COGITA digital media archives 2008. All rights reserved

What makes COGITA different?

COGITA explains what makes it different from other companies that sell ERP system software.

We are a specialist
COGITA is a specialist and one of a few companies of its type to have operated in the Australia-New Zealand region for more than 27 years. COGITA is focused on ERP software sales and support for manufacturing and distribution companies. The software tools and their names change (MRP, MRP II, ERP, lean manufacturing, hybrid, advanced) but the issues of customer satisfaction, constraint management, throughput, inventory control and expense reduction remain the same.

We are focused
ERP systems can be found in many types of businesses. COGITA does not aim to work with all of them. COGITA is an expert in manufacturing & distribution businesses and works only with these businesses.

We are established
Knowing that COGITA must overcome many adversities, COGITA's Founder set out with each generation of COGITA's leaders to build a company that would last the test of time.

In the beginning prospective clients asked, "How do we know COGITA will be around in 5-years?"

After 27 years people no longer ask that question. Today when COGITA meets prospective clients they know that COGITA is serious about lasting business partnership - because this is what COGITA is about.

Founded in 1983, focused on ERP sales & support since 1988, and incorporated in 1989, COGITA is an organisation with Australian and New Zealand leaders who are regarded by many clients and ERP industry competitors as the tough minded princes of an extremely specialised niche — ERP sales and services for manufacturing companies and distribution companies.

We have generational leadership
As a generational company COGITA has carefully extended its internal leadership supply chain.

This means that COGITA operates under the day to day leadership (business auto pilot) of two experienced and highly qualified leaders (pilots), hand picked in a transformational process by COGITA's founding shareholders. In 2010 the shareholders identified a candidate to be a third pilot.

Working under individual charters since 2006 with complementary accountabilities & responsibilities for operating COGITA so as to satisfy COGITA clients and win new ones, the pilots are an extension of COGITA's leadership supply chain. This means that COGITA and its services will continue, from generation to generation, independently of the founding shareholders.

We are the competition
In 2008 as the Global Financial Crisis and banking collapse became a grim reality for millions of people who lost their jobs and houses, COGITA became Epicor's 2008 - 2009 Global Partner. This means that, world wide, COGITA sold and supported the largest number of, new, manufacturing ERP licences for Epicor. The recognition is nice but COGITA wastes little time looking in the mirror. Reality is on the other side of the window.

It is said that competition breeds champions. But it is not the only way. After all if you run your own race, under your own rules, you will tend to win.

Therefore COGITA does not actively seek to compete with other ERP services & product vendors. COGITA seeks to apply the individual and collective imaginations and creativities of its leaders and people, to run COGITA's own race. The company's aim is to identify, design and build an enduring business that owns its business niche: lasting business partnership.

In this respect COGITA is different from the organisations who regard COGITA as a competitor. For example, COGITA does not develop ERP systems. In Australia and New Zealand many competitors operate as branch offices of international software companies who also develop ERP systems. This is not a minor distinction. The distinction creates different cost structures and cultures. The distinction makes it easier for COGITA to survive and benefit from adversity without the usual, mindless, head-count cutting performed by companies with  overheads associated with R&D or NASDAQ reporting requirements. Instead COGITA invests in recruiting and retaining certain types of people, with the temperament and intellectual capacity to be effective consultants acceptable to COGITA and COGITA's clients (manufacturers and distributors) year after year and decade after decade.

As each year passes, two factors confer materially significant and growing advantages which do not appear on COGITA's balance sheet, yet make life difficult for competitors:

1. COGITA becomes more established - recent market entrants cannot become more established than COGITA;

2. COGITA's internal systems become more effective at marketing, sales, delivery and customer service. The intellectual property in these systems is becoming large enough for COGITA to show that prospective customers cannot, rationally, ignore the benefits of purchasing their ERP system software and services from COGITA.

Only a focussed company with a deliberate, long term, view is aware of the above distinctions and the benefits they create for clients. The distinctions are barriers to competition.

The distinctions have helped to make COGITA the competition-standard for the companies who regard COGITA as "the competition."

We are unleveraged
In plain English this means that COGITA does not borrow money.

To put it another way, COGITA is funded 100% from its own operating cash flows and cash buffers.

This is caused by conservative operating stewardship and entrepreneurial business development which combine to operate COGITA with no long term debt. Consequently the company has a strong balance sheet with seven-figure levels of unencumbered cash reserves in the form of term deposits and bonds. The company also holds cash equivalents, positive working capital, net assets, retained earnings and shareholders' equity.

In the interests of prudence the company maintains an, relatively large, unsecured funding line with one of its banks, primarily, to ensure that there is a buffer against random international funds transfers glitches which would endanger company cash flows. For ten years the company hardly used its facility. But in 2009 during the Global Financial Crisis 2007-2009, company leaders decided to excessively, though temporarily, increase operating expenses; then COGITA used its unsecured funding line in preference to breaking term deposits. This was a deliberate choice; not an aberration from the company's normal behaviour - maintaining good long term relationships with its banks without depending on them.

Whereas COGITA's Executive Leaders have an absolute requirement for positive operating cash flows, there is no such absolute requirement with respect to profit.

As a result, from year to year, COGITA achieves varying levels of operating profitability according to the company leaders' willingness to decrease or increase COGITA's operating expenses in the interests of long term growth and service to clients, and subject also to the long term capital support of COGITA's Shareholders. For example during the Global Financial Crisis 2007-2009 the COGITA leaders chose to increase operating expenses by hiring more marketing and sales people in Australia and New Zealand although sales had flat-lined. This enabled the company to win large sales at the end of 2009.

As participants in decades of furious change in software technologies, and associated fields, COGITA's company leaders tithe systematically to create cash buffers against the future's inevitable "Murphy factors."

COGITA has no idea if, or when, local or regional or world economies will grow or decline. Therefore COGITA aims to produce consistent above average return on equity growth by selling ERP software system products and services to well established manufacturing and distribution businesses. These companies, unlike trendy, fashionable, enterprises, tend to be strongly branded with histories of selling products and services that enjoy long term demands from their respective markets. The positive compounding effect of this growth is experienced by COGITA customers and suppliers as long term stability when dealing with COGITA.

COGITA is one of a few, specialist, companies of its type in Australia/New Zealand region, established for over quarter of a century. The company enjoys the strength of Executive Leaders and long term financial resources from Shareholders and a Founder who fully support the company's specialist strategy.

We have huge intellectual property
From 1989 to 2001 COGITA sold Qad's MFG/PRO software system. Though COGITA no longer sells MFG/PRO, COGITA continues to provide long term support to the many COGITA clients who use MFG/PRO in Australia and New Zealand. Most of these clients are large, blue chip, FMCG, and/or Food & Beverage, manufacturing & distribution multi-nationals such as Sara Lee or Lion Nathan.

Since 2002 COGITA has been selling and supporting Epicor ERP: Epicor's highly regarded manufacturing & distribution ERP software system. Epicor's large, consistent investments, have powered the development of Epicor ERP from a 1980's, job-shop, ERP system into a 21st century ERP system. This software system bristles with enterprise-wide functionalities armed to the teeth with useability and connectivity aids -- all designed to address the requirements for discrete, make to order, engineer-to-order, manufacturing and distribution enterprises -- supported as always by COGITA.

It is no surprise that a number of blue chip manufacturing companies and their ERP software systems have been supported by the same COGITA consultants for nearly 20-years! As clients have restructured their operations and sometimes retrenched staff, COGITA consultants have inevitably grown to know more, and accumulate more information, than even the clients about their own ERP systems.

COGITA's databases contain detailed information about client ERP systems and client ERP operations extending back to 1989. COGITA's support databases and knowledgebase reflect deep knowledge of clients' manufacturing and distribution operations. Because COGITA's databases are secure we cannot show you their contents, but you can get an idea of COGITA's extensive knowledgebase and intellectual property by looking at COGITA's published newsletters. Published quarterly for nearly a decade, Vision newsletters track COGITA's clients' operations in the public domain. Click here to see these newsletters.

Every client benefits from COGITA's deep expertise of manufacturing and distribution companies in Australia, New Zealand, and the Asean countries.

Because it is extended across more than two decades of continuous, specialist, sales and support for ERP systems in engineering companies, manufacturers and distributors in Australia and New Zealand, COGITA's intellectual property and expertise is un-matched for long term ERP sales and support.

We have been supporting clients in Australia and New Zealand for more than twenty years
As the specialist ERP sales and support company, COGITA supports its extensive client base from offices (click here for offices) in Australia and New Zealand.

No other company in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region is as specialised or as established as COGITA in manufacturing ERP software sales & support.

All COGITA clients are connected to COGITA's network of offices through COGITA's 24x7 online support system. COGITA also accepts support calls from casual and regular visitors to the company's site.

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