Baffled by Big Data? A new approach
In today's fast-paced business environment, leveraging data effectively can be the key to staying ahead of the competition, but many data initiatives are struggling to deliver on their initial promises. A different approach can help.
Many FMCG businesses are drowning in data and yet still struggling to get the answers they need. Sound familiar?
Investing in Power BI and data lakes, whilst attending demos on dashboards and integration layers, often leads to high expectations. But six months later, despite lots of time and resources, you’ve not seeing the expected results and you’re still managing key decisions in Excel. And still no one really knows what’s driving your supplier complexity or why that essential new ingredient still isn’t approved.
At Canopy R&D, we think it’s time to demystify the new generation of data tools and focus on providing clear, actionable insights to solve your business issues.
The Problem Isn’t the Tools, it’s the Approach
The modern data toolbox is brilliant. Power BI, data lakes, APIs — these are powerful technologies. But too often they're being used with insufficient understanding of the business's true needs. Projects are being led by newly established data teams within the IT function who know the tools and how to build things, but not exactly what to build or how the overall business works.
The result?
Beautiful dashboards that answer the wrong questions
Long timelines, big budgets and limited business impact
Frustrated technical and NPD teams still working around the system
As this new suite of data tools becomes demystified and broadly established, the key skill will be knowing what questions to ask, and which tools are appropriate. Simply being an early adopter of the new tool won’t cut it.
A Better Way: Start with the Business need, then use the Tools
At Canopy R&D, we take a different approach. We understand the real technical challenges business face that drive complexity and slow innovation execution.
Why do you have multiple similar ingredients doing the same job across different products and locations?
Why does a simple recipe change cause so many delays?
Why can’t we track the cost of complexity across functions?
We understand how recipes, specs, suppliers, and projects really work, and we know how to pull meaningful data from the systems you already have (SAP, Interspec, Excel, whatever).
Then and only then we use tools like Power BI to make that data visible, usable and above all valuable. We’ll use the right tool for the problem that you want to solve.
What Makes This Work?
We’re not trying to sell you a platform.
We’re not tied to one system or one way of working.
We’ve been there and understand the business needs
We build what’s useful and only what’s needed.
The Result?
Instead of a generic dashboard, you get a clear view of what matters to you, such as:
Which ingredients are driving disproportionate cost and complexity
Which suppliers are introducing hidden risks
Where your NPD bottlenecks really are and what to do about them
It’s not “big data.” It’s the right data, applied with purpose.
So, What’s Next?
Whether you’ve started a data project or you’re sitting on years of SAP exports, spec system data, and Excel trackers and still can’t get the insights you need, we can help.
Contact us today to start transforming your data into actionable insights and start driving your business forward with confidence.
We’ll start small. One question. One dashboard. One clear outcome.
And if you’ve already had a painful data project? Let’s do it differently this time.
Canopy R&D: turning business know-how into practical, data-driven change.