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 JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
Score 7.0 out of 10
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An ERP primarily aimed at medium-sized companies that combines financial management capabilities contain the familiar general ledger along with expense management, accounts payable and receivable (AP/AR), advanced cost accounting, and fixed asset accounting.
BlackLine showed a commitment to continuous innovation and improvement of their product. We are on this accounting transformation journey for the long-haul and we need a business partner that is committed to finding solutions to our problems - Including our problems today and …
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.
If there are lot of complicated systems this might not be the best system. If you have only some complexity Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is a product a technical or application person can wrap their hands around and understand the whole system.
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.
The new versions (9.2) of JDE has so much open functionality and really gives the user control over the screens and what they want to see. Love that the layout of the screen is really up to the user and what they want to see it along with freezing columns and creating favorites for way access.
It is so flexible with the system platforms that it can run on and so easy to customize since it supports so many databases.
It is intuitive and does not need to have a lot of training on how to use the software.
It's just a great ERP software and one of the better ones I've seen.
Oracle is FINALLY starting to listen to the users and SIGs and putting enhancements into the system which makes life easier for us business users.
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).
The Configurable Network Language (CNC) is a proprietary protocol, and it can be difficult to source resources that understand this language well.
It has some inherent limitations with generating PDF or printable files. Most organizations use a third party platform like Creat!form or Bottomline to solve this.
No built in credit card processing solution, and no plug-and-play eCommerce or webstore capabilities available.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
It is simple to use and implement as compared to complex softwares in the market that may take ample amount of time to implement. The budget is also slightly less to provide the same functionality that other softwares are providing. Also having Oracle database that comes with the system is much easier to handle and use and have much security.
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.
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.
Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne's advantage is significant cost savings and operational improvements when you run Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne in the Oracle Cloud. Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne offers the only no-compromise enterprise cloud platform for moving Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, its associated database systems, an ecosystem of apps to the cloud. Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne's One-Click Provisioning tool allows you to deploy Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne on the Oracle Cloud in hours, not days while maintaining the integrity of existing customized apps.
