In today’s complex and fast-moving business environment, it’s important to leverage technology and automation in all your business systems. Through strategic alliance with Blackline, which supports activities not managed by ERPs, but that are critical to business stakeholders and their performance analytics, planning and decision process, our professionals will cover issues facing the modern accounting and finance department, and how your business can use technology to help automate substantiation of reconciliations and mitigate risks to ensure integrity during the record-to-report process. This allows financing staff and management to make sound and timely business decisions from valid results.
To unpack these topics, we look to Susan Edwards from our Accounting Advisory practice, who not only helps our clients implement BlackLine, but has also been on the industry slide utilizing BlackLine and has experienced both transformative perspectives.
Joining the Cherry Bekaert team on the podcast is Michele Quartel, a trusted advisor to the BlackLine Partner ecosystem. Moderating the topic is Garrett Buckless, a Senior Manager in the Accounting Advisory practice at Cherry Bekaert.
Cherry Bekaert’s Accounting Transformation Advisory practice is focused on technology-driven solutions for building foundational accounting needs, optimizing processes, and designing advanced digital controllership functions, which increases productivity, reduces costs, and improves reporting. For more information on our services, or questions about accounting automation, please visit cbh.com/accountingadvisory.
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HOST: Hello again and welcome to the Risk and Accounting Advisory Podcast. I'm GARRETT BUCKLESS and I'm the domain leader for the Accounting Transformation practice at Cherry Bekaert.
HOST: Today our topic is Blackline and issues many accounting and finance departments are facing. We have a special crossover episode and with me today are Michelle Cortel from Blackline and Susan Edwards from our Accounting Advisory Services practice.
HOST: Michelle, could you please introduce yourself and talk a little about your background and the work you do with Blackline?
MICHELLE CORTEL: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here with you and Susan.
MICHELLE CORTEL: I have been with Blackline for eight years in implementations, customer and partner training, and product lifecycle management. I now serve as a trusted adviser to the Blackline partner ecosystem.
MICHELLE CORTEL: Before joining Blackline, I was in the accounting industry for more than 25 years in roles ranging from auditor to consultant to controller. I am a CPA.
MICHELLE CORTEL: I consider myself fortunate to be part of the Blackline Partner Solution Consulting team. Our mission is supporting Blackline partners in understanding the full capabilities of the Blackline solution and enabling them to deliver value messaging, impactful demonstrations, and outcomes to customers.
MICHELLE CORTEL: My team supports initial onboarding enablement for partners, pre-sale support, demo environment support, and product training.
HOST: Thanks, Michelle. We're grateful to have you joining us today. Susan, would you mind introducing yourself and talking about your experience, especially with Blackline?
SUSAN EDWARDS: I'm Susan Edwards, an Accounting Advisory Manager at Cherry Bekaert based in South Carolina.
SUSAN EDWARDS: Prior to joining Cherry Bekaert, I had the good fortune to implement and work with Blackline as a manager of accounting for a multi-hospital system. Implementing Blackline allowed us to go from a nine-day close to a three-day close.
SUSAN EDWARDS: Blackline increased the visibility of our status during closes, improved the quality of our reconciliations, and freed up our staff to do higher-value analysis.
SUSAN EDWARDS: On the Cherry Bekaert side, I am excited to work with Blackline as an implementation partner after seeing how transformational Blackline was for our team.
HOST: As I mentioned in my intro, today's conversation will discuss Blackline and issues facing the modern accounting and finance department and ways to address those issues. Our aim is to highlight issues currently affecting our clients, discuss root causes, and how Blackline and Cherry Bekaert have addressed these issues in our experience.
HOST: Michelle, can you kick off our conversation by introducing Blackline?
MICHELLE CORTEL: The Blackline solution supports activities within the record-to-report process that are typically not managed by respective ERPs but are still critical to business stakeholders for reviewing performance results, planning and forecasting, and decision processes.
MICHELLE CORTEL: Think of Blackline as fitting directly in the middle of the record-to-report process as a complementary solution to the general ledger. It picks up where systems typically leave finance and accounting teams to complete work manually, often with spreadsheets.
MICHELLE CORTEL: Blackline supports reconciliations, month-end close checklists, high-volume ticking and tying of transactions, journal entries, and variance analytics.
HOST: Michelle, when a company comes to you, what are the types of issues facing the CFO and accounting and finance departments?
MICHELLE CORTEL: What we commonly hear, and what I experienced in prior roles, is a balancing act for finance and accounting functions. Teams face time pressure because they are cobbling together data from various systems in a highly manual and inconsistent manner to meet month-end deadlines.
MICHELLE CORTEL: As a result, teams rarely have time for the deep-dive analytics required for planning and forecasting against strategic goals.
MICHELLE CORTEL: There is also an increased risk of errors in the actual results because much of the work is manual. This often results in management having lower trust in the results and being hampered in making timely business decisions, not to mention potential audit issues.
MICHELLE CORTEL: This has a trickle-down effect on employee morale. Staff become dissatisfied with repetitive, low-level manual tasks, and retention of top performers becomes a real concern. There is a true cost associated with employee dissatisfaction and turnover.
HOST: Thanks, Michelle. Susan, are you seeing similar issues with your clients?
SUSAN EDWARDS: Yes, I'm seeing the same issues with my clients and in my past experience as an accounting manager.
SUSAN EDWARDS: Prior to Blackline, we had transitioned to electronic workpapers, but much of our work remained manual. Each month managers had to set up lead sheets for reconciliations and journals. Staff had to log completed reconciliations and journals, save their documentation, and managers had to open files, manually approve, and mark everything on the lead sheet.
SUSAN EDWARDS: This process was tedious, and if there were issues, the process restarted. At year-end, auditors were mining manually organized files for support, and managers lacked visibility into staff activities.
SUSAN EDWARDS: Our staff was frustrated with the monthly manual work. Blackline's workflow was a game changer. Managers could see in real time what was complete and what had reconciling items.
SUSAN EDWARDS: Staff could tag each other in Blackline to ensure the right people knew which issues were outstanding. External auditors were able to access approved reconciliations and journals directly via Blackline, eliminating administrative audit work.
SUSAN EDWARDS: I see these pain points with clients almost every day, and I know Blackline would be transformational for many of them.
HOST: Thanks, Susan. Michelle, how can Blackline help address some of these issues?
MICHELLE CORTEL: Blackline helps automate substantiation of reconciliations and much more to mitigate risk and ensure integrity and efficiency during the record-to-report process.
MICHELLE CORTEL: By standardizing finance and accounting operations, Blackline accelerates the month-end close and gives teams time to concentrate on deep-dive analytics required for planning and achieving strategic goals.
MICHELLE CORTEL: Teams can focus on higher-value work, which often results in increased employee morale because staff are engaged in work that matters to the organization.
MICHELLE CORTEL: I consider Blackline a strategic software partner that delivers capability and automation during the record-to-report process, enabling organizations to avoid being in the business of software development themselves.
MICHELLE CORTEL: If a potential client is apprehensive about cost or time to implement, Blackline has approximately 3,900 customers and just over 335,000 users. Our customer transformation data shows benefits that clearly outweigh the cost and time to implement.
MICHELLE CORTEL: In the current economic environment, cost containment is important. Organizations have options from doing nothing to a full finance transformation. In the option to do nothing, people and process costs will increase.
MICHELLE CORTEL: A few statistics from customer transformations: average ROI of approximately $22.77 on the dollar, 85% reduction in time to reconcile, 70% faster month-end close on average, 66% average increase in process automation, and 78% average increase in journal entry automation.
MICHELLE CORTEL: If I were still a controller, I would measure these outcomes carefully to bring more value to the organization from my team.
MICHELLE CORTEL: Blackline transforms the record-to-report process to an efficient and automated state and creates capacity for finance and accounting teams to concentrate on what matters.
HOST: Michelle and Susan, how do Cherry Bekaert and Blackline partner together to deliver results?
MICHELLE CORTEL: Blackline values the partnership with Cherry Bekaert. We recognize that partners such as Cherry Bekaert are the boots on the ground in accounting transformation.
MICHELLE CORTEL: We aim to support partners every step along the way so they can focus on solutions for their customers, whether accounting needs, process optimization, increasing productivity, or reducing costs.
MICHELLE CORTEL: From deep-dive solutioning to support, implementation, and training, we ensure the Blackline partner ecosystem is knowledgeable, supported, and enabled.
SUSAN EDWARDS: As an implementation partner, Cherry Bekaert serves as the liaison between an accounting team and the Blackline platform to provide the best implementation experience possible.
SUSAN EDWARDS: We quarterback the project plan for implementation to free up client staff for more high-value work. Clients still need to provide resources and subject matter experts, but we guide the process so that at the end of a 90-day implementation period, they have a fully functional core Blackline with reconciliation tasks and reports ready to go.
SUSAN EDWARDS: One of the best benefits of our partnership is how well Blackline pairs with our other accounting transformation services.
SUSAN EDWARDS: Cherry Bekaert does process optimization for financial reporting and the month-end close to help mature a client's month-end close process as a basis for Blackline implementation. We ensure the process leading to Blackline is developed and repeatable.
SUSAN EDWARDS: If we improve the process around financial reporting and the month-end close, we can implement Blackline as a supercharged way of moving up the maturity scale.
HOST: Michelle and Susan, thank you both for joining us today.
HOST: We provided insight into Blackline, issues facing the modern accounting and finance department, and ways to address those issues. At Cherry Bekaert, our Accounting Transformation practice is focused on solutions for foundational accounting needs, optimized processes, and advanced digital controllership designed to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve reporting quality.
HOST: For more information on this topic or how to approach accounting transformation for your organization, please visit cb.com.
HOST: Please like, share, and subscribe to the Risk and Accounting Advisory Podcast. [Music]
