Despite transitioning from a paper-based close to a SharePoint application almost a decade ago, Berkshire Bank’s reconciliation process was still highly manual.

“The SharePoint system was cost-effective, but we didn’t gain any efficiencies,” says Michael King, controller at Berkshire Bank. “It was really just a way to physically document reconciliations. Our close process remained very clunky.”

Relying on SharePoint to manage reconciliations was also very time-consuming. “I would click to approve a reconciliation and sometimes the system would recognize it. Sometimes it wouldn’t. I’d have to wait hours—or even overnight—and hope that the system would eventually accept it. It was absolutely brutal on our productivity.”

In addition, the SharePoint system made reconciling certain GLs exceptionally difficult. “We couldn’t group accounts by cost center or GL. The system couldn’t handle it. We had to go through and look at everything individually. It took a lot of time, especially on the loan side,” says King. “It was very inefficient, and it kept us from engaging in more strategic work.”

King and his team were committed to increasing efficiency across the entire close process. “First and foremost, we wanted to reduce the amount of time it takes to prepare, approve, and review reconciliations. That was our primary goal.”

However, leadership was concerned about both the cost and the resources needed to implement a new system. “Our company had done quite a few acquisitions, which had already taken up a lot of resources—not just from my team, but within the entire bank,” says King. “And our SharePoint system had no incremental costs. For some, that made its continued use attractive.”

As King and his team worked to make the business case for a new solution, the 2020 pandemic hit. Rapid changes and uncertainty over the next few months called into question the sustainability of SharePoint as a close tool.

“We realized at that point that we really needed to just get it done. We identified available funding from the 2021 budget for the first and second quarters. Leadership got on board when they realized that other departments besides our own, such as internal audit, would benefit from the increased efficiency.”

After several months of research and demos, the team selected BlackLine over three other vendors, implementing BlackLine’s Modern Accounting Playbook solution.

“BlackLine has a very user-friendly, simple interface. That was critical, as there can be some initial resistance to change,” says King. “We wanted to make sure that we implemented something that people could learn quickly—and even get excited about.”

King was also impressed with BlackLine’s experience and reputation in the financial industry. “We valued BlackLine’s market share, especially among banks. Other vendors offered us referral calls from non-banking institutions. But with BlackLine, we had several excellent references calls with other banks that liked using the platform.”

But for King, the fact that BlackLine manages its own implementations sealed the deal. “We considered using PeopleSoft for the financial close, as we have it as our general ledger. But we didn’t like that they don’t handle their own implementations.

“BlackLine manages implementation from beginning to end. That was a huge differentiator. There’s no need to integrate a third party, which always winds up taking more time.”