Letter of Recommendation
January 18, 2023
Our experience with Cogent Analytics has been a very positive and beneficial one. Before the project began, it felt like we certainly knew about some of the things we were looking for help to solve. We found several more during discovery. Throughout the process, Cogent made clear the expectations and goals that were to be met.
Prior to the project, our 44 year old manufacturing company had never been through a process like this. No other company besides the bank had ever seen our financials, we had 30 year employees who were never asked to report at a meeting. We were having trouble making money, recruiting, retaining good employees and offering competitive wages. The compensation plan on the factory floor didn’t match the company’s goals. Our work force was balanced with dedicated, long time employees and a revolving door of new hires.
Agreeing to the discovery was a big step for us, and our analyst did a full company culture review interviewing all staff members at every level. Also during discovery was full financial review that opened our eyes to several areas where we were leaving margin on the table. After we agreed to a detailed project plan, they got to work the next day. We met our project director as well as several other offsite folks that were assigned to us immediately. We agreed further on addressing our company profitability, accountability framework, and added KPI controls.
Throughout the project, our project director was the first one there and the last one to leave each day, while coaching and training our managers on how we are going to meet our goals. Each week, we had a comprehensive status update meeting that detailed what we had completed. We studied the project plan discussed next priorities. The final part of the project to be dropped in place was a brand new compensation plan for our entire company, focused on gross margins, evaluation scores, and productivity. Management here had discussed implementation of a system like this for decades. Cogent implemented a robust system promoting buy in across the organization in about 2 months time.
We are very happy with work that the entire Cogent team performed for our company.
Matt Kraft
General Manager
