BeyondTheBlack Call for Speakers & MAA Nominations 2023

“Service is at the heart of BlackLine, and we're committed to serving you. More than 4,000 customers have made the move to modern accounting and trust BlackLine to help them close confidently. We can't wait to serve you and help you succeed.”

That’s a direct quote from our CEO Marc Huffman, and it’s true! We absolutely love seeing our customers achieve transformational outcomes by going beyond manual accounting processes to embrace modern accounting. And that’s why we celebrate dozens of your stories every year at BeyondTheBlack—the premier accounting and finance conference—with featured speaking sessions and our annual Modern Accounting Awards (MAA) ceremony.

This year’s conference will be live and in person in San Diego, where hundreds of F&A professionals will gather to explore how integrating, orchestrating, and automating end-to-end accounting processes can fundamentally shift accounting from a cost center to a strategic value driver.

All of us at BlackLine, along with your F&A peers and colleagues, want to hear your story. So we’re putting out the call for submissions to speak at the event or submit your company for one of the seven MAA categories! Join us September 11-13 in sunny Southern California and share your company’s modern accounting successes.

Support your fellow BlackLine users by sharing your expertise and real-world experiences. This is an incredible opportunity to showcase your organization’s successes and achievements and stand out as a leader in the F&A world.

Interested in being a speaker? Think about topics that are relevant to your fellow F&A professionals and other BlackLine users. Topics can be relatable to any level or user role, including but not limited to beginner/intermediate/advanced users, system admins, preparers/approvers/reviewers, and internal/external auditors.

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing: 

• How has your organization transformed your accounting and finance department(s)?

• Do you have an innovative or out-of-the-box use of BlackLine?

• What are some exciting metrics/results and how were you able to achieve them?

• Can you highlight change management or training stories from your organization?

Need more inspiration? Here are some incredibly popular sessions from BeyondTheBlack 2022:

1) Ansys & Hyatt: BlackLine & Oracle Transform Accounting

2) BlackLine Accrual Importing, Matching, Auto Journals & More with SiriusXM

3) Freeing Up Capacity for More Insights & Action at Schlumberger

Don’t be shy about your successes. Your fellow BlackLine users get incredible value hearing real-world stories, so take this opportunity to toot your own horn and help others in the process.

Some companies have done such incredible things with BlackLine, we just had to honor them with their own special awards. Is this your year to be a Modern Accounting Award winner?

We’ve showcased companies of all sizes and from a range of industries including Intel, Atlantic Union Bank, Flowers Bakeries, McKesson, Chobani, Finning, and many more. All types of companies are eligible for the MAAs, so if you have an incredible story of transformation or of embracing modern and/or continuous accounting, we encourage you to submit it for consideration. 

Here are the seven categories for the 2023 awards:  

• The Accelerator—for the company that has automated routine accounting work to save time and refocus finance professionals on strategic business initiatives, revolutionizing finance and accounting use cases with process design and automation.

• The Capitalizer—for the company that consistently unlocks working capital, achieving operational excellence by unifying data and processes with the deployment of BlackLine's accounts receivable automation solutions.

• The Closer—for the company that has embraced continuous accounting, distributing close tasks across the period to reduce month-end workloads, speeding up the close process and supporting the business in real time.

• The Modernizer—for the company that has embraced modern accounting, moving from traditional, manual, and chaotic processes towards a proactive, predictable, and fast finance and accounting function.

• The Pioneer—for the company that is a modern accounting trailblazer, taking on new challenges to continually eliminate manual processes and elevate innovation through the creative use of technology solutions, advanced functionality, and new capabilities and features.

• The Transformer—for the company that has transformed finance and accounting operations with a bold vision across people, process, and technology.

• The Unifier—for the company that has overcome the challenges inherent in a complex finance technology landscape by unifying data, processes, and visibility to deliver accurate results faster.

The deadline to submit to be a speaker or for an MAA is March 17, 2023. Please visit our Call for Speakers page to see an example submission and find a list of required submission items. We can’t wait to hear about your successes with BlackLine