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21 October, 2026
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Customer challenge
In the ever-evolving digital landscape, companies must continuously innovate to maintain a competitive edge. Our client, operating in the beverage industry, recognised this imperative and embarked on an ambitious digital transformation initiative.
The primary goal was to replace their legacy SAP ERP system with the more agile and robust Microsoft Dynamics 365. This transition was crucial for modernising operations, enhancing efficiency, and leveraging advanced analytics for better decision-making.
The solution
As a trusted partner in this journey, our responsibility was to design and build a sophisticated Data Lake in Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. This foundational data architecture enabled seamless data integration, ensuring that the client’s data was not only centralized but also readily accessible for value-adding analytics.
The comprehensive reporting framework, developed through Power BI, empowered the client to transform into a data-driven organisation where strategic decisions are guided by precise and timely insights.
Business Outcomes
The client’s commitment to digital innovation, supported by our expertise in data solutions, has paved the way for enhanced operational efficiency and informed decision-making.
Specific Challenge
The client runs 40 bottling plants around Africa, and machine maintenance is a difficult activity to plan effectively for. Historically, the average unplanned downtime per plant was around 3 hours per week, and at an average productivity loss of R40,000 per hour per plant, that total machine downtime impact could reach over R100 million per year.
Before the digital transformation project started, productivity planning was structured around Qlikview and Tableau reports. Unfortunately, the 120 production planners across the group still needed to spend signicant time on manual planning, even with the Qlik and Tableau reports. In addition, due to data credibility issues and late data updates, the planners often had to resort to manual reports extracted through SAP.
Specific Outcomes
Altron worked with the client to completely redesign the reports to fit their processes, which gave them the capability to access Power BI metric-based dashboards categorised by country, company, site, and/or line level. In addition, the solution preserved historical data, enabling trending and comparative analysis. Machine efficiency planning and monitoring were most improved by the Enterprise Asset Management Work Orders and Work Requests reports, due to improved oversight on key metrics enabling proactive management.
As a result, the client was able to reduce unplanned machine downtime across their African plants, as well as automate the entire planning process for machine maintenance.
Through strategic digital transformation and innovative data solutions, our client has significantly enhanced operational efficiency and decision-making capabilities. This journey underscores the power of technology in driving business success and sets a benchmark for future industry advancements.