Building Your Own Cognytics Modules

At ECI Cognytics, we build views, widgets, and dashboards to help you view your business data, but no one knows your business better than you do! In this section, we discuss how to build your own tools for reviewing the data the application collects. The system administrator can provide these module builder tools to you during the user role assignment process.

Being able to tailor views, widgets, and dashboards means you can monitor metrics specific to your business (stock turnover for building supplies, open PO backlog, branch performance, etc.). This can help you assess your business’s financial performance by reviewing incoming payment information, aging metrics, and the costs of goods sold.

However, with great flexibility comes the need for governance and best practices to ensure the data remains trustworthy and the views remain usable. Be very careful when creating these modules. When you modify an existing dashboard, the change will be applied to all users who access it. Systems Administrators must ensure that the individuals you provide these tools to can build the views/widgets/dashboards that use the essential data to help the whole team make informed business decisions. We make the following recommendations when you set about creating new dashboards, widgets, and views in Cognytics:

Define Clear Objectives:
Know what business question(s) the dashboard is meant to answer (e.g., monitor AR/Aging, track service metrics, sales pipelines, etc.). This helps you pick the right views and widgets for your dashboards.
Ensure data accuracy and consistency:
Make sure the underlying data sources are correct and the same as your other teammates use. Ensure the definitions are clear (what “open invoices” and “service calls” mean) and that users trust the numbers you use. If you create a metric in a different way on another dashboard, and the results differ, different teams will spend time reacting to conditions they perceive differently.

Focus your dashboards:
Higher quality is better than more widgets! If there are too many charts or tables in a single view, it may be overwhelming and less useful to your users.

Lay out your dashboard logically:
Place the most critical, top-level metrics at the top; follow with trend details or supporting table breakdowns; then any granular data or drill-downs at the bottom.
Use relevant filters and drill-downs:
If you can filter by date, branch/store, or product, drilling down into details increases the widget’s value.
Consider performance when creating a dashboard/widget:
If the data loads too slowly or tries to query too much data, users may abandon it. Caching and limiting the default data range with aggregated summaries can help.
Review the tools you create periodically:
Check whether the dashboard/widget/view is still aligned with your business goals; ensure the data is still collected correctly, and you still find value in each widget in a dashboard. Like everything else, dashboard requirements can change, particularly if ECI Development changes how the data is stored in the system.

And finally, don’t build dashboards, widgets, or views in isolation: involve the users who will depend on the data you compile, and tailor it to their roles and decision-making needs. Please note that data in the Cognytics tables is typically one day old, so you may not see overnight payment processing reflected until the next day.

Only users with Builder Module access can create these tools. The system administrator sets these permissions. If you do not have access to the Builder Modules, contact the system administrator to request this access.

What Data is Most Useful to Your Users?

For LBMH businesses, your data evaluation needs to reflect both traditional retail metrics and industry-specific drivers, such as commodity volatility, inventory turnover, and gross margin management. Creating views, widgets, and dashboards that are useful to you will depend on the specific audience (Owner, Branch, Sales, Inventory, Back Office Manager, etc.) you are creating them for, and on ensuring they use the same fundamental metrics.

Then, reviewing the data tables containing the application information each group needs is key to developing your own modules. When you understand the data your teams are looking for, you can mine the existing views, widgets, and dashboards to create your own tools.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the most important information you can collect for each audience to help you assess the success of your business:

Understanding Revenue and Your Sales Mix

Business Owners, Branch Managers, and Sales Executives may want to focus on:

Return on Assets (ROA) / Return on Equity (ROE) – The data that helps you evaluate how well assets and capital are being used to generate profits is key to profitability and keeping the business healthy.

Total Revenue Growth – Understanding this data will help you measure demand trends and overall business performance.

Sales by Product Category – Identifying these metrics to help scale performance across lumber, building materials, hardware, and specialty item stock by group and section.

Income by Channel – Understanding where the money is coming from by tracking sales through retail, contractor, wholesale, and ecommerce channels is key to visualizing the business’s income by channel.

Branch Sales – Aggregating this information helps you evaluate organic growth possibilities and review the performance of existing stores and storage locations.

Operating Cash Flow – Collecting cash flow metrics may be a better indicator of sustainability than profit alone.

Accounts Payable Days – Finding tools that balance incoming revenue and supplier payment timing can preserve cash flow, which can be key to running a business or a branch/store smoothly.

Accounts Receivable Turnover – This data can be particularly important for contractor-heavy businesses with extended credit terms.

Average Transaction Value and Frequency – Understanding your customer loyalty and market penetration data can help you build new plans for the future.

Market Share and Regional Growth – It is useful to find external benchmarks so you can compare your data to the performance of your competitors. Monitoring industry-based publications, business-related regional organizations, and local news can help you build these benchmark indicators. Specific suggestions include:

Industry averages, which may be accessible using the North American Building Material Distribution Association data.
Historical trends (e.g., pre- vs. post-construction season)
Peer groups (regional or size-based)

Understanding Gross Margin and Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)

Purchasing / Inventory Managers may want to focus on:

Gross Margin Percentage – Collecting this data provides a key profitability measure, particularly at a time when the market is sensitive to lumber price fluctuations.

COGS Analysis – Collecting this data helps you track input costs of materials, which is crucial given the high variability in commodity prices.

Margin by Product Line – Understanding that the lumber margins tend to be thinner than hardline products, makes tracking how these distinct goods are selling important. Evaluating and recognizing these margins can help you optimize your product mix.

Backlog of Contractor Orders – Reviewing a backlog of your orders can provide a forward-looking metric that could indicate future demand.

Inventory Turnover Ratios – Understanding these metrics can show you how efficiently your inventory stock is selling and being replaced.

Inventory Lead Times – Reviewing the holding periods ties up cash and increases the risk of product obsolescence, so maintaining a view of this information can be useful to defining future purchases.

Shrinkage / Loss – Keeping track of the high-value or bulk materials and their loss is an important part of evaluating the shrinkage of your inventory. Collecting data points that show this can be useful.

Understanding Operating Expenses and Efficiency

Back Office Managers may want to focus on:

Distribution and Logistics Costs – Freight and delivery expenses can heavily impact profitability.

Operating Cash Flow (OCF) – Collecting cash flow metrics may be a better indicator of sustainability than profit alone.

Commodity Price Indexes (such as, Random Lengths Lumber Index) – External factor that influences pricing and margins.
Supplier Rebates and Terms – Material for assessing purchasing efficiency and vendor relationships.

Further, business owners should compare their key metrics to other external sources, including:

Industry averages, which may be accessible using the North American Building Material Distribution Association data.

Historical trends (e.g., pre- vs. post-construction season)

Peer groups (regional or size-based)

Pro Tips for Creating Useful Data Resources from the Application

You can improve your data sources, particularly when you are investigating sales channel results by creating Customer Class codes that represent distinct income channels such as:

Retail for walk-in business
Contractors for repeat LBMH customer AR accounts
Ecommerce for customers who buy from you online
Direct Ship for customers who purchase through you and your supplier,
Manufacturing for businesses that sell products that they build

Another method for tracking business is to create Source Codes for different types of orders or sales that specify the origin of the business, such as Store, Online Orders, Direct Ship, Manufacturing, etc. This tracks data based on the source of the income rather than the specific account type.