Flora Food Group adopts a single data solution with Microsoft Fabric

Flora Food Group wanted to consolidate multiple analytics tools into a single, more efficient platform that is better optimized and more sustainable.

The company deployed Microsoft Fabric tobenefit from consolidated reporting, data engineering, data science, and security under one umbrella and architecture.

With the streamlined architecture and enhanced capabilities of Fabric, Flora Food Group can offer more detailed and timely insights to its customers, enhancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.

Flora Food Group is committed to sustainability, not just through its products and supply chains, but also by customizing and deploying a single service solution to manage, store, and analyze its data, instead of relying on multiple systems. It’s important for the company to practice and deliver sustainable and efficient options throughout its end-to-end business services.

A Netherlands-based company, Flora Food Group serves more than 100 countries, with 14 manufacturing sites across five continents and a highly effective supply chain. Flora Food Group began in 2018 and is known for its blockbuster brands such as Flora, Rama Violife, BlueBand, and Country Crock. Flora Food Group is defined by its purpose: to make people healthier and happier, with nutritious and delicious, natural, plant-based food that is good for people and for our planet.

Flora Food Group’s existing analytics infrastructure relied on various Microsoft and Azure data and cloud solution–based tools. While effective, this multiple-solution setup was becoming increasingly unwieldy and costly, with considerable wasted database capacity. Flora Food Group decided that consolidating these tools into a single, more efficient platform was both an optimal and sustainable solution.

By choosing Microsoft Fabric, we benefit from consolidated reporting, data engineering, data science, and security under one umbrella and architecture.

Ben Nott, Head of Global Data and Insight, Flora Food Group

Transitioning to a complete analytics solution

Flora Food Group was already using the underlying technology, so migrating from disparate solutions to Microsoft Fabric was a natural choice. Ben Nott, Head of Global Data and Insight at Flora Food Group, says, “We were already on Microsoft Azure with Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, and Power BI. So, it was a no-brainer for us to consider the option of an end-to-end solution like Fabric.”

Fabric, a unified end-to-end data analytics platform, could remedy Flora Food Group’s concerns. It offered a unified architecture that provided the Azure data, BI, and cloud-based services Flora Food Group was using. “By choosing Microsoft Fabric, we benefit from consolidated reporting, data engineering, data science, and security under one umbrella and architecture,” Nott emphasizes. Michał Strugiński, Platform Lead for Data and Analytics at Flora Food Group, highlights the advantages: “Fabric got our serious consideration almost immediately since the underlying technologies it uses are akin to what we were using, with all the advantages of a single platform.”

Flora Food Group knew that thorough planning and road mapping was vital to succeed, prior to migrating and deploying a new system. The transition involved migrating large datasets to Fabric while running parallel existing systems, to ensure a smooth transition. During migration, the team rebuilt and consolidated reporting.

The Flora Food Group team adopted a medallion architecture, organizing data into a warehouse and three layers—bronze, silver, and gold, the curated zone—each using OneLake within Microsoft Fabric. This recommended approach builds a single source of truth to optimize data for efficient analysis. The three zones co-function to streamline data processing and reporting workflows, with a modern data analysis warehouse that stores Flora Food Group’s data for analytics.

“We first migrated our larger datasets to Fabric, built our Direct Lake–fed reporting, and had users test it for performance and reliability,” Nott explains. This phased approach allowed Flora Food Group to refine the system before full deployment, ensuring minimal disruption to its operations. To date, the company’s finance and supply chain teams are using Fabric. The transition to Fabric is expected to continue over the next few months, with full deployment anticipated within six months.

Using Microsoft Fabric simplifies your architecture and consolidates your costs. It’s a strategic move that enhances both efficiency and capability.

Ben Nott, Head of Global Data and Insight, Flora Food Group

Reaping the benefits of a single data platform

Adopting Fabric yields significant benefits for Flora Food Group, with enhanced reporting capability and shareable semantic models among the most notable. With Direct Lake, Flora Food Group doesn’t have to manage refresh schedules, and reports can include much greater granularity. “Users can get much lower granularity by filtering down inside the report because the models exist at the lower level, and we don’t need to aggregate because of the optimized speed,” Nott explains. This has particularly benefited operational areas like Flora Food Group’s supply chain, where detailed, near real-time data is critical.

The consolidation of platforms has led to improved cost efficiency and resource utilization. “We are more cost-effective in how we use our compute resources because the times where we’re not spiking to 100% utilization can be used by other resources under the same subscription,” Nott notes.

For Flora Food Group employees, the new system has simplified workflows and assisted with productivity. Power BI developers benefit from better orchestration, management, and transformation of the company’s data. With the streamlined architecture and enhanced capabilities of Fabric, Flora Food Group can offer more detailed and timely insights to its customers, enhancing service delivery and customer satisfaction.

The interoperation of AI capabilities in Fabric streamlines the data management process, reducing the need for data duplication and strengthening security. OneLake, a built-in Fabric security feature, significantly improves data integrity and governance. Flora Food Group plans to further incorporate AI capabilities within Fabric, exploring the potential of Fabric Copilot and other advanced features. Nott offered advice for other organizations that already use Microsoft solutions and are considering a similar transition: “Using Microsoft Fabric simplifies your architecture and consolidates your costs. It’s a strategic move that enhances both efficiency and capability.”

Flora Food Group’s journey with Fabric underscores the importance of a unified, scalable analytics solution in today’s data-driven world. By choosing Fabric, Flora Food Group streamlined its operations, reduced costs, and set the stage for future innovations. As Nott says, “The full migration to Fabric should be very easy for us, considering we’re already using the underlying technology. It’s the logical next step in our digital transformation.”

We were already on Microsoft Azure with Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Factory, and Power BI. So, it was a no-brainer for us to consider the option of an end-to-end solution like Fabric.

Ben Nott, Head of Global Data and Insight, Flora Food Group