A Word from the CEO
Welcome to the first issue of the iLumen Insights, a newsletter which serves to enlighten, inform and assist our customers and partners on a variety of subjects related to iLumen, our technology, and most importantly, provides a mechanism to better serve you: Our Customer.
One of iLumen’s core values is Customer Service, and as a result, we have embarked on the development of Customer Touch, an internal program focused on ways to improve communication and anticipate both current and future customer needs. Superior customer service is highly dependent upon both the creation of processes, as well as a customer-centric cultural mindset. Both facets are addressed in Customer Touch. Communication is foundational to our approach, and this newsletter is but one tool that will be used to reach our customers more frequently. You will also see other tangible benefits of Customer Touch through the formation of dedicated, cross-functional Customer Account Teams, quarterly customer review meetings, and surveys.
We fully expect that iLumen Insights will be a useful and beneficial aspect of our relationship with you, and we look forward to being of greater service to you, and building even stronger relations over the coming years.
Product Update: iLumen’s New Technology Platform– A revolutionary update in how we serve customers
The first ever complete rebuild of the iLumen technology platform is launching this year. Our entire team has been working diligently on this state-of-the-art platform, and it’s on track for Beta this month (April). We will be upgrading and converting all customers to this new platform during the months of June, July and August. Please talk to your iLumen Account Manager for scheduling and details.
It has always been our goal at iLumen to provide you with the best possible user experience and value. Recent delays in data processing and system response have sometimes stood in the way of this objective (Growth in our customer base has resulted in a significant increase in the amount of data that our system receives and process every day). iLumen has responded with an unprecedented effort to update and re-engineer the back-end data processing engine that performs all the background work in support of user functionality . I am pleased to report that the new technology strives to achieve a true “real-time” data processing infrastructure, and will deliver many other significant benefits:
- All data submissions (both company uploads, and bulk connector uploads) will process in minutes, not days.
- Processing and analysis of that data will propagate through the entire system in real-time.
- Therefore, enhancements to calculations and data analytics can be applied “on-the-fly”, as opposed to requiring massive “re-processing” efforts.
- All systems screens and functions will be optimized for speed and performance.
- System navigation and work-flow will be simplified and streamlined.
- The “Portfolio Connection” application will be delivered as a full web-based product (desktop application no longer required”.
We are confident this upgrade will significantly enhance your ability to adopt and scale the value proposition delivered to your users. We look forward to working with your team to achieve new levels of success with our new technology.
Partner Update: iLumen and RMA Announce Strategic Relationship
In March, iLumen and The Risk Management Association (RMA) announced a strategic partnership to distribute RMA’s Annual Statement Studies to licensed users of iLumen’s products (see the full press release here).
We are excited to offer this information as part of our service going forward, and to provide more data comparisons for our customers and their clients. iLumen’s new RMA Reporting Module will provide those additional data points to enhance reports and analysis through our service. We are now offering this module to all iLumen customers as an integral part of our services. By subscribing to the new RMA Module, you will receive the following:
- Integration and incorporation of RMA data together with your portfolio of data and the iLumen benchmarks.
- Access to two new standard reports leveraging RMA data: Single company comparison, and RMA benchmarking report.
- Full access to RMA data for all licensed users (seats) of iLumen at extremely favorable pricing.
For more information on how to enable the RMA Reporting module, call our Support desk at 888-663-9983, or contact us at support@ilumen.com.
Products and Services Highlight: Using the printable "Reports" feature in your iLumen system to achieve competitive differentiation and to automate daily Excel-powered Reporting
The customizable "Reports" feature in iLumen is one of the most popular features of our system. A standard set of five reports are included with every installation of iLumen. This standard set is designed to be used with a variety of clients – using annual data, interim data, and comparative industry data.
Differentiate to Win New Business
Many of our clients have made the report suite a part of their new client proposals. As a result, they achieve competitive differentiation
against other firms and often end up winning the client by demonstrating in-depth knowledge of the company trends. Using the reports with
prospects is extremely easy to do. The steps are as follows:
- Email support@ilumen.com with the details of the prospect account to be set up.
- Request 2-5 years of annual history form the prospect. This can be in the form of Excel statements or audited statements in Excel or PDF format.
- Forward the financial data to support@ilumen.com.
- iLumen Support will perform the work necessary to set up the prospect and add the data to the system.
- Review the data and print the reports to present as part of the proposal.
Please email support@ilumen.com for more information on this service.
Automate your Excel Reports – Eliminate manual data entry
Most CPA firms and Banks regularly use Excel reports as part of their day-to-day work in order to facilitate client reporting, perform audit
internal analytics, monitor credit, etc. Maintaining these Excel reports, and inputting data into them for different companies, is often a
painful and time-consuming task.
iLumen offers a "custom reports" service to automate any reporting that are regularly used by our clients. iLumen’s Professional Services department will work with you to take the reports you are already using and adapt them to be automatically powered on the iLumen system. These will then become part of your regular reporting suite and you can generate and print these reports for any and all firm clients. No more time-consuming data entry and no more painstaking maintenance work!
Please contact your account manager or email support@ilumen.com for more information on the "custom reports" service.
Tips and Tools: Correctly using the "Peer Group Benchmarking Report"
One of the most frequent questions fielded by iLumen Support is on the generation of Peer Group Benchmarking report. The steps involved are as follows:
- Select a client from Portfolio Connection and go to "Benchmark Analysis"
- Go to “Peer Group” tab.
- Choose the filters and click on “Run Query” from the top panel.
- A list of peer group companies will appear in the bottom panel. Refine the group by deleting companies.
- From Client Peer Reports, select "Generate Benchmarking Report."
- Once the report is generated, go to Client Reports tab and refresh the screen to see your report.