How Nucleus cut QBR prep from 6 hours to minutes using Rewst

Customer story

At a glance

Nucleus, a SOC 2 Type II–certified MSP serving over 200 clients across Canada, cut quarterly business review (QBR) prep from six hours to minutes and reduced the team needed to deliver a QBR from ten people to two. It did so with two interconnected automations in Rewst: a configuration sync that maintains a single trusted asset list across RMM, PSA, and documentation platforms, and a QBR scorecard that turns that data into client-ready reports automatically.

Together, they freed the vCISO team for strategic client conversations, reduced QBR delivery from ten people to two, and established the data foundation Nucleus needs to pursue compliance-as-a-service as its next growth phase.

This QBR and configuration sync system won GTIA's inaugural Innovate Award for Best Internal AI Solution for an ITSP, selected by live attendee vote at ChannelCon 2026.

Key results

hours saved per QBR report, from 6 hours to minutes

80%

reduction in staff needed to deliver QBRs (10 > 2)

92%

reduction in configuration sync task cost with RoboRewsty

trusted asset list maintained across RMM, PSA, and IT Glue

NRR

(non-recurring revenue) pipeline now consistently met

The turning point

Getting the data right before automating anything else

Nucleus needed a single, reliable asset list before automating client reporting. Since the QBR scorecard pulls directly from this unified data to generate client reports, any inconsistency would just automate errors. That’s why configuration sync came first — to ensure every system matched before automating reporting.

"First step: you need to know what you have so that you can manage it."

— Karl Fulljames, CTO at Nucleus

Nucleus had tested other tools for API-based integrations before choosing Rewst, but the results were inconsistent enough that Karl couldn't depend on them for production automations.

Rewst resolved that. "Having Rewst there to connect and just deal with that API nonsense so that when I wanted to create an automation, it would just work. That was the main reason to go with Rewst," he said. Security accountability mattered too: delegating credential and token management to a vendor with defined responsibility was preferable to managing it internally. "I've seen more than enough in the news about AI wiping out databases. I don't want to be in the news."

CEO, Jennifer Roy, framed the business case alongside Karl's technical one: automation was a capacity investment that freed the team to do better work.

"Work that is repetitive and boring is not inspiring. We started thinking about automation as a way to create more creative work for our team."

— Jennifer Roy, CEO at Nucleus

The challenge

Asset data that neither auditors nor clients could rely on

Karl Fulljames, CTO at Nucleus Networks, had a simple way of describing the problem. "If you have five separate lists of assets in five different tools, you can't rely on them." Nucleus’s asset data was scattered across five tools, with no way to keep them consistent. As a SOC 2 Type II–certified MSP, this manual reconciliation created significant audit risk.

Preparing QBRs required pulling data from multiple sources, reconciling discrepancies, and consulting technicians for missing information — a process that took four to six hours per report and still sometimes produced errors, such as listing assets that no longer existed.

Additional friction points included:

SOC 2 audit readiness is dependent on manually reconciled lists with no automated verification
QBR delivery required ten people across the organization
Non-recurring revenue (NRR) pipeline targets are inconsistently met despite the headcount involved
No path to compliance-as-a-service for clients without first solving the internal data problem

The solution

Configuration sync and QBR scorecard built in Rewst

Nucleus used Rewst to build two workflows: configuration sync, which keeps asset data current across systems, and the QBR scorecard, which automatically generates client reports. What once took ten people and six hours now takes two people and a few minutes.

Architecture

The solution integrates four systems:

NinjaRMM platform: source of truth for live device inventory
ConnectWise PSA: system of record for tickets and billing
IT Glue: documentation and asset tracking
Rewst: workflow orchestration across all three

The setup operates in the background. Asset data stays current, reports are available when needed, and the vCISO team walks into client meetings with accurate information rather than a manually assembled export.

How the configuration sync operates

The configuration sync keeps asset records consistent across RMM, PSA, and IT Glue. When a device is removed from the RMM, the workflow automatically archives the device record, removes it from active IT Glue documentation, and updates the corresponding record in ConnectWise PSA. The result is a cross-system asset list current enough for SOC 2 audits and client-facing reporting.

When Nucleus migrated RMM platforms, Karl used RoboRewsty, Rewst's AI Workflow Builder, to rebuild the configuration sync rather than starting from scratch. "I have a lot of ideas, and I didn't have a lot of ways of executing them," he said. "Now that RoboRewsty is there, I can just tell it, and over the course of a couple of hours, I've been able to spit out automations left, right, and center really quickly."

After rebuilding, Karl also used RoboRewsty to optimize the workflow's task efficiency. Monthly task costs dropped from $500 to $40, a 92% reduction. The savings funded additional automations, including a billing reconciliation workflow that saves the VP of Operations six hours per month and was built in under two hours.

How the QBR scorecard operates

The scorecard workflow draws on the asset data maintained by the configuration sync and automatically generates a client-ready report. Preparing a QBR no longer requires pulling data from multiple tools, reconciling discrepancies, or consulting colleagues for estimates.

The workflow also changed who owns the QBR process. With report generation automated, the vCISO team took over what had previously required ten people spread across the organization. Their time is now allocated to the client meetings themselves rather than to the preparation behind them.

Operational impact

Nucleus now generates QBRs in minutes that previously took four to six hours to assemble. Across roughly 80% of their 200-client base, that represents hundreds of hours recovered per quarter. The staff required to deliver those QBRs dropped from ten people to two.

"Their value is meeting with the client, not sitting there for six hours creating a report and then trying to find time to meet with the client. The value of this whole process is using people for what they're strong at: building those relationships, telling the client where the risks are."

— Karl Fulljames, CTO at Nucleus

The QBR conversations themselves changed in character. Before the automation, meetings tended to focus on transactional topics: warranty expirations, individual asset statuses, and whether specific records were current. With automatically generated, verified data, the vCISO team can use meeting time for long-term planning and risk communication.

In the past, Nucleus had occasionally presented assets in client QBRs that no longer existed. "The report we're putting in front of clients is now reliable," Karl said. "So our trust is back."

Nucleus also built a feedback loop to keep finding the next opportunity. A button in their PSA labeled "Automate Me" lets any technician flag a repetitive task for cross-functional review, and the QBR scorecard and billing reconciliation automation both began as observations from people doing the work.

Financial impact

Automating QBR prep freed the vCISO team to focus on revenue-generating work. One now works full-time on the non-recurring revenue pipeline, and Nucleus consistently meets NRR targets that were previously out of reach. As Jennifer Roy put it: "QBRs equal NRR." The time recovered from automation goes back into the client relationships that drive it.

Rewst's task-based pricing model also changes how Karl thinks about ROI. Every workflow is evaluated on its own terms, and RoboRewsty can audit existing workflows to identify efficiency gains. "It's not one minute saved per task," Karl noted. "It could be hundreds of minutes saved per task that we're spending." That framing makes the platform cost easy to justify: if each workflow pays for itself, the total investment is a function of how many workflows you build.

The data infrastructure also opens a new service line. Nucleus is now positioned to offer compliance-as-a-service to its own clients, using the same automation foundation it built for its internal SOC 2 requirements. MSPs that can demonstrate compliance readiness and extend that capability to their clients command a materially different conversation at the executive level.

Strategic takeaway

Automate the data layer before you automate the output

Automation is only as reliable as the data it runs on. For MSPs pursuing client-facing automations such as QBR reporting, compliance documentation, and strategic advisory, the data layer must come first.

Without it, automation scales inaccuracy rather than eliminating it. Nucleus learned this through their SOC 2 requirements before they could leverage it commercially, and that sequencing turned out to be the right order. The configuration sync came first because the audit required it; every client-facing automation followed from that foundation.

Karl offered a parallel principle from the technical side: "AI should primarily be the surgeon's assistant that's handing the surgeon the scalpel." That framing keeps automation in its proper role: a tool that extends what the team can do, pointed at the right problems in the right order.

"It's not a cost. It's an investment in your business."
— Jennifer Roy, CEO at Nucleus

Ninety-six percent of MSPs report knowing they need to automate. Fewer than sixty percent have invested in a dedicated automation platform. The gap is a framing problem, not a knowledge problem. MSPs that treat automation as an operational expense underinvest and underdeliver. Those that treat it as a capability investment build services their competitors cannot replicate without making the same commitment: to the data layer, to the tooling, and to the people doing the work.

Those figures come from Rewst's 2026 State of MSP Automation Report. Nucleus CEO Jennifer Roy joined the report webinar, The 2026 State of MSP Automation: Bridging the Automation Divide, to unpack the findings and where MSPs like Nucleus land on the right side of the automation divide.

Where do you fall within the Automation Divide?

Hear from Nucleus CEO Jennifer Roy and the Rewst team about the Automation Divide, and how you can close the gap.

Watch the replay

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