On August 26, 2014, Gartner published their IT Market Clock for Financial Management Applications, 2014—a comprehensive report that provides actionable insight for companies as they plan for and prioritize their IT investments.
The report renamed the
Close/Reconciliation Management category to Enhanced Finance Controls and Automation (EFCA), which according to the report, “These solutions cover many of the functions required to automate the “last mile of finance,” that is, the processes required to finalize period-end accounts.” This is around the account reconciliation process arena in which BlackLine has traditionally dominated. The report also states, “The
close/reconciliation management asset class has expanded over the last year to include a wider range of functionality that extends beyond the month-end close into a broader solution that can enhance the management and control of any finance process throughout the accounting cycle.”
We agree with Gartner’s segmentation analysis and are gratified that a firm of Gartner’s caliber and reputation recognized BlackLine as a sample vendor. In announcing the renamed category, we believe Gartner has validated not only BlackLine’s vision for financial control and automation technology but also our decision to collaborate closely with ERP Value Added Resellers to bring innovation to market in a timely fashion.
Nine years ago, BlackLine launched a new category of business technology—a cloud software that delivered new levels of visibility and automation. Our novel solution erased the drudgery, inefficiency and compliance risk that were inherent in these manual spreadsheet-based processes, liberating our customers in Finance & Accounting to put their time and brains to more strategic endeavors.
“These applications reduce the time and resources required to execute the month-end closing and other finance processes. Many of these solutions can be deployed across multiple core financial and financial value chain applications, enabling organizations with a heterogeneous financial application landscape to improve and better control their finance processes without major investments in the underlying applications,” the report states.
Gartner’s report also underscores the complementary role that our solutions play as a necessary adjunct to traditional ERP systems. While ERP systems are a superb means of handling the basics of accounting, doing such things as verifying the journal entries and sub-ledger tie outs, they don’t specifically validate this data. They cannot bring the financial close process to a confident conclusion.
This broader solution is BlackLine, the only provider today offering a true cloud-based platform in the new Enhanced Finance Controls and Automation category. Our longstanding mission is to offer customers unparalleled visibility into their financial data to ensure utmost accuracy. We’ve helped more than 1,300 mid-size and global enterprises accomplish this by automating and simplifying their financial close processes and our partners are experiencing the same success with their customers and prospects.
Our partners are modernizing the way finance and accounting works by not only implementing BlackLine but also with finance transformation services that deliver immediate and long-term client satisfaction.