BlackLine vs. SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

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.

SAP BPC is well suited for complex planning and consolidations needs where the underlying transactional system is SAP ECC. It suits well if the organization has separate teams with BPC, ABAP, BW, Basis, Hana skillset. SAP BPC is less appropriate for organizations using Agile methodology. It is not suitable for organizations in a hyper-growth cycle as the installation and implementation is time-consuming. It will not work for organizations where the planning and budgeting needs keep changing frequently. The UI of SAP BPC is not very intuitive and very difficult to set up a dynamic dashboard for senior executives and officials of CxO.

• 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

• SAP BPC is real time data. You can send information into the system and see it reflected in your reports immediately. Other systems may require a manual push into a reporting system.
• SAP BPC is a shared reporting tool, so multiple users can be working in a model/environment at the same time, real time. This is especially helpful if your workbooks incorporated multiple processes requiring multiple users to get into the same model.
• SAP BPC is a powerful tool designed to help all facets of the company, from cash flow to capital expenditures to headcount management to financial planning to consolidation.

• 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

• Being from a law firm, the system needed a lot of custom tailoring in order to fit our full needs (although many companies could say the same thing). Although the ability to highly customize the system to the company's needs is a positive, it frequently results in the system responding in unexplainable and unrepeatable ways which negatively impacts and slows the budget process. Because of the sporadic nature and variety of the issues, we are unable to repeat them on cue and therefore cannot nail down a solution.

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.

Unlike other SAP traditional products, SAP BPC was meant to be simple and familiar to financial users

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.

BlackLine performs rather quickly considering the amount of data we were pushing in and out of it.

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.

We need a big support team with various skillset like BPC, ABAP, BW, HANA, FICO etc

SAP BPC training content and trainers are very good. The training is structured and provides a very good understanding of the product features and functionalities. I attended 6 separate training sessions of week-long or more. I had very good experience in all the sessions. The training is organized very well.

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.

SAP Training contents are very good, informative and exhaustive.

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

The implementation was carried out in two phases spread over a period of 4 years with 2 upgrades in between. We also had multiple upgrades to HANA.

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.

With Hyperion we struggled as it didn’t have integrated planning and consolidation, whereas BPC does have it. BPC is easier for reporting as it is Excel-based. Also BPC has prepackaged business process flows that helped a lot. Hyperion on the other hand has a faster response time for user queries or report generation.

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.

• Office administrators are able to enter data directly, freeing up accounting staff.
• Dependent expenses such as taxes and benefits are automatically calculated, saving time for accounting staff.
• Single source of data for budget information ensures consistency of information when reporting to senior management.