Unifying Financial Review Processes with BlackLine

⇨ Finance teams are under pressure to deliver real-time analytics and help decision-makers guide their organizations.

⇨ To help organizations improve their R2R processes, BlackLine recently cohosted a webinar with SAP, showcasing solutions that help unify financial review processes.

⇨ Organizations need to find solutions like SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option, to provide them with a holistic view of their financial information and the collaborative platform to address any variations promptly.

Finance teams are under more pressure than ever. These teams are often required to deliver real-time analytics and help decision-makers guide their organizations to a successful future, even though they often still need to receive increased budgets to help them do so.

Significant technological advancements are emerging in the SAP ecosystem that can help overcome some of these challenges. However, organizations must prioritize the solutions they feel are most important to their continued success.

Improving Key Processes

SAPinsider’s recent SAP S/4HANA Finance 2024 benchmark research report found that 40% of companies said that improving record-to-report (R2R) and closing processes was the most important strategy to support their financial planning – the highest percentage of any response.

To help organizations improve their R2R processes, BlackLine recently cohosted a webinar with SAP, showcasing solutions that help unify financial review processes. BlackLine’s Andrew Stutzman, Director of Consolidation and Financial Analytics, highlighted the need for companies to integrate data to gain end-to-end insights and improve decision-making.

Organizations need help with siloed data, disparate processes, and lengthy cycle times, making it more difficult to deliver timely insights. To overcome these issues, the latest SAP Solution Extension, SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option,  integrates variance analysis from every level of the organization seamlessly with SAP. This gives users a holistic view of their entire financial picture. BlackLine also integrates with downstream SAP solutions like SAP Group Reporting to provide access to additional insights.

While timely insights are valuable, the accuracy of the information being extracted is paramount. The solution differs from traditional tools by helping teams ensure the accuracy of their account balances before reporting. This gives organizations extra time to ensure accuracy and ensure fewer issues later in the process.

End-to-end Offering

Businesses must find solutions that accommodate or improve previous workflows. The financial review option complements SAP to give companies an end-to-end offering for finance, allowing them to complete multiple essential tasks in one platform.

“The Financial Review solution itself is a natural extension of the work that most customers are already doing in BlackLine. But now we are satisfying another key control by documenting variance commentary and performing attestation on financial statement items – and doing it in the same platform where companies already substantiate their balance sheet. That provides full traceability and end-to-end auditability,” said Stutzman.

This collaborative platform allows users to perform proactive analysis of financial statements and gain deeper insights into any variations they find. Users can also be better prepared for audits by maintaining a complete audit trail.

Conclusion

More than ever, decision-makers need insights in real-time to manage their complex financial landscapes. Yet providing these insights is easier said than done. Organizations need to find solutions like SAP Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine, financial review option, to provide them with a holistic view of their financial information and the collaborative platform to address any variations promptly.