Cognition360 – the specialist data analytics solution for IT managed services providers using ConnectWise – has appointed Aaron Kennedy to the position of CEO, based in Atlanta, GA.
Cognition360 founder and President Ken Davis says the appointment follows strong growth in Cognition360’s MSP customer base over the past 12 months.
“Aaron Kennedy is a perfect fit for the new role,” Davis says. “Aaron has been a part of many MSP acquisition journeys, both on the buy and sell side, and in his past role of Director of Service Delivery for Konica Minolta’s North American IT services operations he has deep expertise and experience in the dynamics of how to ‘pull the levers’ to help MSPs increase growth and profitability. His experience in managing fast growing IT organizations and his recent consulting experience working with MSPs of all sizes are particularly valuable as Cognition360’s growth accelerates.”
Aaron Kennedy, Cognition360’s newly appointed CEO
Aaron Kennedy says joining Cognition360 ‘closes the loop’ in pursuing his long-term interest and involvement in using data analytics to help MSPs achieve a step change in operational productivity, profitability and customer satisfaction.
“When we were growing our MSP – which we sold in 2016 – I was highly focused on extracting useful data out of ConnectWise and other data sources, and leveraging that data to make fundamental operational improvements in the business. I could see that the data was there, but the challenge was getting it out. Even the manual reporting processes I worked on made a big difference. During my time running service delivery at Konica Minolta’s MSP business, I focused heavily on data and data analytics, including using whatever tools I could get my hands on to get under the hood and understand new MSP acquisitions.
“More recently, while doing business improvement consulting for MSPs, I’ve become even more focused on data analytics. This is the single most significant and exciting area of business improvement for MSPs.
“Joining Cognition360 right now is an opportunity to work with the most transformational platform available. Over the years I’ve used pretty much every analytics tool available for MSPs. But Cognition360 represents a major leap forward with fundamental differences in scope and capability. Other tools can tell you what’s happening with your business, but Cognition360 tells you not only what but why.
“Cognition360’s combination of relational database and Power BI reporting designed and built from the ground up to serve MSP businesses really is a major technology leap forward. Their dashboards are well put together. You don’t need data scientists – they do that for you. Nobody else doing that.
“The huge pool of data aggregated in Cognition360’s relational database is a very powerful weapon. Nobody else has that amount of data – tens of millions of tickets which can be analyzed up, down, and sideways to see and understand new and better ways to improve their productivity and profitability. The degree of business improvement is absolutely measurable and best in class customers are achieving profitability improvements of more than 30 percent.
“A lot of MSP owners go: ‘it’s a red number but how do I make it green?’ Cognition360 points you in the right direction to answer that problem. As MSPs become frustrated with tools that just show them what the numbers are – without the ability to understand why – it’s very exciting to help them see the opportunities for change. To home in on the areas where the biggest wins can be made quickly.
“I’m very charged up with everything I’ve seen so far and we’ve only just started. There is huge untapped potential with Cognition360 and I’m really delighted and excited to be part of the journey,” Aaron Kennedy says.