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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Xactly
Score 8.6 out of 10
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The Xactly platform is a revenue intelligence ecosystem that by consolidating forecasting, incentive compensation, and sales engagement workflows into a single source of truth, provides high-fidelity visibility into the revenue lifecycle.
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.
Being that Xactly Incent is custom built to meet our specific plan requirements, it has been well suited for almost everything. One scenario where we could use some improvement is manager reporting. Better visibility into the roll up of any team goals and team actuals. Also some of the incentive payment information is a bit clunky. We calculate incentives each quarter on a YTD basis and then subtract was has already been paid. Sometimes this creates a shortfall for the sales rep that needs to carry forward. Reporting for this doesn't flow easily.
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 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.
When clearing out or deleting the data in Incent, certain areas allow deletion only one by one. Eg position, people etc. Would be great if this can be done in bulk.
Could improve in the style/view/functioning of Incent user interface
Can implement more features for end users interface to keep them more engaged and ignoring a feel of boring UI
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.
As an admin and compensation expert, I'd rate it a 10 as it solves for the majority of our needs and the complexity of our plans is easier to manage via Incent. While I wasn't part of the implementation, I did hear feedback that the initial setup required a high level of precision and technical coordination. From a user's perspective, our Sellers have ranked the tool at a 7,5-8 rating throughout the years, mostly because the system feels "clunky".
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.
From an admin perspective, the software's usability is high. The different components are organized in a way that is easy to figure out, for example, all elements of a plan are under the Plan Design section. There are some areas where searching within the system is a bit cumbersome because after clicking into a result and back out it clears your filter. I found the software easy to navigate when I first started and the amount of documentation and helpful videos they have on the community and within the University make the system even easier to learn.
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.
In general the system is nearly always available. But the daily achievement calculation takes a hugh amount of time. therefore it was in the past month sometimes only from midday onwards completely updated and usable for Sales employees. Xactly support was and still is working hard to get it available early mornings. Availablility time has increased a lot. It's now down to around 10 am in the moring
Xactly Incent performs extremely well. I have not experienced it "slowing down" when usage is heavy. This is particularly true when it comes to the regular recalculation of credits and commissions. It is not uncommon for Xactly to be dealing with hundreds of thousands of orders/credits in a pay period, but the system handles it well. Xactly recently changed their calculation engine and the speed for regular refreshes increased significantly.
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.
They take the time to understand the system. They keep us updated on the status of our cases. Finally, their continued follow up ensuring the initial issue was resolved is very nice. They will not close the case out until they have confirmed that our issue has been completely resolved and fixed.
Awesome product, easy to use during daily activities. Reporting and user experience are very well organised. The sales team also likes this tool for reviewing their commissions at any time, which provides real-time updates. For new hires or mid-hires, the commission calculation is working very efficiently. Every sales-side organisation must have this tool.Awesome product, easy to use during daily activities. Reporting and user experience are very well organised. The sales team also likes this tool for reviewing their commissions at any time, which provides real-time updates. For new hires or mid-hires, the commission calculation is working very efficiently. Every sales-side organisation must have this tool.
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.
Xactly offers training on new releases on a monthly basis and training on basic principles regularly via registration. My experience with both is that they do not provide the in-depth knowledge necessary to truly master the system and advanced courses still do not go to the level needed to autonomously manage the system and plans. Professional services are a large part of any cloud based service such as Xactly and I feel a reliance on such paid consulting services is a great money-maker for Xactly.
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
Go into implementation knowing how you will handle churn, if there are claw backs, treatment for every type of commission payment (i.e. new business, renewals, etc.) and know your average customer life. You'll also want details by customer for as far back as you can go (within reason).
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.
Ignoring the contractual issues that we had, Optymyze is very different from Xactly Incent. I would say that both offer high degrees of flexibility, but Xactly requires greater technical knowledge to customize. Optymyze allows administrators to manipulate data in a way similar to Domo or Tableau, allowing someone who is less technical to customize it. Xactly's connect module, on the other hand, requires strong knowledge of SQL to be able to manipulate data. I've been looking to take the training for Connect, so I can't comment on the limitations or flexibility beyond that.
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.
It's very flexible. In most cases it can be adapted to your needs by programming which may cost extra money. We have a lot of different complans and close to 1.000 employees using Xactly in EMEA. It's mainly used by Sales and Finance
I am not aware of the company investment, but the overall result is fantastic. Employees visibility to commissions and components of their commissions is great. They have much more accessibility to their numbers and better understanding of how commissions are calculated. They can also review commissions at their convince on the application.
There seems to be more employee engagement and satisfaction with the overall commission process and reporting with Xactly Incent.
