Background
Sales- and service-driven across Europe
Hoshizaki is a Japanese manufacturer of commercial kitchen equipment. Hoshizaki Europe operates as the regional sales and service organization, delivering ice makers, refrigeration units and sushi-related products to professional customers across various European markets.
The organization spans multiple legal entities and focuses strongly on sales and after-sales support. Reliable data is essential to give sales teams a daily view of their performance, helping them track progress, prepare for customer meetings and spot opportunities or follow up where needed.
Challenge
Fragmented insights and access to historical AX data
When we started working with Hoshizaki Europe about eight years ago, they were working with disconnected reports from Microsoft AX. Each team – finance, logistics and sales – relied on its own tools, definitions and reporting processes.
Back then the situation became even more complex due to multiple countries, currencies and business units. Manual reporting led to inconsistent outcomes, duplicated efforts and time-consuming reconciliations.
With Birds BI we then provided a single solution that could unify ERP data across all entities, apply consistent business logic and provide reliable insights to every department.
Forwarding to the more recent situation, Hoshizaki Europe was transitioning from AX to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations. For them it was essential that historical AX data from all the legal entities was still accessible in Power BI reports.
Solution
A solid data platform for historical AX data and new Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations data
Hoshizaki Europe Initially selected us years ago to streamline reporting from their Microsoft AX environment to improve visibility into sales and operational data, based on consistent logic across the European sales organization.
We solved the challenges by using standardized Content Packs, unlocking the complex data layer of Microsoft AX. Something that would typically require months of custom development but was now available out-of-the-box – including a ready-to-use data warehouse, a complete Power BI data model and a tabular model – giving the BI team a quickstart and a solid foundation for reporting.
Our most recent solution to the historical AX data challenge was to load them into the Birds BI datawarehouse, structure the data and connect them to the same datamodel with the same F&O datalabels.
This way Hoshizaki Europe can have full access to historical data from the old ERP system and seamlessly compare them in Power BI reporting also containing current data.
From there, Hoshizaki Europe apply their own business rules – such as turnover definitions and currency logic – to tailor insights for finance, sales and logistics.
All departments work from one consistent data foundation within Power BI, supported by a small BI team that focuses on insights instead of infrastructure.
Results
From scattered reports to confident decisions
With Birds BI in place, Hoshizaki Europe benefits from:
- Reliable access to current and historical ERP data from multiple legal entities
- Standardized currency logic across dashboards
- A central data model with shared business logic across reports
- Rapid creation of department-specific KPIs
- A shared view for sales, finance and logistics
- Broad Power BI access across the organization, tailored to each user’s role
- A small BI team that focuses on insights instead of just infrastructure
Conclusion
Reliable insights, no technical overhead
Birds BI allows Hoshizaki Europe to focus on their business, not on building infrastructure. The platform supports decision-making across teams and scales effortlessly with the organization’s growth.
Real stories, real results, real impact.
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Birds BI data platform for 4PS Construct
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