Cognition360 saves Cinos from ‘ConnectWise reporting hell.’

Implementing Cognition360 for reporting in July 2022 has been a game changer for technology provider Cinos, enabling the company to access its ConnectWise data quickly and easily at a level it had previously been unable to reach. Customized Procurement and Commission Reports have helped Cinos to save time, money, and resources, and increase efficiency and productivity across the business. And Cinos has only just scratched the surface of the reporting Cognition360 delivers – the future is bright!

Founded in 2007, Cinos specializes in delivering and integrating audio-visual and managed services to a global marketplace. Cinos has its headquarters and branch offices in the UK, with regional offices in Europe, North America, and Asia. The company has grown over the years from seven employees to over 130 across the globe today.

Cinos started using ConnectWise in 2019, says Cinos Managing Director Johanna (Jo) Guest.

“Everything in it is brilliant, until it comes to reporting – it is too complex around the Financials. Because it has procedures that aren’t data sets, we couldn’t get to the data we needed. We’re a projects-based company, we need to know where we are with our projects. An average project is over 100,000 pounds, so we have phased billing. And we just couldn’t get to the Financials for these projects in ConnectWise. I was saying to our accounts manager, ‘Surely we are not the only company who needs this info that you can’t get us!’”

Frustrated by not being able to get the reporting she needed, and wasting time building reports from scratch, Jo went hunting for a solution and tried BrightGauge before ultimately finding Cognition360.

“BrightGauge was great in terms of simplicity,” Jo says, “but it wasn’t possible to get to the level of detail that Cognition360 can get to – which is what I needed. I am so pleased I found you!”

“We have different payment terms for different projects. In ConnectWise for a project, you can either bill when it’s completed, or leave it in the invoicing queue. But it doesn’t tell you what you can bill. So, I could have a ticket with a hundred grands-worth of products on it, but I could only get a workflow notification if all the products had been picked and shipped.”

“Everything in ConnectWise is brilliant – until it comes to reporting. It is too complex around the Financials – we couldn’t get to the data we needed. Because we’re a projects-based company, we need to know where we are with our projects. We needed to get into those Financials to know how much we could bill; what kit’s been delivered – and that’s what Cognition360 created for us.”

Enabling easy access to Financials

Jo’s immediate requirement was to be able to easily access the Financials to know at any moment in time exactly what products have been delivered for each project, and how much could be billed on that day based on the payment profile.

Cognition360’s Lead Data Engineer, Eamon Magan, customized the Cogition360 Procurement Report for Cinos, adding a ‘Payment terms’ field enabling them to pick products to be invoiced based on the payment profile of the project.

“It’s amazing.” Jo says. “I can run a report, hand it to somebody who is not an accounts person – at all – and he can export that Power BI, he knows how to do a pivot table, how to filter on the payment terms and because of the report you’ve built us, he then knows what projects to go into and bill.

“Just to put it into perspective, today, in the space of an hour, we’ve been able to go straight into the projects and bill 260,000 pounds. That is literally off the Cognition360 Procurement Report.”

Jo says that pre-Cognition360, it would have taken ‘ages’ to get that billing done. With no way in ConnectWise to assign a payment profile to a project, short of waiting for a project to close, finding the required information meant drilling down manually into 200-plus projects in ConnectWise. Not only was it time-consuming, says Jo, it was subject to human error. And it negatively impacted the bottom line. “We could be millions of pounds out if we’ve got a handful of projects going over a six-month timeline,” she says.

“Cognition360 manages to get into all the places ConnectWise can’t – and that’s the beauty of it. You’re able to pull that data out,” Jo says.

A further benefit, Jo says, is a quicker turnaround on invoices – because she can get invoices out sooner (typically same day), Cinos is being paid quicker: “It’s not only made an impact on the bottom line, but the cashflow as well.”

Simplified commission reporting

A custom Commission Report for the Cinos sales team includes a field that converts all currencies to GBP. With offices in different parts of the world purchasing and billing in various currencies, and sales commissions needing to be recorded, converting everything to GBP is administratively simpler and cleaner for Cinos. No matter what currency the sales team is selling in, they see their commission in GBP – and this is visible to them in their in-field app as well. And when the accounts team invoices, everything is converted to GBP.

“The beauty is I don’t need to report anything to them, because they can see it – not live, obviously, it’s next day, but they can see it on their app,” Jo says. “Any questions, they can come to us during the month and resolve it, which makes payroll easier because I’m not having to reconcile and check.

“Also, we were having to literally send the sales team individual statements. So, you’d have your big report; you would then go through, check all the currency ones – which you couldn’t go into a product level; then we would have to filter it by the salesperson name, copy that onto a separate spreadsheet, then go and send it to them.”

That rigmarole is now a thing of the past. “You’ve nearly given me my life back, which is amazing,” Jo says.

“I’m telling everyone about Cognition360 – you guys are phenomenal. I just want to save people from the ConnectWise reporting hell. I’m on a mission!”

Reclaiming time, money, and sanity

Pre-Cognition360, Jo estimates she was working at least 80 hours a week, before work and on weekends, to get reports done and invoices out while still doing her fulltime job.

Implementing Cognition360 has saved Cinos time, money, and resources, and Jo has reclaimed her weekends and mornings: “In terms of building the reports and going through the projects, if I was to have done them every day, I am talking at least one head count – I’d probably say even more, with the projects going through. It’s why I was having to wake up at four o’clock in the morning, and work seven days a week, because that wasn’t my normal job. I’ve still got a business to run. It was just unnecessary time. That’s why I was so grateful.”

With the initial need met, Jo and the team will now explore the many other reports available in Cognition360.

Next up is a new-build Work in Progress Report, showing revenue recognized, that is going to further simplify Jo’s workload and save a significant amount of time by surfacing up the information she needs to easily create a Work in Progress Journal.

“That has taken me the best part of two years to get out of ConnectWise – and I couldn’t do it. I ended up, every month, doing five different reports, then I’d have to put it into Excel, and play around with it before I could do my Journal. For Eamon to be able to build this report for us to do our Work in Progress and bill people – it’s amazing,” Jo says.

“We haven’t even touched on the other reports yet – I’ve got a feeling it’s going to definitely not only save time but save the company money as well.”

‘Unbelievable’ service and support

Jo is full of praise for Cognition360’s responsiveness and service, calling it ‘absolutely unbelievable.’

“Eamon is just phenomenal,” Jo says.

“He always gets the spec right. And nothing’s too much trouble. The other thing is, Eamon doesn’t just build the report, he also interrogates the data to make sure it’s right – he’s not just doing what we ask him to do.”

Jo says everything from Cognition360 has surpassed expectations: “The speed, the response, the quality, just that little bit extra – it all makes a difference. It makes it quite personal – we never feel like we’re just a ticket on a conveyor belt going round.

“I’m telling everyone about Cognition360 – you guys are phenomenal. I just want to save people from the ConnectWise reporting hell. I’m on a mission!” Jo concludes.