Since 2011, Globe’s Collection Advisory & Audit Department had relied on the Audit, Reconciliation & Monitoring System (ARMS) for daily audit and reconciliation. Yet by 2018, ARMS couldn’t keep up with the sheer volume of data moving through the system.

According to Shiela Jimenez, head of collections assurance and advisory, Globe ARMS had “reached its end of life,” resulting in a continuous decline in efficiency. “It couldn’t handle one-to-many or many-to-one reconciliation rules. It had limited matching criteria and latency on processing multiple data. And creating new matching rules required extensive programming.”

As a result, staff had to rely increasingly on manual processes, including the generation of multi-source reports. According to Ivy Victorio, head of external collections assurance and advisory at Globe, “with different data as the basis of reconciled collections per department and multiple data sources from different internal or external systems, our timeliness of reconciliation and reporting was compromised.”

As ARMS grew less efficient, it also became more costly to maintain. The system required ongoing support from a third party, and support costs increased 5% every year.

“We realized that if the system broke down, daily auditing would also have to be performed manually,” says Norman Evangelista, Technical Support, Globe. “This would require a significant—and costly— increase in staff.”

Globe invited several vendors to participate in an RFP and system walkthrough process. BlackLine was the only vendor who provided a demo. “During the demo, the team realized how BlackLine aligned to Globe,” says Suzy Urbano, head of enterprise support, Globe. “It’s cloud-based, fast, and flexible. BlackLine can also adapt any changes in data sources from continuous internal or external systems enhancements or optimization.”

The team was especially interested in BlackLine Transaction Matching. “Transaction Matching would greatly reduce the time we spent on daily audit and reconciliation of collections, deposits, and settlement from our various collection channels and partners,” says Urbano. “We could define multiple match sets and pass rules, set up thresholds for variance, and convert and merge different file formats.”

BlackLine worked closely with Globe during implementation to address all audit and reconciliation challenges. “The implementation team from BlackLine was very knowledgeable and supportive,” says Menchit Briones, vice president for financial control division at Globe. “They provided useful recommendations and suggestions on how we could improve our reconciliation logic and approach.”