BlackLine's cloud-based financial operations management platform unifyies data and processes, automating repetitive tasks and enhancing accountability. BlackLine solutions for financial close, accounts receivable, and intercompany accounting support large enterprises and midsize companies.
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Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 6.8 out of 10
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Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a core suite of Oracle Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Oracle Expense Management and Oracle Risk Management are part of this solution. Other apps include Financials, Revenue Management, Accounting Hub, PPM, and Procurement. The single cloud platform offers built-in industry standards and modern best practices. ERP software is the backbone of many organizations and Oracle aims to offer a modern, connected…
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Pricing
BlackLine
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BlackLine
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Required
Additional Details
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Pricing per user varies by component within the Oracle ERP Cloud solution.
BlackLine is well-suited for us when it comes to the bank reconciliations, as our systems feed right into BlackLine, and the various match sets reconcile the data effortlessly. BlackLine would work to its fullest extent if all departments utilized it, so you can take advantage of all the various products that are available.
Oracle Fusion Cloud is best suited if a customer moves from Oracle eBusiness Suite (on-prem) to a SaaS offering. The transition is comparatively manageable to implement. However, the customer must understand that we cannot have too many customizations in the SaaS model, so many heavily customized on-prem applications would need to be incorporated in the Cloud by using Cloud tools like Oracle Integration Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Autonomous Database, Oracle APEX provisioned on OCI, etc.
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.
On the home page I can see Team Assignments usually first time not My assignments.
JV posting is slow.
Many error emails about failed JV with the same context.
We receive emails about task certification. Can we receive the list of reconciliations monthly?
Posted/prepared JVs cannot be deleted from the to-do list (there is only one extraordinary case, where we had a BL issue and the JV was booked but without a Document ID).
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.
Oracle ERP cloud is a significant investment for our company. It will be an ongoing software cost and there's no looking back on that. Our users have become very accustomed to this tool that it is not practically feasible to rip them off from this system. So yes we will continue to renew the subscription going forward.
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.
I like the program, but it is only as good as the initial implementation and the user support required after go-live. I don't think pre-implementation training needs to be too much of a focus, but once you're live, there needs to be an intense focus on working with users and providing high-quality resources to help.
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.
The application is used by big banks like HSBC is a testament to its reliability. I did not hear or experience any outages.Oracle is in the hosting business since long. In its previous avatar, it used to be called as Oracle on demand. So oracle has enough experience and expertise in hosting and managing customers applications in their datacenters. Oracle is the only major company which has platform as a service, database as a service and software as a service product offerings on the cloud.Hence customers can rely on Oracle as many major fortune 500 companies do.
Cloud performance is something that they need to improve. Also it is not consistent. Sometimes for some users it is slow while for others it is fast. This is frustrating for users especially when they are in the middle of what they are doing. We communicated this to Oracle and they suggested to submit request for environment re-sizing. But again this we think should be a proactive effort from Oracle rather than relying on customers to reach out. This is something Oracle definitely needs to work on.
Since implementing Blackline, our support team has had quite a bit of turnover, and as such, it has taken longer than normal to get meaningful resolutions to our issues. The people we have worked with have all been great and responsive. However, the turnover has definitely had an impact on our experience.
Support is always providing step by step details to resolve any issue we encounter. If the issue is currently not a functionality or feature of the application they are supportive in offering guidance on submitting an enhancement request. Currently there is an enhancement that will be rolled out by Oracle that was designed for our organization.
The inperson trainings from Oracle University are effective. The trainers have vast experience and teached thousands of students. In person training will make people sit in a class and do the exercises. One can also learn from other students, who come with different background, industry etc. In person training will be an immersive experience and helps learn more in a short period of time.
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.
We bought online training subscription from Oracle University. The subscription allowed our team to learn the nuts and bolts of the application.The subscription model helps access to all the modules as opposed to buying training for one module. We also leveraged guided learning subscription from Oracle. Guided learning is a state of the art learning application from Oracle. It resides within the application and guides the users on each and every step. This is learning by doing and is very effective. Once you buy guided learning, oracle keeps updating it with the release of new functionality in the quarterly upgrades.
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
Try to use the system as true to generic form as possible and cut over quickly. Parallel implementation is not recommended. If the numbers are accurate and materially similar to prior period - cut over. A small accounting adjustment is much better than millions in project overruns or dual system maintenance.
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.
Oracle Cloud ERP is more flexible, more negotiable and has better breadth and support worldwide. Their reports are better and speed of implementation is faster. It stacks better since the company is larger, more stable, and has more research and development. There are more references to check with peers too.
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.
Orcle ERP Cloud transformed and stabilized in this past 2 years since it was implemented. We have past the auditor reviews and 24 month end closes and 8 quarter closes and 2 FY closes. Above all we do have SEC reporting with all this data. Having said that our ERP subscription is a worthy investment and highly reliable source of information for our organization's needs
Talent retention by creating roles with value-add work and reducing the mundane.
Promotion opportunities for those that have embraced BlackLine and have taken on more complex and more rewarding work as a result of the automation achieved.
Time savings which allowed teams to take on new projects without increasing headcount and without employee burnout.
