Spotlight On:
Growth-ready financial close
If you're reading this, chances are you're already convinced of one thing: that optimizing the financial close process is crucial to gain and maintain your competitive advantage.
It can be hard to envision what this looks like in practice.
At BlackLine, we empower finance and accounting leaders to navigate the challenges of modern-day demands on teams involved with the close. Our aim? To help you accelerate the close, unleash productivity, and boost your competitive advantage.
We do that by allowing you to:
Safeguard accuracy—by making it easier, faster, and more cost effective to attain in the first place.
Increase your strategic output—by allowing teams to focus on exceptions and opportunities rather than data-chasing.
Deliver rapid time to value—by enabling your business to transform piece-by-piece, then connect those pieces as part of a wider strategic roadmap.
In this eBook you can explore the real-life success stories of the people and companies who have partnered with us.
Want to explore how BlackLine can help you turn your financial close processes into an enabler of profitable growth?
“When I think about BlackLine, seamless, transparent, greater visibility, and increased control are all words that come to mind.”
Eamon Matthews
Business Process Lead, Accounting & Reporting,
The Coca-Cola Company
Eamonn Matthews
is a business process lead of accounting and reporting at The Coca-Cola Company.
The Global Finance Operations (GFO) division of The Coca-Cola Company manages more than 50,000 GL accounts.
But a lack of standardization was causing major headaches.
“For reconciliations, each region was allowed to determine what type of supporting documentation and technology they would use and the frequency of reconciliations, who was involved, and training materials.”
Eammon and The Coca-Cola Company had a vision of something more connected.
Something that would not only remove inefficiencies (they were spending over 14,000 hours a month on reconciliations alone) , but also allow the company to charge towards its growth goals, too.
The Coca-Cola Company had a plan designed to double revenue within the decade. For the GFO, supporting that plan meant ensuring all its processes—including balance sheet reconciliations—were standardized, global, accessible, and easy to use.
Eamonn and the company needed a cloud-based, globally accessible reconciliation solution that offered auto-certification, administration rules and auto alerts, enhanced reporting and analytics, and real-time dashboards.
The search led them to BlackLine…and a painless implementation process.
“It shows how good the implementation team was that we didn't even need consultants to help decipher what exactly we were supposed to be doing. BlackLine's reporting functionality has made critical data very transparent and accessible,” says Eamonn.
The results:
Value-added reporting wins
The company was able to reduce the number of FTEs working on reconciliations from 800 to 350—a 56% reduction. This means managers and frontline staff now spend a lot less time on routine work and more time on value-added reporting.
Game-changing efficiency
The company is now generating $600,000 in annual savings across their reconciliation processes.
Global visibility across entities
Eammon is now able to look at all 272 legal entities in one dashboard and make informed decisions—a far cry from having to talk to 15-20 GL managers to get the information he needed.
Thirsty for more?
Does Eamonn’s story grab your interest with Coca-Cola’s significant time and money savings?
Auto reconciling
99.9% of Domino's transactions.
Products used:
Transaction Matching
Account Reconciliations
Enhanced Reporting
“Our accounting organization innovates to find the best way to deliver quality results to our stakeholders. And BlackLine was the best partner to not just deliver the numbers, but to deliver confidence.”
Sarah Pflug
Senior Product Manager, Payment Strategy
Domino's
Sarah Pflug
is a Senior Product Manager, Payment Strategy at Domino's.
Domino's processes tens of millions of transactions every month, and in the past, teams spent a lot of time and effort in spreadsheets.
Sarah knew they should be spending more time investigating exceptions because that's where the real insight comes from. Plus, she wanted the opportunity to provide better support and advice for the rest of the organization. But because of the sheer volume of transactions and the team’s manual processes, they simply didn't have time.
As part of a review of their overall electronic payments, Domino's realized there was a significant opportunity to improve their transaction matching process.
“When we saw the capabilities that BlackLine had to offer, we found that it was the most robust, and that's why we chose to expand into transaction matching.”
Once BlackLine Transaction Matching was fully implemented, Domino’s was able to automatically match 99.9% of their 40 million transactions every month.
BlackLine afforded Sarah the ability to change the type of work she and her team does. These days, she’s able to proactively look at what's going on with the numbers and provide operations teams with quick analysis and support of what’s happening. It’s allowed her to be a much better partner for the rest of the organization.
The results:
Incredible auto-match rates
With a 99.9% auto-match rate, the Domino’s teams can spend more time on exceptions, analysis, and stakeholder support.
Reduction of manual tasks
With BlackLine Transaction Matching, the teams spend less time in cumbersome and error-prone spreadsheets.
Improved partnership
The payments team can now provide quick analysis and support and be overall better partners for the rest of the organization.
Smell that success!
Are you tempted by Sarah's account of how Domino's reconciled 99.9% of its transactions? Ready to see how BlackLine can help?
Reporting on
Red Wing Shoes' award-winning
379% ROI.
Products used:
Journal Entry
Task Management
Transaction Matching
Account Reconciliations
“Red Wing Shoes is saving 856 hours/year which allows us to better support the business, our vendors, and our customers.”
Vickie Frentz
Sr. Financial Systems Analyst
Red Wing Shoes
Vickie Frentz
is a Sr. Financial Systems Analyst at Red Wing Shoes
Nucleus Research's annual ROI awards recognize end-user organizations whose deployments of specific IT solutions have achieved exceptional financial and business results.
By partnering with BlackLine, Red Wing Shoes became the 2020 winner of the award.
“What I like about BlackLine is that it creates an opportunity to drive innovation for the team. We can be more analytical and provide value to our business partners. Ultimately, we get better financial insight to support better business decisions,” notes Holly Mudgett, Director, Corporate Accounting & Business Systems, Red Wing Shoes.
Red Wing Shoes currently distributes its products to over 100 countries and over 4,000 US retail locations, including company-owned, dealer-owned, and branded stores..
But the company was using Excel spreadsheets and email to manage its day-to-day accounting activities.
This led to a lack of standardization and controls. And as Red Wing grew, its financial processes became increasingly inefficient and laborious.
Red Wing Shoes began searching for a dedicated financial close and consolidation (FCC) software solution in 2017.
The non-negotiables were:
- Organizational visibility and consolidation of all its financial processes and data into a single location.
- Standardization and controls over workflows.
- A seamless user interface and intuitive guided workflows to reduce labor and time input.
The search led them to BlackLine…and a painless implementation process.
BlackLine's ability to create account and cost center combination groupings allowed Red Wing to cut the number of monthly account reconciliations they needed to perform by over 7,000.
The bottom line: A huge $1.2 million in annual savings through new productivity, efficiency, and visibility.
The results:
Award-winning ROI
Red Wing has achieved an ROI of 379% a year, a 1:3.2 cost/benefit ratio, and began realizing payback of BlackLine in just 4.8 months.
Huge time savings
With BlackLine, Red Wing has built standardized workflows to facilitate and automate its financial processes. Altogether, the guided workflows save staff, managers, and directors a total of 1,500 hours every year—which they have reallocated to other value-added tasks.
Improved organizational visibility
By consolidating its financial information, the company is saving 3,500 hours each month through account reconciliation automation.
Ready to fill your boots with ROI?
Were you impressed by Vickie’s story of saving hundreds of hours and achieving 379% ROI? Interested in learning how BlackLine can help?
Saving Light & Wonder over two weeks of busywork.
“In addition to the reporting time savings we're seeing with BlackLine Consolidation & Financial Analytics, we're also improving accounting accuracy and quality.”
Jeremiah Johnson
Director, Global Close & Controls
Light & Wonder
Jelcey Whitlock
is the Accounting Manager, Close Management & Reporting
&
Jeremiah Johnson
is the Director of Global Close & Controls at Light & Wonder
Light & Wonder is the leader in cross-platform games and entertainment, with 6,000 employees across six continents.
Jeremiah and Jelcey have been working with BlackLine since 2006 to create impactful, robust, and continuous record-to-report processes.
Next stop? Eliminating manual financial reporting and analytics...
“Everything was manual, all in Excel. We had six people manually refreshing reports and doing drill-down to try to understand what caused a variance at a given location.”
- Jelcey
“We were able to connect the data in ways we'd never been able to view before.”
- Jeremiah
Jeremiah and Jelcey knew that BlackLine's Financial Reporting Analytics solution was the way forward.
Its ability to automate spreadsheet-heavy processes (like analyzing balance sheets and income statements at line-item and consolidated levels) proved to be a game-changer.
The combination of BlackLine Financial Reporting Analytics and Variance Analysis also allows the company to easily perform additional fluctuation analysis at a group level.
The results speak for themselves:
Faster reporting
Teams using Financial Reporting Analytics now deliver monthly financial reporting two weeks faster.
Improved close accuracy and quality
Light & Wonder's finance teams devote more time to strategic tasks which leads to a more accurate and higher-quality close.
Enhanced visibility and stakeholder collaboration
Light & Wonder has a much more efficient approval system for processes involving e-mail exchanges or shared files with preparers and management. The heightened visibility that stakeholders have also guides an optimized close.
Excited about growth-ready financial close, consolidation, and financial analytics processes?
You've had the opportunity to dive into several different stories about how individuals have advanced their teams and companies by leveraging BlackLine's solutions.
Just a few of the major accomplishments included:
- Over $1M dollars in savings through increased efficiency and reallocation of FTEs
- Thousands of hours of time saved through standardization and automation of processes
- Improved accuracy, visibility, and quality of numbers and reports
Still not convinced?
Check out some of our 100% organic reviews.
One solution for all financial accounting needs
I have worked for multiple companies as a system admin. I have used almost all the modules from BlackLine…You name it, and BlackLine will deliver.
Eswar C.
Senior Platform Support Analyst Enterprise (> 1,000 emp.)
BlackLine has transformed our month-end close
Through the matching system, we have been able to reconcile cash for our 50+ bank accounts on a daily basis. Switching from performing bank reconciliations in Sage 100 to BlackLine has cut more than a week of time off of our month-end close alone.
Joshua M.
Mid-Market (51-1,000 emp.)
Get started with BlackLine ASAP—you won’t regret it!
BlackLine has been an excellent tool for our accounting department. We've been able to automate over half of our monthly journal entries, reduce time in reviewing monthly reconciliations, and continue to find ways to automate and increase efficiencies in our close process.
Director of Accounting
Manufacturing Company Enterprise (3B - 10B USD)
BlackLine helps us develop automated solutions
We are able to increase our productivity by loading transaction data directly into BlackLine and using that to create reconciliation items from unmatched transactions. This saves our preparers and approvers time, as the reconciliations no longer have to be manually created in spreadsheets and the items manually typed in.
Michelle S.
Accountant Enterprise (51-1,000 emp.)
It’s your turn.
If you're ready to take the next steps and begin to implement changes that BlackLine can help with at your organization, schedule your free demo today.