DL Chemicals is a manufacturer of various sealing and bonding solutions. They have been producing high-quality products consistently for over 80 years, thanks to the knowledge they have gained. Their range of products includes silicone, MS polymer and hybrid sealants, acrylic sealants, PU sealants, PU foams, adhesives, and an extensive range of ancillary products. Whether you need customized products or private label solutions, DL Chemicals is the ideal partner in their sector. DL Chemicals has two sites - one in Waregem and one in Wielsbeke - and in the last two years, they have provided their products to over 3,500 customers worldwide
Why did DL Chemicals choose the Power BI "Out-of-the-Box" solution?
DL Chemicals had an existing solution for their sales figures report on their Dynamics Navision ERP system. However, due to their transition to Business Central, they needed a new reporting system to incorporate their new data source and legacy data from Navision. Additionally, they wanted to refresh the look and feel of their existing reports. With element61's deployment of the Sales domain from the Power BI "Out-of-the-box" for Business Central solution, the business users would be empowered with comprehensive insights and analysis of its sales data like never before.
Upon deployment, it became clear that other business processes could benefit from the visualized data. The latest insights led to the implementing of the purchase, inventory, and production modules. With the added data, the purchasing department could quickly respond to stock movements and situations thanks to information on actual inventory status, produced quantities, and upcoming sales orders. Meanwhile, Power BI dashboards were created for the warehouse and production departments to improve their daily operations.
Finally, a new source was added to the enterprise data warehouse solution - Dynamics 365 CRM - to enrich the existing Sales report with customer visit data and noted interests.
How is DL Chemicals accelerating its crucial business processes with Power BI and a Data Lakehouse?
DL Chemicals decided to replace their old reporting with element61's Power BI "Out-of-the-Box" solution. This predefined solution allows adding different source systems to one Business Intelligence solution. We utilized this solution for DL Chemicals by including history from Navision and more recent data from their Dynamics 365 Business Central system. The "Out-of-the-Box" solution uses Microsoft Azure Cloud technology to create a Data Lakehouse, which acts as a source to start developing reports with Power BI.
Since the "Out-of-the-Box" solution is pre-packaged, element61 was able to deliver the solution quickly. The successful implementation of the Sales module also allowed us to add Purchase, Production, and Inventory to the solution smoothly. Additionally, DL Chemicals' customization requirements were quickly resolved by element61.
By using Azure Cloud, new resources can be easily added to the solution. For example, we added some master data files managed by DL Chemicals (on an Azure Data Lake Storage account). We recently added the Dynamics 365 CRM as a data source for the Data Lakehouse. All this data is orchestrated by Azure Data Factory and is delivered to the right place for later processing by Databricks. The data is processed through several layers, namely bronze, silver, and gold (also known as the medallion architecture). For each layer, the data is being prepared to be visualized by Power BI. Eventually, Power BI makes it possible to view the reports from any location and with any device. This is an added benefit for DL Chemicals as their representatives can view their figures on the road.
Conclusion
After the implementation, we can conclude a few important points:
DL Chemicals was able to replace the existing Power BI reports quickly and efficiently with the out-of-the-box implementation.
They extended the reports with data from the new ERP system.
The insights gained from this implementation have led to other departments requesting their own reporting, providing them with a better overview of daily activities in the firm. In a relatively short period, DL Chemicals progressed from sales-specific reporting to an enterprise data lake with insights from multiple departments in the firm.
The company transitioned from an on-premise solution to a cloud-based, future-proof solution with the flexibility to add new data sources easily.
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