In this episode of The Connector Podcast, host Koen Vanderhoydonk interviews Marko, CEO of CX Reports, to discuss how their platform automates the generation and delivery of large volumes of client‑facing reports such as invoices, statements, and partner performance documents. Marko explains the core pain point of scaling complex, data‑rich reports (e.g., generating up to one million portfolio statements per month) and how CX Reports’ visual editing, API‑driven automation, and cloud‑native architecture address it. The conversation walks through a typical buyer’s journey, distinguishing DIY users from those who request demos, and describes a parallel‑system migration approach that eventually replaces legacy reporting tools. Compliance is covered through a pass‑through data model, offering both cloud and on‑premise deployments with audit trails. A pension‑fund case study illustrates how 40,000 statements are produced in an hour, with automated email distribution and printable PDFs for mail. Marko highlights hidden IT costs—especially ticket‑driven changes—and how self‑service reporting reduces these expenses. Market trends show a 60‑40 cloud‑to‑on‑premise split, with larger financial and healthcare clients initially preferring on‑premise but often shifting to cloud once data handling concerns are clarified. Looking ahead, CX Reports plans to embed AI to enable natural‑language report creation and further self‑service capabilities within the next 12‑24 months. The ideal customer is any organization that sends thousands of PDFs monthly, such as investment funds and financial institutions, reachable via cxreports.com.
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Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Welcome to the Connector Podcast, and today I've got with me Marco. Marco from CX Reports. Can you explain me who are you and what does CX Reports do?
Thanks for calling me here.
I'm Marko.
I'm the CEO of CX Reports.
CX Reports is a product for generating and automating and delivering actually reports sent to clients. So what CX Reports typically used is like for generating invoicing and billing statements, bank account statements.
Partner performance reports.
The goal is to allow clients to send perfect reports to their clients, to their own clients.
Yeah. And what is the typical pain that you're solving for them using CX reports?
Yeah, what we see is that sometimes this reporting complexity becomes a problem for clients. And then when they combine that with scale, for example, sending hundreds of thousands of statements to their users, that becomes a huge pain point when they reach out and look for a solution.
Recently, for example, we had a client that asked if CX Reports can generate 1 million portfolio statements per month. And usually these statements have some complex tables or charts inside, and then When they see that needs to produce million documents, then they get scared and look for help. So I would say that is the biggest pain. Also, what clients are seeking is this visual editing capability and automation integrations with their own systems and things like that.
Can you perhaps walk us through, because there's a lot of things that you touch upon, can you walk us through to a typical buyer's journey from where it all starts, I guess, a client having a complaint or the capability that doesn't work until very much being in production.
Yeah, it's usually like that.
They already have their own systems, which might be legacy system, older systems, which do not have all the capabilities. So it usually comes from frustration in the existing tools.
And what they do, they search for an alternative solution then. Typically find CX reports online, and based on that we have two groups of clients.
One group is do-it-yourself group, and they then read the whole documentation, watch all the videos. They start free trial. They do everything on their own.
That's one group, and the other group is, for example, clients that want a demo, want us to show them everything, and.
explain everything and then they move forward, I would say. So I would say that is common.
And would you say then when the solution is brought to production at that moment in time, what do you typically see that you stay next to the system the client already has or you kind of replace it completely?
It usually Starts by having 2 systems in parallel. So it's because reporting is a pretty complex area and there are probably a lot of reports. So we start with a few use cases where we replace existing systems and then these systems work in parallel. Then over time, clients migrate more and more reports towards our system.
And then at the end, they can replace the existing systems fully.
Mm-hmm.
So it's a process.
And the reason why they come to you, because you obviously can do massive volumes, but I'm sure this is not the only unique selling point of CX Reports.
Yes, so CX Reports can do a lot of things, and I think that is probably the— I would say automation is probably the biggest selling point, but the automation is not the only thing. Like modern companies are software driven, so they want everything. They want like cloud native products. They want integrations. They want APIs. They want automation. So so it's I would say our automation capabilities are most important, but also everything that that comes after that. So when they integrate CX reports, it fits in very nicely to their own ecosystem of products. They can integrate it very nicely if they're If they have their own application, like software as a service application or accounting system or something, CX reports can complement that really nicely. And that is very important.
I have a couple of questions on a few domains. And one domain is more on the compliance side. Considering that you create sensitive reports with personal data, how does that work on your end in terms of compliance?
Yeah, so that's a common question. So we offer both cloud and on-premise solutions. So some clients which are really sensitive, they can decide to host it on their own. However, CXReports does not store any data within its own database. It's like a pass-through system where client data is just pulled in for generating reports and then just deleted immediately after.
So nothing gets stored in the CX reports database. So once customers realize that, then they are more open towards using a cloud version of the system. Also, we offer other things like audit trails and storing generated reports on cloud for for auditing, which are really good features that customers seek.
And while creating those typical reports, there is often a lot of complexity getting the message across. Is that also something that you guys help in terms of building the report user experience, for example?
Yes, we can help clients to get started. We also offer professional services, so usually clients have their own reporting systems and many reports already implemented. So sometimes we work with them either to train their people to do the migration, or sometimes we can also migrate some of their reports for them.
So we definitely try to help them out, especially in the beginning, so everything starts smoothly.
Yeah. Can you maybe walk us through to a concrete example where a customer came to you and what actually they at the end then come home with?
Yeah, we recently had a pension fund as a customer. So they have around 40,000 users. These are people which pay every month and save for their retirement.
And then these funds get invested in various financial instruments. Pension fund at the end of the year needs to distribute annual statements for every investor, every user. So these are documents a few pages long with all the information about portfolio, about returns, about their payments, and all of these these things. What is also interesting, they have a lot of older people who get these statements. Over traditional email, mail, not using emails. So there are 2 groups of users.
One group is receiving statements via email and one is receiving via traditional mail.
So before using CX Reports, they use like 5 different tools to assemble the data, move, generate reports, send, distribute emails, prepare things for printing and delivering. And with CX Reports, after this initial setup, now everything is done in 1 hour. Like they can generate 40,000 documents in 1 hour. All the documents that need to be delivered via email are automatically distributed. And for all the users that need to receive it via traditional mail, they get 1 big PDF which they can print and then deliver to the post office for sending. So for them, This really solved their problem.
So the end result is much nicer.
Yeah, the end result is much nicer than what they had before with all the fonts, logos, colors. It perfectly captures their branding and then it looks very professional.
So we're almost talking about outsourcing here and in outsourcing there's often a lot of hidden cost that when the customer actually looks at outsourcing, they kind of oversee. So what have, in your experience, what have been the hidden costs that your customers have been underestimating before moving to you?
Yeah, I would say IT costs.
That is the bigger, the biggest issue, I would say.
We have one customer which is a bank which has outsourced IT services.
And for them, like everything is an IT ticket and then this company providing services is pretty expensive. And we see making simple changes like creating a new report or adding a few columns or things like that can be extremely expensive and wait for weeks or even months to be implemented. So I would say CX Reports takes this burden away by allowing departments to own their own reports and not depend so much on the— IT services being external or internal, that doesn't matter. So I think that is the biggest cost that we are cutting.
You earlier mentioned that you both provide your services on cloud and also on-premise. What do you see currently in the market as being the most favorable solution?
Yes, so bigger customers, especially finance, and we have some healthcare customers that they say immediately we want on-premise.
And that's always the starting point. But over time, when they realize how things work, that the data is not actually stored within the application, it's just used for generating documents, then they change their mind somewhere in the buying process.
And what we see at the end is like 60-40.
ratio in favor of cloud. So cloud has, it's a benefit that they don't need to think about infrastructure, about backups, about all these things. So we also offer them data processing agreements, legal and security protection, and these things then move the needle in favor of cloud. But for the Hyacinth, sensitive customers, that's always on-premise, at least as a starting point.
No, understood. When you look forward in terms of innovation in your domain, what do you see the next 12 to 24 months?
Yeah, I think in that area, AI is the primary thing that will happen in the next 12 months. AI offers amazing productivity gains instead of manually creating reports, designing, writing queries, and all these things. All of these things can be automated via AI. So that's our primary focus next period to really make AI-first reporting, AI-driven reporting. So our customers can just say what they want and then AI would know the system good enough to produce reports that they seek. So that is our—
and CX Reports is a perfect product for integrating AI features.
It's, I would say, a classic tool that can be automated in that way.
And are you then looking more at the self-service side like you mentioned earlier? Because that AI would make it more easy?
Yes, that is the path forward. Although at the moment, we are not quite there yet. So a lot of work in front of us.
But I give you like 12 to 24 months, so we still have a bit of time.
Yes.
But it's super exciting and I think that indeed you're on the right track there. If I can ask you one last question, if you would define your ideal customer, who would that be and then how can they contact you?
Yeah, they can contact you via our website.
That's very easy, cxreports.com.
Ideal customer is any customer that sends thousands of PDFs per month.
So that would be any company that is sending reports towards their customers is our ideal customers. That would be like investment funds, financial institutions, anyone who reports towards their customers is our ideal client.
All right, Marko. Thank you very much for your contribution. Thank you also to the audience for tuning in and stay tuned. More news on this channel. Thank you so much.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
You're very welcome.
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