Nature’s Path
Nature’s Path partnered with FreshBI, now positioned as a forward-thinking AI company, to design and implement a tailored data platform using Power BI and SharePoint. While the solution did not yet include AI, it was intentionally designed as a foundation for future AI enablement, ensuring scalable data governance, performance tracking, and insight generation.
The system anticipated the future integration of large language models (LLMs) by:
- Structuring innovation data for easy querying and classification
- Creating a unified dataset architecture that supports predictive analytics
- Enabling ad hoc exploration and real-time decision-making—precursors to autonomous, AI-driven recommendations
Problem or Challenge
Despite its innovative drive, Nature’s Path faced a significant internal challenge: the absence of a systematic method for tracking the performance of its new and innovative products. Without this structure, the company also lacked the analytics framework needed to make data-driven business decisions about which products to continue, improve, or retire.
This lack of visibility restricted Nature’s Path from fully understanding:
- Past performance trends
- Current operational success or weaknesses
- The ability to prescribe new business actions that align with their desired outcomes
Nature’s Path recognized the need to move beyond basic reporting and adopt a solution that would increase their overall data maturity. They were looking for a partner who could help them operate with greater confidence, efficiency, and profitability, and support them in becoming a data-driven organization.
Objectives
- Implement a centralized tracking mechanism for innovative items and attributes
- Develop a platform to analyze product performance and profitability
- Enable cross-functional decision-making supported by real-time data
- Transition from reactive analysis to a predictive and prescriptive business intelligence model
- Build an internal capability to understand what happened, why it happened, what might happen, and how to influence outcomes proactively
Solution
Nature’s Path partnered with FreshBI, a trusted business intelligence firm, to design and implement a tailored solution using Power BI and SharePoint.
The solution included three core components:
1. SharePoint Integration
FreshBI created a centralized SharePoint list that housed all “Innovation” items along with their relevant attributes. This repository served as the foundation for systematic tracking and management of innovative products, establishing a consistent framework for innovation performance.
2. Data Blending and Dashboard Creation
FreshBI blended the newly created SharePoint list with Nature’s Path’s existing Products table. This produced a unified dataset capable of supporting rich analytics. Utilizing Power BI, FreshBI built a dynamic and interactive dashboard that allowed Nature’s Path to:
- Compare individual innovative item performance
- Analyze product margins
- Benchmark against other items and grouped product categories
3. Customizable Analysis Tools
The dashboard included a customizable and exportable table, giving users the power to conduct ad hoc analysis. This allowed various teams to explore the data more deeply and answer questions relevant to their specific roles, supporting flexible and independent decision-making.
Process
The transformation followed a clear process path:
- SharePoint list creation to centralize innovation-related data
- Blending datasets from SharePoint and the existing product database
- Dashboard development in Power BI with dynamic visualizations
- Deployment of custom tables for ad hoc filtering, analysis, and exports
Each step was designed to build toward a solution that not only provided visibility but also enabled teams across the organization to act on data insights in real-time.
Outcome / Results
The collaboration between Nature’s Path and FreshBI delivered tangible benefits that extended across the organization:
- Significant time, money, and resource savings compared to building a similar solution in-house
- Improved access to real-time, actionable insights on the performance and profitability of innovative items
- Informed decision-making empowered teams to discontinue underperforming products, optimize their portfolio, and focus efforts on high-performing innovations
- Faster cross-functional alignment, with departments now referencing the same data source
- Increased organizational efficiency through enhanced data transparency and usability
With this solution in place, Nature’s Path was now able to understand not just what happened in the past, but also why it happened, what is likely to happen next, and how to shape future outcomes, a true step toward becoming a data-driven company.
Key Features
- Centralized SharePoint list of innovation items and their attributes
- Unified dataset integrating SharePoint and existing product data
- Dynamic Power BI dashboard with side-by-side performance and margin comparisons
- Customizable and exportable table for flexible analysis and ad hoc insights
- Seamless integration of data tools without the need for large-scale internal development
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