Fit for the future: Financial Controls and Automation Platform from BlackLine

One of the best ways that technology has had a positive impact on lives in the workplace is by reducing repetitive and mundane workloads for personnel. Not only do day-to-day roles become less tedious and irksome, but also staff time is freed up to undertake more interesting and business-positive assignments.

The business too also benefits. Staff suffering from boredom are not productive, and are prone to making more mistakes than average; it’s perfectly natural for attention spans to shorten and minds to drift when confronted with yet another mundane chore!

When a business is considering transforming its finance and accounting department, a software solution should be sought that can create an absence of complex, manual, and error-prone working routines for staff “at the coalface.” Luckily, from BlackLine, there is a solution that does just that.

But because BlackLine’s offering goes so much further than just removing those fallible steps inherent in data accounting practices, organizations can get benefits which go well beyond.

By deploying BlackLine solutions, teams can focus on discrepancy analysis and create impactful value drivers for the organization at large. Additionally, the software has the power to monitor for errors continually, right across the close, detect inefficiencies in work processes, and even root out fraud.

BlackLine’s Finance Transformation solution automates accounting workflows and provides a single, easy to use workspace for period-end accounting and reporting, across a range of facilities which include account reconciliation, variance analysis, journal entries, and daily reconciliations.

In short, BlackLine’s solutions mitigate against errors, decrease risk, and enforce control. This is the digital age for the enterprise’s core finance function.

By standardizing accounting department workflows, the overall consistency of an organization’s financial data increases. Manual handoffs become significantly less frequent, and the powerful algorithms behind the solutions provide automated internal controls which proactively protect data integrity.

Rules-based fluctuation analysis and journal validation are just two areas in which the appropriate use of technology, thanks to BlackLine, can drive finance and accounting departments to better decision-making. Furthermore, as the benefits add up, compliance levels increase in every function. For enterprises operating across multiple territories, keeping the right side of shifting legislation & guidelines is a core requisite.

The BlackLine solution comes with pre-built reconciliation templates and certification rules which help ensure efficient close activities and allow high-volume transaction matching.

Data imports become automated processes (say goodbye to manual .csv imports) and the solution is designed in general to allow teams to close faster and more efficiently. The result is the department’s ability to focus on more in-depth analysis and concentrate solely on any accounts which require further investigation and/or human intervention.

Source: BlackLine

With BlackLine, the whole audit process is streamlined, with workflows and controls strictly aligned to strategic business goals. Finance teams can be measured against established metrics, and at all times there is a minute-by-minute view of the organization’s financial status, irrespective of its position in close procedures.

Users are granted granular-level access to view relevant assignment lists, dashboards, and pertinent reports that are considered critical to performing their roles. The same central console is used by all staff with privileges assigned according to individual roles and responsibilities. Accounting leaders can quickly identify unusual transactions, aging items, and unreconciled differences.

Further up the organization, CFOs and controllers can draw financial information from BlackLine as a single source of truth, amalgamating data seamlessly from globally-distributed teams, departments, and working groups.

Legacy systems and enterprise-wide existing software systems can be fully integrated into BlackLine solutions: enterprise ERP systems, for instance, can help manage global accounts and different currency preferences. Integration aids the enterprise’s aims, not hindered by creating the need for duplicate data entry.

The beauty of BlackLine’s solution is that, like best-in-breed new cloud deployments, it is scalable as the organization grows & changes organically, allowing for financial transformation and strategic change in the business.

For a complete view of your organization’s financial health, and to discover ways in which BlackLine Finance Transformation solution can help your finance and accounting department become more efficient and strategy-minded, get in touch with a local representative today, or schedule a demo.