Can an agent replace Mosaic?
A strategic finance platform that pulls from your ERP, CRM and HRIS to build budgets, forecasts and board reporting.
Yes, and the contract size makes it worth acting on. Mosaic connects to systems you already own and charges five figures to arrange their numbers into plans. It holds no data of its own. An agent on the same connections does the arranging.
- Indicative spend
- €2000/mo
- What it actually costs
- quote-based, typically €20k+/year on an annual commitment
- Verdict
- The product was the labour. An agent and somewhere to put the data covers it.
What the agent takes over
Every job this product exists to perform, with our verdict on each. Follow one through for the step-by-step breakdown.
- Financial reportingMostly. An agent assembles the numbers, builds the pack and writes a first-draft commentary that is genuinely useful. What it cannot do is know which number the board is actually worried about this quarter.MOSTLY
- Reporting and dashboardsYes. Pulling from several systems, reconciling the definitions, building the view and explaining what moved is exactly what agents do well — and it removes the recurring tax of someone rebuilding a spreadsheet every Monday.YES
- Data analysisMostly. An agent cleans, queries, models and visualises quickly and competently. The risk is not that it computes wrongly — it is that it answers the question you asked rather than the one you meant.MOSTLY
- StrategyNo. An agent produces a competent strategy document quickly, and competent strategy documents are worthless. Strategy is choosing what not to do, under uncertainty, with something at stake — and an agent has nothing at stake.NOT YET
Why it does not survive
Integrations, which agents also have. The record of truth stays in your ERP; Mosaic only reads it.
What you would still need it for
- A board-pack format your investors are used to, until the agent reproduces it
What replaces it
- An agent across the ERP, CRM and HRIS APIs
- Budget-vs-actuals and headcount plans generated monthly, not hosted
The brief
What you would tell an agent to take over from Mosaic, assembled from the jobs above.
I want to cancel Mosaic. It currently does: A strategic finance platform that pulls from your ERP, CRM and HRIS to build budgets, forecasts and board reporting. Take over this work: - Financial reporting — MOSTLY. Mostly. An agent assembles the numbers, builds the pack and writes a first-draft commentary that is genuinely useful. What it cannot do is know which number the board is actually worried about this quarter. - Reporting and dashboards — YES. Yes. Pulling from several systems, reconciling the definitions, building the view and explaining what moved is exactly what agents do well — and it removes the recurring tax of someone rebuilding a spreadsheet every Monday. - Data analysis — MOSTLY. Mostly. An agent cleans, queries, models and visualises quickly and competently. The risk is not that it computes wrongly — it is that it answers the question you asked rather than the one you meant. - Strategy — NOT YET. No. An agent produces a competent strategy document quickly, and competent strategy documents are worthless. Strategy is choosing what not to do, under uncertainty, with something at stake — and an agent has nothing at stake. Do not take over: - A board-pack format your investors are used to, until the agent reproduces it These stay with me across all of it: - What the story is - What to highlight and what to contextualise - Anything going to investors - Choosing the metrics - What the numbers mean for the plan - Anything shown to investors - Framing the question - Knowing the data’s history - Deciding what to do about the answer - The choice - The things you are giving up - Convincing everyone - Being wrong in public Before we start, tell me: which of these you cannot do with the access I can actually give you, and what would break if this ran unattended for a month. — brief built at cananagentdo.com/mosaic
Compare
Replace Mosaic
That is €2000 a month back, and one fewer login. The work is connecting an agent to the systems Mosaic was sitting between.
Build the replacementPrices are indicative list rates for a small team and change often — check yours before cancelling anything.