Fast-growing business illumin speeds up approvals by 50%

ApprovalMax has tremendously improved the efficiency in our invoice approval process, allowing both the finance admin team and department leaders to enjoy a centralized system to access, manage, and review all vendor bills. It has saved a lot of hours for everyone!

Like many other growing businesses, illumin expanded faster than some of its processes could handle.

The Toronto-headquartered advertising platform, originally known as AcuityAds, was founded in 2009 and underwent rapid expansion. In just over a decade, illumin acquired four other adtech companies and grew to over $100m in revenue as a public company.

Now, illumin employs hundreds of employees working across multiple countries to help its clients connect with their customers through data-driven advertising. This rapid growth has brought about huge opportunities for the business and its team to change the game for marketers and the advertising landscape.

However, the journey from startup to scaleup outpaced illumin’s processes.
“Everything happens so fast and you almost forget about the little steps. For us in the finance team, that’s mostly being able to control expenses and have more visibility,” says Vanessa Gajilomo, Cost Accountant at illumin.

Slow processes, fast growth

illumin still used a highly manual process for managing incoming bills and expenses.

“We would receive a bill via email then have to forward it on to different people to get their approval,” says Gajilomo. “There was a lot of back and forth. If that person didn't reply to you, you’d have to go find that email and follow up on it – imagine you have 30 invoices and have to make 30 follow-ups. It was just a nightmare.”

Without a real process or tool in place, department leaders had little visibility on which bills had been approved, paid, or rejected. There was no central way of storing and managing these financial documents, so people saved them to their own computers with no centralized filing system. This led to delays approving invoices, which typically took two weeks to be processed but in some cases months, and resulted in lost time internally - for finance and other departments. While illumin always ensured bills were approved and paid on time, without the right tools in place, the finance department had to rely on slow, inefficient processes which took significant effort.

“The big vendors we work with, like Google, will cut your services if you don’t pay on time. So we had to manually make sure those ones were approved and paid on time, but even then it was always last minute,” adds Gajilomo.

Illuminating the finance function

In 2023, illumin added ApprovalMax to its finance tech stack, alongside Oracle NetSuite and Concur, to manage approvals for bills and expenses.

Now, the finance team and department heads have a centralized way to upload financial documents and circulate them for approval, all connected via an integration with Oracle NetSuite, illumin’s ERP of choice. 

As soon as you enter an invoice into Oracle NetSuite, it automatically speaks to ApprovalMax. The data is live almost within minute.Vanessa Gajilomo,Cost Accountant at illumin

This visibility has big flow-on effects for illumin’s finance team and the broader business. With a clearer view of all upcoming bills to be paid and other incoming expenses, the team easily plans and schedules payments to manage cash flow. 

“We can see if things are approved earlier but we don't need to pay it right away. This means we can then schedule payments better too based on the terms of the approved invoices,” says Gajilomo.  “ApprovalMax also shows if people are too slow at signing off invoices so we can actually instantly find out why and run a report on why it's taking so long or follow up.”

Moving at speed

Faster approvals to help the business move at speed. Some of the main benefits include:

• Time savings: Previously, it took weeks – or even months – to approve incoming invoices. Now, it typically takes less than two days.

• Straightforward approvals: illumin simplified the entire sign-off process. Instead of manually emailing decision-makers and following up, it’s all managed automatically in ApprovalMax, making it easier for everyone involved.

• Better visibility: illumin’s finance team can clearly see which invoices are yet to be approved, by which team members, and plan payments for approved expenses to manage cash flow.