6 Reasons Why CIOs Count on BlackLine for Finance Transformation

The role of the Office of the CIO has expanded beyond managing a company’s technology—these days, they are expected to drive strategic value across the organization. One area where this transformation is particularly crucial is in finance and accounting (F&A).

As CIOs, we have a unique opportunity to optimize processes, enhance financial insights, and contribute directly to business growth by helping to select the best finance and accounting software solutions. The right choice in this area isn’t just about improving back-office efficiency—it’s about empowering the enterprise to make data-driven decisions and achieve a competitive edge.

Although BlackLine has always been a preferred choice of CFOs for finance transformation, CIOs have also backed our technology from behind the scenes.

Let’s look at why CIOs love what BlackLine has to offer.

When vetting a new supplier, many companies spend a considerable part of the procurement process on the technical and security review process. The IT/CIO organization must look at everything in detail. The process goes on even longer when the vendor cannot readily provide credentials and proof of security, data, privacy, business continuity, etc.

As a vendor of comprehensive, flexible, and scalable solutions that help companies open the door to future-ready financial operations, BlackLine is keenly aware that we are an important part of our customers’ processes and technology strategy. Where other companies meet the bare minimum requirements regarding data security, we go beyond with more certifications and attestations than others in the marketplace, including SOC1, SOC2, ISO 27001 (ISM), ISO 27017 (Cloud Security), ISO 27018 (Cloud Privacy), and ISO 27701 (Privacy Information Management).

Learn about our security, best practices, and more.

Continuing with this discussion of credibility, when IT is investigating new systems or software, we often look at who else is using it. I might ask, “Do other CIOs in my network use it at their organizations?” Or perhaps I look to see if other organizations I trust are running this particular solution. When I see that a company is a preferred premier vendor, that gets my attention because there must be good reasons to partner with this vendor.

This is exactly the situation with BlackLine and SAP.

An SAP solution extension is a third-party solution that SAP premium qualifies. Instead of building a capability themselves, they resell a partner's solution. BlackLine is the only solution extension partner in the record-to-report space, with SAP reselling our Financial Close and Intercompany solutions. We’re tested, validated, and premium qualified annually, so you can be sure of the quality of BlackLine’s solutions.

Such a strong partnership with SAP means there is nothing to worry about when it comes to integrations and interoperability because these systems work with each other day in and day out. If I’m the CIO at an SAP house, this helps me sleep better at night.

And, in fact, SAP runs BlackLine, so that is extra credibility.  

BlackLine doesn’t only play well with SAP—it fits in with many tech, business, and F&A ecosystems.

BlackLine has strategic partnerships with SAP and many others, and we offer pre-built connectors to a range of ERPs. Crucially, our platform just WORKS across so many other platforms because we’re ERP agnostic.

Why does this matter? CIOs understand more than anyone that total cost of ownership isn’t just about subscribing and deploying a software, but there is a hidden cost of integrating it with other systems within your landscape. This cost often gets ignored when making technology decisions but adds up over time leading to long term issues.

Today’s financial operations are managed across numerous applications and purpose-built solutions. Layering in manual work like managing spreadsheets, sending emails, and posting transactions only adds to the tangled web of systems and processes handled by the office of the CFO. BlackLine meets that complexity with the Studio360 Platform—a comprehensive, flexible, and scalable solution that seamlessly connects and optimizes data and activities across your organization.

Another big headache for CIOs and IT teams when considering a new solution is the level of technical administration labor involved in deployment and ongoing maintenance and updates.

With BlackLine, the good news is that level is low for both IT and the business. BlackLine is well-known for its ease of implementation and maintenance—a significant advantage for organizations looking to modernize their F&A processes.

BlackLine is designed to be quick and easy to implement. The platform offers excellent training courses that are specific to unique features, making it easy for personnel to learn and become experts with the tool. In addition, BlackLine provides turnkey, built-in business logic and best practices developed over years of customer implementations. This means less time spent on configuring the system and more time focusing on driving results.

The BlackLine platform unifies data and processes, providing a single source of truth. This centralization simplifies maintenance and ensures consistency across the organization. Being a cloud-based solution, BlackLine continuously updates its platform with new features and improvements without requiring significant downtime or manual intervention from the business or IT side.

When looking at a new solution, you want the ability to add new features or modify existing ones without significantly changing the core system. This helps you adapt to changing requirements and user needs over time. At the same time, you don’t want a system that is so customized and changes so often that you need an entire team to support it. In addition, this can lead to change fatigue for your user base.

BlackLine’s software is world-class. But even more importantly, our customers rave about the leading practices that BlackLine embeds in the software and the resources we put behind it to make sure the software is easy to use and that it's solving a problem in the right way. It is purpose-built for F&A professionals, by F&A professionals.

Other companies may offer a highly customizable approach, but that often results in a system that can become hard to maintain. With BlackLine, most customers find customization unnecessary because our out-of-the-box features are exceptionally rich and purpose-built. Instead, they benefit from the platform's extensive configurability, which allows them to tailor the solution to their specific needs without needing custom development.

And finally, we can’t forget AI—one of the hottest topics in the world right now.

I think we can all acknowledge that AI, in general, is still very much a work in progress … but we also realize that AI is the future.

Fellow CIOs will appreciate that, here at BlackLine, our approach to AI stems from a desire to augment F&A processes and teams rather than letting AI take complete ownership of a task. We understand the unique challenges for F&A teams and are bringing AI to our products in a very responsible way. Our goal is to use AI where it truly makes a difference—without causing risk to accuracy and compliance needs.

Our mature approach to the right places to use AI and in what capacity allows us to pursue use cases for AI that will provide teams with added efficiency and intelligence.

We’ve seen great success incorporating AI into our products and solutions to help F&A teams strengthen risk management, transform data into insights, and automate repetitive work.

Investing in the right finance and accounting software solution is more than just a tech upgrade—it's a strategic decision that can profoundly impact the organization’s financial agility and long-term success.

As CIOs, we are tasked with ensuring operational efficiency and driving innovation that aligns with business goals. By selecting a solution that integrates with other systems, delivers real-time insights, and scales with the business, we position our organizations to make smarter decisions, reduce risk, and remain competitive in an increasingly data-driven world. The future of finance is digital, and it's up to us to lead the charge.