Layne Water Midstream

Layne Water Midstream is a premier large-scale water midstream operator, delivering strategic and reliable water management solutions to Texas’s oil and gas industry. Starting as a small spinoff of a larger public company over three years ago, Layne Water Midstream ran its operations on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. At the time, the company was managing accounting for eight different companies in Business Central, where their data was siloed, and reporting was a heavily manual process.

To meet the extensive monthly financial reporting demands of the busy private company, the three-person finance team spent extensive time consolidating reports from each separate business. For example, they needed to produce an AR Aging Report every week. To run it, they had to collect AR reports from six businesses, slice, and dice that data, and turn it into something usable for the executive team. According to Controller, Dave Pittenger, “Business Central reporting is challenging.

We had to jerry-rig the system to produce the required financial and operational reports every month. Since the process was so manual, much time was spent updating reports and re-reconciling reports – at the expense of analyzing results.”

Recognizing the need for an easier, faster, and more accurate way of reporting out of Business Central, the team at Layne Water Midstream set out to find a Business Central reporting solution that would deliver the reports they wanted. Unfortunately, the first reporting system they tried out was complicated and required data modeling expertise that no one on the team possessed. That’s when their Business Central partner, told them about a new cloud reporting solution that had just entered the market: Cosmos.

After that, the decision was simple: “When Cosmos showed us the library of pre-built reports that were included,” explains Dave, “we knew we’d found the right people.”

• Time-consuming and error-prone manual data consolidation and reconciliation
• Inaccurate data and outdated reports
• Stressful user-experience
• Impossible to show the costs requested by the operations team
• Reporting was slow and tedious

• More accurate data and detailed reporting
• Built for non-technical users without complex tables and data modeling needs
• Instant access to general ledger data for accurate financial reporting and analysis
• Custom reporting options for more visibility into pipeline operations

Layne Water Midstream said yes to Cosmos on a Thursday, got the permissions they needed from their outside IT group on Friday. The following Monday, they ran some pre-built reports to see what they got, and what modifications they wanted to make.

Dave and his team’s day-to-day life has improved significantly since implementing Cosmos. Instead of spending several hours creating an AR aging or an AP aging report, they can now efficiently run an up-to-date one in Cosmos at the click of a button and format it the way they want. The speed and ease of reporting mean more time for financial analysis than ever before. It has also increased the team’s confidence exponentially when delivering reports to the executive team.

Although the team is only two months in, they have already seen big improvements to the reports they create and the processes they use. “What you find when you use Cosmos is that better data means we are constantly improving the way we are reporting,” explains Dave. “For example, we’ve started combining the General Ledger data in Business Central with volume and customer data into the same report. This allows us to get statistics, average pricing, and continue advancing our analytical capabilities.”

Cosmos has given Layne Water Midstream the data and reports they need to make proactive decisions that will support growing their footprint of water pipelines and deliver additional value to their customers and employees. Moving forward, they are highly anticipating the new Power BI integration feature. Power BI was always out of reach without a data engine, but now, they are excited to introduce advanced visualizations and dashboards into the mix.