On 13th and 4th November, Illuminis headed off to the Liverpool Exhibition Centre to join some of the world’s leading suppliers of high-tech machinery and software solutions to UK manufacturing. Visited by 6000+ delegates, the event formed part of Digital Manufacturing Week sponsored by The Manufacturer magazine and Innovate UK, the government agency promoting the UK’s best and brightest companies. Excited by the opportunity to present their innovative business reporting software to manufacturers, large and small, MD Paul North said: “This was an exciting opportunity for us to showcase our innovative software, Octelas, to a much wider audience drawn from across the whole of the UK. We were delighted by our reception: our cutting edge software, enabling SMEs to instantly access any of their business data without needing special skills, really struck a chord with the businesses we spoke too, giving us many leads to follow up on after the show.” Much of the focus at the Expo was on enabling UK manufacturing to benefit from the opportunities offered by Industry 4.0 technologies (often called the “Fourth Industrial revolution” because of the potential for intelligent digital technology to transform manufacturing in much the same way that steam power did in the first industrial revolution, followed in the 20th century by electronics and then computing). The “Internet of Things” as it is commonly called, is already transforming the ability of manufacturers to control every aspect of their operations in real time. According to Paul North, digitisation of manufacturing will allow Octelas business reporting software to access data never before available: examples are endless but include the ability to identify, in the case of any single item manufactured , exactly how much it cost to produce in materials and labour. The annual Smart Factory Expo showcases over 150 cutting edge exhibitors in 8 visitor zones: smart factory, digital transformation, internet of things, industrial automation, manufacturing innovation, cyber security, field service and supply chain & logistics.

Over forty local business people attended the illuminis Spring seminar ‘Working your Business Data’ in the contemporary surroundings of the Grant Thornton Collaboration Space in Victoria House, Milton Keynes.

Illuminis is delighted to be shortlisted in the prestigious National Technology Awards of the Year in the ‘Innovative Enterprise Product of the Year‘ category for their exceptional Octelas software product. The BIG awards night is 16th May 2019 in London where we have high hopes of walking on stage to collect a trophy and be recognised Nationally for our work.

If Christmas is your key trading period then most likely you are already well into the swing of your busiest quarter of the year. But did you know that the data generated during this time could become a valuable performance tool to keep you ahead of the competition? If you are relying on standard accounting information to manage your business then it could be months – perhaps even six months to a whole year – before you have a clear picture of your business performance. But what if you had full visibility on best and worst performing goods week by week, even day by day? With totally reliable information at your fingertips you wouldn’t have to guess how you were doing, you could respond to trends by focussing all your efforts on the best achieving goods and clear those doing less well. Says Illuminis Chairman Paul North “Getting on top of issues as and when they happen is key to businesses operating on short seasonal trading patterns. With Octelas software, managers can easily track sales as they happen as well as compare them with previous years on a rolling monthly average basis so that the true underlying position quickly becomes very clear”. Likewise, pinning down the gross margin achieved on every sale is crucial to matching selling prices with market demand and still bringing in an acceptable level of profit over the period. Paul comments “Octelas calculates gross margin automatically and as users spot pricing errors immediately, they can adjust prices as often as they need to, to reflect customer demand”.  In particular retailers bringing in Christmas goods from overseas need to be right on top of currency fluctuations. Octelas software adds value to your business reporting by capturing and combining all the data created by your company from accounting system, spreadsheets, CRM and other sources at least once a day and delivering it automatically to users by phone, PC or other device, providing an update on all the latest sales, purchases and other activities. Accessing the information from Octelas requires no more skill than using an online shopping trolley and so every manager can always stay on top of the key information needed to run the business without resorting to acres of spreadsheets.

We are delighted to have been shortlisted in two categories for the 2018 National Technology Awards: Analytics Product of the Year. (Data might be getting bigger, but to make sense of it there has to be outstanding analytics, so this category welcomes nominations for analytics programmes and systems that can deliver real business intelligence, with proven results) Innovative Enterprise Product of the Year. (This category is for products that are game-changers for the corporate world and can honestly claim to be capable of creating major impacts on the way that enterprises do business. These may be evolutions or wholly new ideas, but they must have a definite corporate application) The National Technology Awards celebrate the pioneers of new technology, focusing on innovation in areas such as finance, travel, gaming, IoT and analytics. Winning entries come from those companies and organisations who have made outstanding technological contributions across a variety of sectors. The winners will be announced at the gala dinner and awards ceremony on 17 May 2018 at the Waldorf Hilton, London and the Illuminis team are looking forward to attending an amazing evening.

Illuminis is proud to sponsor the Milton Keynes City Orchestra’s first concert in the New Year at The Venue MK on Sunday 14th January 2018 at 4.00pm Rarely performed in England, this concert is a mix of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, one of the best loved and most performed works in the classical repertoire. Add the fiery tango rhythms of Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires and you have a truly intoxicating mix of music. Francesco D’orazio is an internationally renowned violinist and he will perform throughout the concert, which is played without an interval, in another unusual turn in classical concert performance. We hope that you will join us tickets are £10, £25 and £5 for under 18’s or students. For more concert information and to buy tickets click here