LOS ANGELES and LONDON – Sept. 1, 2016 –BlackLine, a leading provider of financial controls and automation solutions that enable Continuous Accounting, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Runbook, a Europe-based provider of financial close and automation solutions to the SAP market. The decision further solidifies BlackLine’s position as a leading provider of software solutions to automate and control the entire financial close process for SAP customers worldwide, and also supports the company’s ongoing European expansion strategy.
The acquisition of Runbook extends BlackLine’s Continuous Accounting platform to drive greater automation on behalf of all of its customers worldwide. Runbook’s SAP solutions complement BlackLine – merging financial quality assurance with financial automation and accelerating BlackLine’s innovative strategy for transforming Finance & Accounting (F&A).
“Runbook is an important investment in our future, an alignment that makes BlackLine stronger on behalf of our respective customers,” Therese Tucker, BlackLine CEO, said. “Runbook’s financial close automation software solutions serve some of the largest SAP organizations in the world. The company brings a wealth of talent, technology and SAP integration and execution knowledge to BlackLine, broadening our Continuous Accounting platform by adding complementary technologies. Together, we are equipped to solve the financial close management challenges faced by CFOs around the world.”
Tucker added, “This move is part of our larger plan to deliver deeper automation across the full range of F&A processes and enterprise platforms, including more than 40 leading ERP systems.”
Runbook co-founders Herman Heller and Rob Leesberg will continue to contribute their extensive experience and expertise as part of the BlackLine management team. “We are excited to join forces with an important market leader in the financial and accounting automation space. Throughout the years, we have had nothing but the greatest respect for BlackLine as a highly innovative organization and leader in this growing market,” said Heller, Runbook CEO. “By uniting our SAP expertise with BlackLine’s cloud knowledge, we believe we are a much stronger company going forward.”
Gartner recently recognized BlackLine as a Leader in the 2016 Financial Corporate Performance Management (FCPM) Magic Quadrant. Runbook also has been described as “best-of-breed” by Gartner.
Tennenbaum Capital Partners and certain of its funds acted as Agent for the senior credit facility issued to support the acquisition.