Leading Digital Finance Transformation with SAP + BlackLine
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Key Takeaways
⇨ Organizations must transition from manual financial processes to automated solutions like BlackLine's Journal Entry to improve accuracy, efficiency, and compliance in their financial operations.
⇨ Phased financial transformation strategies allow companies to implement new functionalities gradually, enabling them to start reaping benefits early and manage the complexities of migration smoothly.
⇨ Learning from the success stories of other organizations can provide valuable insights for SAPinsiders embarking on their financial transformation journeys, helping them to avoid common pitfalls.
Financial transformation is one of the hottest topics across the SAP ecosystem for 2025. CFOs from leading organizations understand that they must adopt advanced technologies and solutions to keep pace with the rate of technological change and accommodate increasing volumes of work.
To help SAP organizations understand how financial transformation can help them meet their business goals, BlackLine recently held an SAP & BlackLine customer panel with A&F professionals from Delta Airlines, Tractor Supply Company, and Harman International, highlighting their success to demonstrate the impact that a comprehensive transformation project backed by BlackLine and SAP can bring.
Delta Airlines
Delta Airlines, the largest major airline in the U.S., is committed to driving digital transformation in its finance operations. However, like many other companies, it faced challenges with manual record-to-report (R2R) processes. Financial operations became increasingly complex, limiting the insights they could generate and slowing down critical decision-making.
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As a key part of its ongoing digital finance transformation, Delta implemented BlackLine to boost accuracy, find efficiencies and overcome manual R2R challenges. SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine helped streamline their operations, reduced errors, and automated multiple facets of Delta’s financial operations. This powerful solution has empowered Delta to free up resources for more strategic with data driven insights.
Tractor Supply Company
With the looming 2027 SAP S/4HANA deadline, Tractor Supply Company, the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the U.S., saw the need to align its resources to migrate smoothly and effectively.
Like many organizations, TSC worked with BlackLine to enact a phased approach to implement some new functionalities. This strategy allows companies to be able to take advantage of some financial transformation benefits ahead of the full roll out, in addition to making the whole process run more efficiently.
TSC implemented several modules under SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine in 2024 and plans to expand use in 2025. In concert, these solutions will enable TSC to streamline operations and shorten their financial close. With the benefits they see from these solutions, including freeing up resources, balance sheet readiness, and control over the migration, TSC will be able to fully transition to SAP S/4HANA ahead of the 2027 end-of-maintenance deadline.
What This Means for SAPinsiders
Go beyond manual. Companies of all sizes are beginning to realize that they can no longer afford to rely on manual processes. The volume and complexity of financial transactions are becoming too much and compliance regulations are beginning to mandate more digital solutions like audit trails. Organizations should find automated solutions like Journal Entry from BlackLine to streamline essential processes and free up workers to add more value to the enterprise.
One step at a time. Many SAP organizations opt for phased transformation styles. This helps them not only reap benefits before the end of the project, but also makes what can be a daunting process seem more manageable.
Follow the roadmap. Understanding how other organizations have decided to handle their financial transformations is a great way for companies that are just getting started to better understand what their options are and what pitfalls they should avoid. For this reason, BlackLine shares numerous customer success stories, highlighting how organizations of all sizes and types have managed their journeys.
