Item: BlackLine
Rating: 7
Author: Joshua Henke

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

BlackLine is used almost exclusively by our finance and accounting users, including internal auditors. Task Management and Account Reconciliation are the tools that keep us accountable to ourselves, the auditors, and our shareholders. There is an integration tool that allows us to automatically update the account balances from our financial system.

Pros and Cons

Task Management is straightforward. Ownership, review, and approval are straightforward and pretty easy to configure and follow.
Account Reconciliation works similarly. Supporting documents can be attached to a given rec to ease the audit. If balances change after approved, the approval is peeled back.
Integration with our financial system works seamlessly. Configured to run every 4 hours each day, it's helpful to know even when balances change, BlackLine is up-to-date.

The User Interface is clunky and strange to navigate. It's fluid somehow at the same time. Perhaps organization efforts would help.
Their Support organization could use training. I've had too many frustrating conversations because of (or about) basic communication skills. They're all very polite, in my experience, but lacking in basics (e.g. come prepared to a meeting/call). I've explicitly and constructively shared this with them with almost no change.

Return on Investment

Cannot speak to ROI beyond saying we continue to pay for it, renewing, adding licenses, so it must meet our needs for the money!

Likelihood to Recommend

I ranked it high at a 7/10 primarily because there's not much competition. It generally gets the job done, but they could really up their game with healthy competition. There are a few other modules, like Consolidations and Variance Analysis, we do not use and could benefit us.

For our use, it's overkill as a glorified checklist. This is our primary use and, while important, is pretty expensive, given how many user licenses we need.

We are beginning to enable multiple subsidiaries and multiple currency. It's capabilities here and the knowledge fo the Product Manager are encouraging. Seems straightforward, conceptually.

Support Rating

They're responsive, kind and patient, but communication skills and basic business acumen lack.

BlackLine Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Less knowledgeable

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of BlackLine Support

Turned around a sandbox refresh request in less than 10 minutes

Gets the job done, could really shine with some UI improvements

Overall Satisfaction with BlackLine