About Image Relay

Image Relay is a fully integrated marketing solution that puts digital assets and product information in one place for fast, seamless creation and delivery.

The problem

Image Relay had a finance tech stack across multiple systems which led to manual processes, duplicative work, and the need to reconcile information from different sources. They hired Tiffani Keys, their current Director of Accounting, in 2021 whose early responsibilities included implementing a revenue recognition and invoicing system as an addition to their GL tool.

Over time, Tiffani realized that she was spending significant time each month triaging issues between two systems that were not integrated. Although not actively searching for a solution at that moment, she heard about Rillet through an industry Slack channel and inquired as the need for an easy, one-stop solution had become apparent.

Over the last few years a large number of niche solutions have popped up to serve finance and accounting departments. Many of these solutions provide valuable services for their chosen niche. However, in an era of automation and white glove customer service, most of these softwares either don’t provide an end-to-end solution or don’t have the requisite integrations with other systems to provide a seamless experience for users. The ensuing friction leads to lost time and manual workarounds. Image Relay sought to address these issues by looking for an accounting system that maintained data integrity while emphasizing efficiency and user experience.

The solution

In order to make the leap from their current tooling, Image Relay required that a new accounting platform:

• Reduce the time required for manual workarounds
• Provide an accurate, centralized source of truth for data
• Provide an easy-to-use system

Rillet addressed Image Relay’s needs by:

• Automating workflows
  • One system to easily make changes that are reflected throughout
• Creating a one-stop solution
  • Easy-to-use platform providing invoicing, GL, and SaaS metrics / dashboards
  • Central source to edit invoices, close dates, etc.
• Enabling a seamless user experience
  • Intuitive, easy-to-learn, easy-to-navigate interface and tooling

Previous tooling required Tiffani to manually calculate the revenue and then edit the invoicing to reflect those changes vs Rillet’s ability to manage contract amendments that are automatically reflected across the platform. Additionally, there were issues between systems for lock dates as lifting it for invoicing would change the revenue and require Tiffani to go back to the GL to restate revenue whereas Rillet provides a centralized, integrated source for these edits. When issues would arise that could not be easily resolved, previous solutions would respond in 3+ days while Rillet has been immediately responsive over Slack to any inquiries.

Tiffani notes that one of the highlights of Rillet is the “simplicity, yet the flexibility in how you handle customers” as the platform provides a catered experience for users and quickly ships constant updates in order to accommodate needs across the marketplace.

The results

Rillet’s centralized source of truth saved Tiffani 10 hours per month that had been spent making changes between two systems and pushing updates between them. This elimination of a burdensome monthly manual audit freed Tiffani up to focus on strategy and long-term value-add priorities. The automated bank reconciliation feature provided 99.9% accuracy and saved Tiffani time at the end of each month that had been spent on manual cash reconciliations.

Rillet’s easy-to-use platform that anyone can learn meant that the organization did not need to rely as heavily on accounting resources or system SMEs to provide ad hoc data requests. Rillet could be self-serve for a variety of stakeholders. Even company leadership found useful, actionable insights in Rillet’s automated dashboards that show key SaaS metrics. The CRO consistently uses the tool to track metrics over time such as the ARR/MRR waterfall to understand the health of the business. Even outside stakeholders, including investors, find the ARR formats useful and easy to track.

As Rillet has helped automate some of the more time-intensive tasks, Tiffani has now had the opportunity to take on “doing all of the metrics, doing a lot of the cash forecasting, and doing the budget” as she has “gradually taken on other responsibilities” with Rillet opening her up “to more strategic work”.