Axiom Software by Syntellis Performance Solutions vs. BlackLine

Axiom is extremely well suited to optimize the Budget process. Using Axiom, we have cut our overall budget cycle time in half and have a much higher level of accuracy in all facets of the Budget including Fee Income, Expense, and Margin. Axiom is also well suited for advanced data users as you have the ability to create your own custom database tables which allows you to join to the existing Axiom tables and has allowed us to create custom reporting that we could not even think about on our previous system. The other big benefit of Axiom is that it sits on top of Microsoft Excel and inherits all of its functionality, which most people have experience with.

Incentivized

BlackLine is great for centralization and standardization of Recs, great for reporting and ease of controls documentation. It is not a full fledged automated GRC platform but what it does do with Recs and GL recs is exemplary. The use of the automated Data Loads for both GL and Subledgers is fantastic.

Incentivized

• Compared to a previous EPM we used, Axiom's template load and saving performance has been much better even for large plan files.
• Axiom consultants can create completely customized reports for any of the collected data. Super users within your organization can then fairly easily modify their work to create additional reports without Axiom's help (and invoices)
• Setting up user security is a fairly easy one-time task and very easy to maintain when people change departments, leave the organization, etc. I would recommend you use role-based security settings.
• Compared to our previous EPM, Axiom allows more customization and possibilities for templates. There's very few "the product can't do that" statements.

Incentivized

• Segregation of duties - allows for a formal way to ensure that there is a separate preparer/approver for a given task or reconciliation.
• Provides visibility - having account reconciliation data in one place has automated processes that were once very manual, and involved multiple team members aggregating data.
• Streamlines communication and status of close - having all tasks in one place, in the same format gives us the visibility needed to manage our close process, and know the status of items that are still pending and open for action. This was previously a game of telephone between staff, managers, and leaders, and now has been automated via tasks.
• Automation/Optimization - BlackLine provides a lot of opportunity to automate certain reconciliations based on thresholds, rules, and templates. This allows the team to use that time for researching actual issues, and keeping our balance sheet reconciliations clean.

• Implementation is quite Complex and requires both IT and Financial buy-in
• Reporting solution has some learning curve for end users
• Calculation methods within reporting can be opaque and hard to trace

Incentivized

• The Reporting Module does not provide any FRA reports. Variance reporting is Limited.
• FRA, To trace from GL balances imported to the Variance module can be difficult, as you need to map the GL balances to the level in the Var Module. This is a manual offline process. Would be good to have reporting that provides the link.
• Matching Module - Intransit, when scheduling, you cannot pull all the unmatched transactions; only the current period.
• Match Sets: if you have a chance to a live match set (e.g., filter at DS), you can't update the Match Set; you have to rebuild. It would be good to be able to amend and not rebuild.

Incentivized

BlackLine has made our finance team more effective and accurate. Our current ERP system is unable to do any sort of financial activities currently being done with our BlackLine licenses. Prior to BlackLine everything was done manually through Excel and stored in binders. There was no option for a paperless process. We are now 100% paperless in our close process, freeing up time, space and saving money on office supplies.

BlackLine could use a little work in getting around the system. The interface is not without its issues including lots of scrolling up and down and a lack of using the entire screen. Importing of the initial setup data could be better defined and reimporting data to add additional fields could pose an issue of overwriting data in a negative way.

Incentivized

We never experienced an outage with BlackLine. The only time the system was unavailable was during planned outages for updates and upgrades usually Friday evening after 6pm pst until Saturday morning at 6am pst.

Incentivized

On month ends we get complaints about delay in journal postage

Incentivized

For the scale of our implementation, Axiom only assigned two consultants who were both completely new to the company. It felt like we were all learning about the product together, when you would expect them to already be experts at their own product. The team also made a good bit of mistakes throughout production and go-live, which then caused more work internally for us. The team lead for our project also just left the company, so we'll see how next year's planning goes

Incentivized

Our issues have been few and far between, and have usually been very niche, requiring an extensive review process on both our end and BlackLine's. BlackLine worked with us every step of the way to get them resolved, but because of their nature, they can take longer than a day/week to resolve.

It’s impactful to be F2F

Incentivized

Trainings are available for all topics on the BlackLine U portal. These were incredibly helpful when first starting with BlackLine to get the hang of it. Trainings are useful for any module. I have personally used this to teach myself how to use the tasks and variance modules, which are now fully utilized by my organization. The support team is also very helpful in training our team on anything additional we have needed.

Incentivized

You will have to meet up with your final users, approver, internal auditor and accounting policy holder. Everyone has to agree. When you have a well written process, workflow, policy, approval requirement, and control, your implementation process will be much easier

Axiom was selected based on the impression of ease of use and integration. It is capable of holding all of our entities data while giving us an easier more accessible way to deliver monthly Financials and reports to managers. Then in costing we signed up because the impression of budgeting.

Incentivized

I have not used any of the other products, but we did evaluate them during our discovery phase. BlackLine was the "Cadillac" of the product offerings. You could get a similar product, and maybe even at a lower cost, but we wanted the best of the best, and that's what BlackLine is. We wanted a product that we could grow into, rather than a product we would outgrow over time as our organization grows. We have only touched the surface with BlackLine so far, and we've already reaped the benefits.

Incentivized

Depends on the module

Incentivized

After implementing BlackLine our company acquired another large company with multiple operations. We were able to use the COVID shutdown to bring them on board with BlackLine with little effort in the setup and training of the users.

Incentivized

• Forecasting has improved
• Complexity of analysis has improved as well
• Our main data has been confused as we started using Axiom

• Implementing bank reconciliation matching has taken more time than expected, creating an additional workload for team members.
• Increased visibility into the team's progress on close tasks and reconciliations, allowing for greater accountability.
• This allows our team to have a one-stop shop for all things close-related, saving us time with fewer status calls, trackers to update, etc.

Incentivized