How We Grew in 2020

A look back at 2020

First off, can we take a second to recognize how crazy and challenging 2020 was as a whole? We are beyond grateful to you, our customers, for sticking with us throughout it all. The unexpectedness of last year pushed us to grow beyond just Parking Boss to serve you in new and better ways. We wouldn’t be where we are without you. The drive to create solutions to assist your communities meant some major accomplishments for us in 2020. So without further ado, here’s what we made happen in 2020 that we think is pretty darn cool.

Amenity Boss was born

Closed amenities everywhere was one of the many consequences of state-issued quarantines last spring. The risk of contact was too high to keep apartment gyms and business centers open. As time went on, there wasn’t an intuitive and efficient way to let residents into amenity spaces in limited numbers. Not to mention the need to clean and sanitize the spaces between uses throughout the day.

Amenity Boss was developed to allow residents to start using community amenities again while still social distancing. Managers could set rules and time limits for each amenity, allowing residents to easily create amenity passes. Options to close amenities during certain times ensured they were able to be sanitized as often as necessary. We’re continuing to build the capabilities and have plans for more usage reports.

As of the end of the year, Amenity Boss was being used at 727 communities and a total of 1,819,551 Amenity Passes were registered. We're happy to have helped simplify amenity management for so many.

Reports were improved

We released a new set of activity reports in the Reports tab that give you more insight into your community’s parking trends. You get to see the data for almost any logged parking activity such as how people are registering for different policies, resident and guest permit history, enforcement activity, and more.

Let's take a quick look at some of our internal report data. Last year 112,198 violations were recorded in Parking Boss across 100,134 units served. 1,392,044 guest parking permits were registered across 100,134 units. Out of 68,740 vehicles that were denied permits, there were 897,367 failed attempts to register for various reasons. Paid parking users increased by 187%.

Smart Map functionality was enhanced

We’ve had the option of the Smart Map being included with Parking Boss for some time now. It gives the leasing team the ability to assign parking spaces to residents from the map and see available spaces in the coming months, among other things. Our design and engineering team were hard at work last year moving mapping past parking to the whole community. We’re now able to create a 3D representation of your entire community.

Our new version of the mapping engine lets us capture a new level of detail than ever before. It allows a way to interact with communities with 3D, real-world models that highlight everything from pool location and reservations to the garbage can locations.

We want to give you, your residents, and prospects the chance to see your community in an interactive way on the map. This led to another exciting addition to what we offer: Community Boss.

Community Boss was introduced at OPTECH

As we made our improvements to Smart Map, we knew we were onto something. We looked at how the maps we use on our phones allow us to discover the world around us. But when it comes to apartment communities, they're just a pin on the map. We went to work to bring them to life on our maps, and Community Boss was born.

Community Boss is the interactive hub for shared community spaces. It combines modern mapping with an interactive resident hub to answer the most frequently asked resident questions, and can even be used for virtual community walking tours. Parking Boss and Amenity Boss work seamlessly in the Community Boss hub. Residents and prospects are able to get a high-touch experience with a no-touch reality.

We first announced the launch of Community Boss at OPTECH in November. We’re excited to see Community Boss grow and we know you’ll love what it offers as much as we do.

We grew our team

We added valuable members to the Luminous family in several departments this year. As we developed new products, more people were needed to maintain the level of quality service we have always prided ourselves on. We’re grateful to have the opportunity to grow and add to the team. We welcomed Monica Stillwell, Jesse Lawrence , and Kelsey Dean to our Customer Success team; Evan Happel as Director of Marketing, and Angela Lira in Operations.

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Policy updates

The policy system within Parking Boss (and now Amenity Boss) has gotten some major updates over the last year. Policies are the parameters put in place to fit different permit requirements. We now have a way more flexible policy system that allows for policies created around any scenario. Whatever makes sense for your community, we can build out the policies to fit your needs.

Whether you have free or paid guest parking, caretakers, delivery drivers, you can have a custom policy to let them precisely register for parking. For us, this new basis of policies allowed Amenity Boss to become what it is and has created a solid framework for continued improvement to what we can do for you.

Smartphone LPR was launched

When it comes to parking management, efficiency is key. Our first version of License Plate Recognition (LPR) was recently launched, and now enforcement with Parking Boss is easier than ever before. Vehicles can be searched with a scan of their license plates from Field Agent’s built-in camera. This saves your enforcement teams the trouble of typing in license plate numbers, and saves them time too. Now you can verify guest permits and issue violations with a quick scan.

With growth came a rebrand

We're known to most as Parking Boss (and Amenity Boss). What you might not know is we’ve always been under the corporation name of Luminous. Luminous was founded as a graphic and web design company in 1997. In 2011, when Co-Founder Nathan LeMesurier bought a condo and attended his first HOA meeting, he realized software could be the solution to their guest parking headaches. He and Co-Founder Joel DuChesne quickly went to work developing what would soon become Parking Boss.

To make a long story short, after launching Amenity Boss and introducing Community Boss last year, it made sense for us to bring the Luminous brand back into the light. We no longer offer just one product for the multifamily industry, but three. Now, in a fresh way, we're Luminous: brilliant solutions for multifamily living, offering Community Boss, Parking Boss, and Amenity Boss.

In our next post we’ll be sharing more about our brand refresh.

Looking forward in 2021

We have more exciting plans for 2021 and we look forward to sharing as they come to fruition. We may go by Luminous now, but we will always offer the same exceptional quality and determination to continue improving. Thank you for being a part of our journey through 2020. Here’s to 2021.