. Keeping with its history of innovation, Levoplant wants to expand its use of Jet Analytics to other areas of the company.

“We are still missing opportunities. We analyse some of the process, but there are other sources that we have, like logistic manufacturing software, that we’d like to visualize. We look forward to expanding with Jet Analytics,” said van Holsteijn.

Innovation is in the DNA of our company, which is why we turned to Jet Analytics to help us make sense of our data and spot opportunity.

Frank van Holsteijn Application Manager

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