BlackLine automates the the processes required to finalize periodic closing of the books. Beyond close/reconciliation management the product includes capabilities to enhance the management and control of financial processes throughout the accounting cycle. In October 2020, BlackLine acquired Rimilia, an AR automation solution. Rimilia's capabilities are now part of the BlackLine platform.
N/A
OneStream
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
OneStream Software provides a finance platform that aims to reduce the complexity of financial operations. OneStream™ unleashes the power of finance by unifying corporate performance management (CPM) processes such as planning, financial close & consolidation, reporting, and analytics through a single, extensible solution. The vendor states their goal is to empower the enterprise with financial and operational insights to support faster and more informed decision-making. All in a cloud…
BlackLine is a very robust system and is capable of improving processes. However, it does take time and resource investments. If companies do not have the time and resources and are not willing to invest time and resources, this product will not solve their issues. This is an investment and can be an incredibly powerful tool; however, it won't do the work without guidance. The level of engagement and size of project may evolve over time, however, companies need to understand that it is not an overnight success, but the success that can be achieved in the long run is worth it. I also recommend working with a seasoned implementation partner on a new project. As a company develops the skills to lead the transformation, a partner may not be needed as much, but it is definitely recommended to start.
When as an organization you have more than one finance processes that need to be on some technology platform, OneStream is a great fit. Be it consolidation & reporting, planning & budgeting, account recs, tax provisioning, close management, transaction matching, etc. all these areas are handled well in OneStream. The benefits accrue from a single place to manage master data, data, security, and quick learning for users as different workstreams are rolled out.
Saving time! Our manual process became automated the minute we "turned on" Blackline!
Focus! By saving time using Blackline, our employees are able to focus on other job responsibilities and profit-generation
Support! Blackline's support throughout our implementation and post-implementation has been exceptional. We always receive timely responses and get answers fast, when needed
User Friendly! Their system is very easy to navigate. Even individuals in our organization that don't like or embrace change said the transition to Blackline was smooth and painless
In the master journal entries, it would be nice if you could insert a line without having to rekey the entire entry over again.
Before I would have said the "to-do list" needed improvements, but now it is so easy to tell what I need to look at instead of searching each section for items.
It would be great if the "certify - next" worked on all reviews
Dashboards are very useful to business users, but can be time consuming to build.
Best practice documentation, the product is evolving and is relatively new (about 10 years old) so best practices are still be developed and communicated to the OneStream community.
BlackLine is invaluable to our close process. The time saved from moving paper and auto-certifying can be used for better review of the data. It allowed our CFO and Board of Directors to have confidence that our close process was timely and accurate.
There are some processes that we currently use that cannot be done in BlackLine. Our users don't want to change their processes or learn new processes even though it would make their jobs easier. We have very few users who have adopted BlackLine fully, and management has not made it a requirement to use the application.
Overall usability as an end-user is very easy. There are more people in the system getting information now than the prior platform used. People are gathering their information quicker as well. From an administrator standpoint, there are fewer glitches and issues than the prior platform. This is very good.
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.
My conversations with vendor representatives and our account managers have all been very positive. They provide solution suggestions that are tailored to our organization and requirements. Questions are answered quickly. The company seems genuinely interested in seeing our organization succeed, not only in the implementation and use of their product but also financially.
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.
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
I have not used any products similar to Blackline. However, Excel does offer many similar functionalities to Blackline in terms of reconciling accounts. Blackline offers many benefits over simply using Excel. The reconciliations are organized and easy to find, and they roll over each month on their own. They include the ability to auto-certify if they meet the criteria that your team selects. They also include an audit trail of documentation and approval for each step.
OneStream is a much more powerful solution for us. Both products claim they can "do it all" but the OneStream XF Marketplace allows us limitless possibilities for what we can do - at a fraction of the implementation cost.
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.
More insight into balance sheet account balances. Our team is more timely with getting errors fixed and monitoring important accounts.
The task management tool helps us ensure that we are completing all accruals and reviews each month. This has led to fewer errors and missing accruals.
Our use of BlackLine has greatly increased our efficiency by reducing manual work.
Customers have moved from multiple EPM systems as well as multiple EPM applications to OneStream.
Their ROI has been quite high as lesser admins are required, no need to move data back & forth, no need for an additional dashboarding / BI tool, once a user is on OneStream can leverage it for more than 50+ use cases at no additional license cost.
Automation, direct integration, scheduling, complex calculation capabilities, all help to further improve ROI and free up the time for the team to do value-adding tasks.
Last but not the least is the confidence on the numbers is much higher.
