BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS

Transcription

1 BLUEPRINT FOR SUCCESS A Guide to Continuous Process Improvement

2 Modern Finance Demands Continuous Process Improvement More than 1,500 companies trust BlackLine to help create efficiencies, reduce risk, and provide visibility into financial information. These companies are more than that to BlackLine. They are our clients, ones we proudly serve with a commitment to deliver the solutions they ask for and the products needed to modernize their finance function. They put their trust in us, and in turn, we seek to support them wherever we can. While many BlackLine products streamline and automate financial close and accounting processes, we also developed tools to assist our clients continuously optimize and transform their finance operations, and to aid them in achieving Modern Finance. Modern Finance is a journey of continuous improvement in the quality, accuracy, and efficiency of accounting operations. By embedding process standardization, automation, and continuous analysis, Modern Finance transforms the way finance and accounting teams work. While many have already shortened their close cycles by automating a myriad of accounting processes, the fast moving nature of 24/7 global business means that companies that rest on their laurels and fail to persistently modernize their accounting operations are at a competitive disadvantage. Top performing finance organizations are always adapting, innovating, and improving. BlackLine facilitates improvement projects in three ways: in-depth analysis with Enhanced Reporting, comparative benchmarking with BlackLine Insights, and product rollout and testing within a Sandbox Environment. These exist to support the unique needs of each of our clients journeys. BlackLine s features for continuous process improvement give clients the tools they need to repeatedly hone processes and improve outcomes, and meet the dynamic challenges facing their business, now and into the future.

3 Enhanced Reporting analyze your financial information When it comes to financial close processes, visibility is imperative. Papers, binders, storage rooms, shared drives, and spreadsheets strewn across many locations are inefficient and make the close process anything but transparent. BlackLine provides 80+ pre-defined standard reports to centralize reporting in a unified workspace. BlackLine also provides a feature called Enhanced Reporting, which enables clients to build custom reports tailored to requirements set by management as well as those for company and user-specific analysis. Enhanced Reporting exposes financial data to deliver process-optimizing intelligence for companies, managers, and accountants using BlackLine.

4 Enhanced Reporting features & benefits Create Custom Reports - Build roles-specific reports for Preparers, Auditors, CFOs, etc., and store them in a personal folder for your own use or make them accessible company-wide. Filter Across Multiple Dimensions - Insert any data field in BlackLine, filter on field content, and even create reports with pivot tables to surface the intelligence you need. Viewing Trending Data - Create reports across multiple periods to view trends, catch unexpected results, and flag anomalies for required follow up and exception research. Schedule & Publish Reports - Whether starting from one of 41 template reports or building one yourself, you can run each on an ad hoc basis or schedule them to run automatically. Guide Process Objectives - Creating specific reports for your custom needs delivers the information each user needs by providing relevant data, driving objective-based activity. Enhanced Reporting provides BlackLine s clients a new level of visibility and transparency. Whether you are an accountant, controller, or a CFO, this means getting the exact information you need, whenever you want it. Unpacking your financial information empowers accounting and finance with the data to execute key activities and the ability to analyze intelligence necessary for streamlining processes, identifying and reducing risk, and improving operations. BlackLine Enhanced Reporting unlocks critical information so accounting activities can be continuously optimized based on each client s unique requirements.

5 BlackLine Insights benchmark productivity & outcomes BlackLine Insights delivers the only complete Enhanced Finance Controls & Automation (EFCA) platform by providing benchmarks tailored to finance and accounting. With a sample size of more than 1,500 companies, BlackLine is uniquely positioned to deliver a new kind of analysis driven by previously unavailable accountingbased metrics. As system users around the world are executing actions preparing, certifying, approving, etc. - each action is logged, aggregated, anonymized, and summarized to build benchmarks. BlackLine Insights will allow clients to analyze team performance within their company and help them better understand their processes, workloads, and performance.

6 BlackLine Insights features & benefits Benchmark Accounting Activities - Set goals for key activities across accounting-focused KPIs, and compare your results against relevant company sizes, industries, and geographies. Leverage Largest EFCA Dataset - Nearly 150,000 users execute close accounting activities in BlackLine everyday, revealing deep statistics that complement survey-based benchmarking. Analyze Trends - Annual and monthly aggregates allow you to monitor your progress and see how you are performing against your specific goals for each KPI over time. Optimize Resources - Use dynamic intelligence to reallocate resources and redistribute workloads to open bottlenecks and discover new opportunities for further automation. Improve Continuously - Putting a stake in the ground sets the bar and gives you a place to start process improvement projects. You cannot improve that which you do not measure. Enhance ROI - Platform-wide integration means you can compare your company s results against a trove of global insights and discover new ways to get more out of BlackLine. According to The Hackett Group, a leading provider of process improvement services and benchmarking studies, unmeasured metrics don t get any attention. In order to remain competitive, every element of a business must find new opportunities to improve and streamline operations, including Finance & Accounting. With BlackLine Insights, accounting and finance leaders can finally measure their performance, analyze that information, and make data-driven process improvements. The data is in there. Actionable intelligence is at your fingertips. Take advantage of it.

7 Sandbox Environment test new products, settings, and processes Testing is a critical component of effective change management. BlackLine s Sandbox Environment was built to facilitate process and system testing. Technically speaking, every BlackLine user executes financial close activities in what is called BlackLine s Production Environment. For most, this distinction is irrelevant. BlackLine is simply the system in which they work everyday. However, many clients take advantage of a Sandbox environment, which, just like it sounds, allows users to play with new features and products before they are broadly released. More importantly, Sandbox enables the testing of process changes prior to rolling them out to an entire department or organization.

8 Sandbox Environment features & benefits See New Features First - BlackLine customers using Sandbox get to see, review, and test new products and features weeks before they are released to the general public. Create Custom Training - Use your own data to build tailored, hands-on user training for reporting, account reconciliations, variance analysis, exception handling, and more. Facilitate User Practice - New hires and longtime users alike can gain familiarity with functionality such as recurring journals and partial-period amortization before going live. Test New Products & Settings - When implementing new products or adjusting system settings, evaluate the impact in Sandbox first to ensure successful change management. Streamline Global Rollouts - Coupling custom training with a safe place for users to practice streamlines implementation and adoption across large, multi-entity organizations. Validate Data Imports - Whether synching new data from existing systems, or adding or upgrading an ERP, testing data imports pre-launch is key to successful implementation. Maintain Corporate Compliance - Many clients must comply with change management requirements set by IT, Security, and Audit teams prior to effecting a change in process. In order for finance and accounting leaders to make the most effective improvements to process, user training, and company adoption plans, it is critical to proactively test new settings, products, and processes before they go live. By enabling BlackLine s Sandbox environment in your organization, everything from ERP upgrades and import validation to product releases and new user training can be tested in a safe space. So when change happens, it goes smoothly, everyone is on the same page, and there are no surprises.

9 Modern Finance & Continuous Improvement blueprint for success The concept of Modern Finance can seem all encompassing, as it can include Finance Transformation to technology investments in EFCA, ERP, and CPM platforms. Even after companies adopt new technology, the way we ve always done it often remains so ingrained in the culture that it becomes a challenge to look at existing processes objectively. But, with new technology that helps companies analyze and benchmark operational outcomes, new opportunities for process improvement surface continually. Process optimization is not just about accelerating time to close, it s about improving both the inputs and the outcomes of finance procedures. Modern Finance combines process improvement with technology to improve control, accuracy, and efficiency for the Office of Finance. It moves the CFO and the finance team from being a cost center to a value-adding, strategic leader of the business.

10 In order to achieve this, companies must look to embed a culture of continuous improvement, a six-step process that yields sustained operational benefits. Analyze Current State Use the data of Enhanced Reporting to detect problem areas from process inefficiencies to risk concerns and document these challenges. Design Future State Consider your ideal future, your big goals, and then identify the low-hanging fruit so you can begin improving process immediately and get some quick wins. Optimize & Test Process After creating an innovative new process, conduct initial tests and user training and adoption sessions within your Sandbox Environment. Monitor Metrics & Results Once a new process or technology is launched, benchmark progress with BlackLine Insights and confirm you are moving toward your specific goals. Review Outcomes & Controls Coupling monitored insights with Enhanced Reporting, discover macro trends and compare results against the original objectives. Improve Continuously Rinse and repeat. Use the lessons learned at Step 5 and return to Step 2 and start again. Effective process optimization requires an ever-evolving approach.

11 Modern Finance and its underlying process improvement projects do not present an all or nothing proposition. Think of it as a journey, and not a destination. Take a stepwise approach to realize incremental results and benefits at every stop along the way. This shouldn t be discouraging. It s inspiring. Every day can be better than the last. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. LAO TZU

12 BlackLine s Commitment blueprint for your success BlackLine was built to satisfy the needs of our clients from the beginning. In 2004, the First National Bank of Nebraska asked BlackLine, if we could build software that would track who owned which account reconciliations. As we then built the account reconciliations solution and learned more, we realized that there were many activities that accounting and finance professionals were handling manually with spreadsheets, that there were many processes begging for improvement. As our expertise in Finance & Accounting has grown under the guidance these clients, we saw an opportunity to further support their needs with purpose-built solutions that facilitate resource optimization, change management, and continuous process improvement. BlackLine customers enjoy a dedicated team that is committed to maximizing our client s results, based on their specific goals. Our Customer Success Managers and Account Managers work with you at every step from going live to realizing additional added value year over year. We partner with you to offer a holistic and best practices-driven approach to process improvement, delivering continual value to your organization. More than 1,500 companies trust BlackLine to provide their financial close and accounting automation solutions, and we believe it is our duty to support every client on their journey to Modern Finance. LEARN MORE AT BLACKLINE.COM