BlackLine’s 2020 Modern Accounting Awards Honor Innovation & Transformation

Annual global awards recognize companies that have embraced modern accounting to drive transformational outcomes.

Last year, BlackLine introduced the Modern Accounting Awards to honor leading F&A organizations that are going beyond traditional finance and accounting processes, embracing modern accounting, and driving transformational outcomes by using BlackLine’s cloud platform.

We’re excited to announce this year’s winners, who have all taken innovative approaches to accounting operations and are delivering exemplary results. They include Zurich North America, Intel, McKesson, and Big Ass Fans.

This award honors the company that is the picture of change management success, bringing special focus to their organization’s digital finance transformation strategy and reforming F&A operations with a bold vision across people, processes, and technology.

This year’s winner is one of the world’s largest healthcare conglomerates for standardizing BlackLine across five Global Business Services centers with thousands of users. They completed the rollout of BlackLine’s Journal Entry solution across 20 SAP® systems, and began using BlackLine’s Intercompany Hub to standardize intercompany transactions and streamline F&A, tax, and cash management around the world.

This category recognizes the company that has overcome the many challenges inherent to a complex F&A technology landscape, by unifying data and processes and increasing visibility to deliver accurate results faster_._

This year’s award goes to Zurich North America for transitioning to SAP® S/4HANA in only two years while maintaining accuracy and transparency between old and new systems, coming in on-budget and on-schedule.

As part of their ERP upgrade and in preparation for IFRS17, Zurich saw a 160% increase in total reconciliations. By automating 98% of their certifications in BlackLine, they handled this big increase in workload without needing additional headcount.

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This award honors the company that has used BlackLine to automate routine work to refocus on strategic business initiatives, reimagining an F&A use case with process design and automation.

This year’s winner is Intel, for automating Journal Entry templates for various processes including payroll and bank reconciliations. Their F&A teams are also using 150 rules in BlackLine Transaction Matching to automate 90% of matches in their cash clearing process—saving more than 3,000 hours on that process alone.

This category recognizes the company that embraces Continuous Accounting, distributing and executing close tasks across the period to reduce month-end workloads, speed up the close process, and continuously support the business in real time.

This year’s award goes to McKesson, for enabling a risk ranking and materiality threshold framework that has saved an estimated 7,500 hours per year through a reduction in account reconciliation frequency. They’ve standardized processes by moving from 25 legacy templates to seven standard templates, and aligning tasks across the F&A organization to create real-time tracking and reporting of monthly progress and overdue tasks.

Last, but certainly not least, The Modernizer award honors the company that embraces modern accounting, moving away from traditional, manual, and chaotic processes to build a proactive, predictable, and fast F&A function.

This year’s winner is Big Ass Fans, for modernizing F&A to embed control and consistency into every process, while building a new team and reducing costs by 30%.

“We’re honored to recognize these customers who are true trailblazers, setting examples for others in their respective industries and beyond,” says BlackLine President and Chief Operating Officer Marc Huffman. “Each of the winners pushed the limits to maximize productivity gains and make a transformational difference in their Finance and Accounting organizations.”

Entries were evaluated and winners selected by a team of BlackLine digital finance transformation experts. This year’s award winners will be celebrated at BeyondTheBlack™ 2020:  The Modern Accounting Virtual Experience during a Customer Innovation Showcase hosted by BlackLine CEO Therese Tucker.

Winners also have the opportunity to tell their story during a panel interview with esteemed comedian, author, and The Daily Show host Trevor Noah during the virtual event.

Still not registered for BeyondTheBlack? Save your free spot here and earn up to 12 free CPE/CPD credits.

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