Over the past eight weeks, Somdal Associates has undergone a meaningful and invigorating transformation under the guidance of Cogent Analytics. Working closely with you and your extended team, we’ve made significant strides toward a more scalable structure, streamlined operations, financial discipline, and cultural alignment—all essential to achieving our ambitious goal of doubling revenue by 2027.
Navigating the challenges of a 117-year-old firm, providing guidance, and recommending changes requires overcoming significant inertia. You handled this with professionalism and tact, reflecting your strong intellect and personality. You quickly identified issues with workflow as well as operational inefficiencies and provided options to leadership for correction and improvement.
Both you and Mike Veach also helped with mindset and communication by coaching sales leaders on identifying client problems and concentrating on delivering solutions rather than just satisfying a need by delivering a product. This shift in mindset will allow us to transition from being a commodity to being an integral part of a client’s team. This change was key in winning several large contracts during the first few weeks of high intensity.
You and the Cogent team took an interest in staff members and their development. Your quick evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, along with actionable feedback, led to immediate positive results in areas like operations and recruiting. With your encouragement, we have made several changes by introducing new roles and responsibilities and challenging staff members to step into those roles and grow professionally. The results have been overwhelmingly positive.
Your decades of experience with companies, both large and small, provided valuable insights into management, staff retention, recruiting, finance, and forecasting.
We are happy to recommend Cogent to those who are looking for a rapid turnaround.
Sincerely,
Chris Elberson, Principal, AIA, NCARB
Somdal Associates is a multi-disciplined design firm based in Shreveport, LA that has offered design and planning services to clients since 1908.
