Unwrapping Success – Hershey’s Financial Transformation Journey with SAP and BlackLine

The Hershey Company has been a symbol of American sweetness for over 130 years, delighting consumers with some of the nation’s favorite confections and snacks. From its humble beginnings as a single factory, Hershey has flourished into a multi-billion-dollar global enterprise, employing over 20,000 people worldwide.

As Hershey set its sights on ambitious global growth and strengthening its market presence, the company realized that its existing financial operations have to be streamlined. After years of expansion, its systems and manual processes required a lot of work to get the insight needed. Recognizing this critical need for transformation, Hershey embarked on a journey to streamline its accounting and finance operations to make them future-ready.

A Collaborative Approach to Transformation

In 2016, Hershey established a cross functional finance transformation team spanning controlling, Sarbanes-Oxley (SoX), global shared services, record-to-report, and external reporting teams. With a vision to combine a robust SAP S/4HANA upgrade with streamlined process improvements, the team aimed to create efficiencies and maximize its investment.

After exploring various solutions, Hershey selected BlackLine, an SAP Solution Extension partner, to support its financial transformation journey, jumpstart its migration to SAP S/4HANA and ensure seamless integration with SAP’s Business Technology Platform.

A Phased Rollout for Maximum Impact

Hershey began implementing BlackLine in 2017, starting with Account Reconciliations and Task Management, equivalent to today’s SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine. This led to better control documentation and a significant reduction in the month-end close process. Today, Hershey’s 450 BlackLine users see the benefits of streamlining including 3,000+ reconciliations and the management of 2,400+ SOX related and month close tasks.

Expanding its automation efforts, Hershey introduced Transaction Matching in 2019 to handle clearing items for high-volume platforms like Amazon. It also implemented Journal Entry Approvals in preparation for its SAP S/4HANA upgrade.

The capabilities of Account Reconciliation, Task Management, Journal Entry Approvals, and Transaction Matching are all available today through SAP with options of the SAP Account Substantiation and Automation application by BlackLine.

Optimizing End-to-End Journal Entry Management

As Hershey migrated to SAP S/4HANA, the company identified opportunities to improve its journal entry process. This meant shifting from post-close approvals to requiring approvals for journal entries before they were posted. This validation step catches errors earlier in the process, allowing them to be rectified quickly and make the overall process run more smoothly.

Amanda Kapp, Manager of Financial Data Systems, explained, “When we moved to SAP S/4HANA, we saw the need to transition to Journal Entry Creation, requiring approvals before posting. This represented substantial change management for our users, ensuring all required approvals are obtained before the entry posts directly to SAP S/4HANA.”

With BlackLine, Hershey leveraged predefined templates configured to meet its specific journal entry approval needs, allowing for automated workflows that streamline the approval process. BlackLine removes uncertainty that preparers no longer need to determine who should approve entries or how many levels of review are required— everything is built into the system, improving efficiency, visibility, and compliance.

Another key benefit is the seamless integration between BlackLine and SAP S/4HANA. Supporting documents attached in BlackLine are automatically sent to SAP through an API, allowing users to access necessary documents effortlessly in both systems. “It’s a win for us because you can see it in both locations,” said Kapp.

These changes have streamlined activities and provided greater control. By shifting to a proactive SAPinsider approach to journal entry approvals, Hershey has increased accuracy, efficiency, and strengthened compliance across its journal entry process.

Preparing for an SAP S/4HANA Migration with BlackLine

Migrating to a new ERP platform can be a significant undertaking that often takes years. Yet organizations still need to maintain control and compliance during this transformation period, while increasing efficiency is key to managing cost. Despite the extensive capabilities and benefits of SAP S/4HANA, Hershey estimated that the move would be difficult with the team trying to maintain compliance, control and visibility during the transition from SAP ERP to SAP S/4HANA.

Fortunately, this is where the strength of BlackLine played a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth migration by serving as Hershey’s financial control center, helping the company maintain operations, standardize processes, and automate key workflows throughout the transition. Organizations benefit when they can operate from a single, unified view. This saved Hershey’s valuable time and unnecessary strain, freeing up key team members to work on other important tasks throughout the project.

“BlackLine was key to our S/4HANA upgrade,” Kapp emphasized. “It provided centralization and standardization across our financial platform. BlackLine ensured balance sheet accuracy and sign-off on period-end items without losing historical data such as policies, procedures, supporting documentation, balances, adjustments, and open items.”

During the migration, Hershey restructured its financial framework, including a reconfiguration of its chart of accounts. This change resulted in over 2,000 new account reconciliations; a task simplified by BlackLine’s flexible upload templates. “Because BlackLine provides an upload import template, I easily reconfigured our chart of accounts in BlackLine to align with our new financial structure,” Kapp explained.

Additionally, Hershey leveraged BlackLine’s Task Management module to track migration steps and to manage other key compliance activities. BlackLine’s built-in audit trails and defined auditor roles enabled seamless third-party testing and knowledge sharing across teams. Ahead of the SAP S/4HANA cutover, Hershey used BlackLine’s mass upload functionality to standardize and update thousands of tasks, ensuring consistency and reduced risk.

By implementing BlackLine ahead of its SAP S/4HANA migration, Hershey was able to proactively optimize financial processes, enhance visibility, and reduce complexity, laying a strong let’s connect sapinsider.org foundation for a successful transition. Automating workflows and streamlining processes before the migration delivered immediate benefits, freeing fi nance teams to focus on strategic initiatives while ensuring long-term efficiency in SAP S/4HANA.

Continuous Innovation with SAP & BlackLine

By establishing standardized, automated processes with BlackLine ahead of their SAP S/4HANA migration, Hershey has minimized disruption, reduced complexity, and set the stage for greater efficiency in its future ERP environment. As the company continues to expand and evolve, it remains committed to driving financial transformation and operational excellence. Together, SAP and BlackLine provide a solid foundation for continuous innovation, empowering Hershey to navigate future challenges while ensuring compliance and financial accuracy.

The seamless integration between SAP and BlackLine not only increases operational resilience but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Building on this success, Hershey is expanding its use of BlackLine with the Intercompany module to centralize and strengthen governance over intercompany processes.

With this future-ready platform, Hershey is well positioned for long-term success, reinforcing SAP and BlackLine as the gold standard for record-to report transformation. For organizations like Hershey looking to bolster their financial operations, SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine streamlines and automates account reconciliations, task management, journal entries, and financial review. Additionally, SAP Intercompany Governance by BlackLine reduces intercompany complexity and ensures consistency and control across all business units.

By leveraging the combined power of BlackLine and SAP, organizations can drive operational resilience, enhance financial accuracy, and streamline record-to-report processes as they advance their digital transformation journeys.

The Recipe for a Successful Transformation

Hershey’s financial transformation journey underscores several crucial steps that other organizations can adopt to secure success:

Leadership Buy-In – Strong leadership commitment is essential. Hershey’s executive team fully embraced new technologies throughout this journey, helping pave the way for success.

Clear Vision and Goals – Defined objectives guide the way. Hershey targeted specific areas for improvement, leveraging BlackLine’s offerings to SAPinsider optimize and streamline finance processes ahead of a major SAP S/4HANA migration.

Process Standardization – Consistent practices across teams and locations enhances efficiency and visibility. For a global organization like Hershey, setting best practices across its financial operations was crucial.

Phased Rollout – Implementing changes incrementally allows for flexibility and continuous improvement. Hershey rolled out its transformation in phases while remaining flexible as its needs changed over time.

Stakeholder Engagement – Regular communication and training foster user engagement, optimizing return on investment. Hershey holds monthly meetings with users to cover BlackLine updates, new capabilities, and to promote cross functional engagement between teams.

Data Integrity and Compliance – Ensure that financial transformation supports compliance efforts and streamlines audit processes. Hershey maintained strong control documentation and audit trail with its S/4HANA migration by implementing BlackLine in advance of the migration.

By aligning these steps, Hershey exemplifies how to drive successful financial transformation, enabling insightful decision-making and future ready financial operations.

Key Takeaways for SAPinsiders

SAP and BlackLine are Better Together. SAP Account Substantiation and Automation plus SAP Intercompany Governance help companies to transform their end-to-end record-to-report process.

Jumpstart Your S/4HANA Migration with BlackLine. Early adoption of BlackLine’s solutions enabled Hershey to ensure a smooth transition to SAP S/4HANA while maintaining compliance and efficiency.

Automated Journal Entry Management Enhances Control. Moving to pre-posting approvals is a recommended best practice.

Continuous Financial Transformation is a Competitive Advantage. Hershey’s phased rollout with BlackLine and SAP demonstrated continuous improvement in finance operations.