Zendesk Speeds up Their NetSuite Close Process with BlackLine

San Francisco-based Zendesk is focused on bringing the best customer experiences to end-users through its customer service and engagement platform. Zendesk has seen rapid growth since going public in 2014, and provides integrated customer support software to over 125,000 organizations across 160 countries.

But challenges have come with the company’s growth.

In addition to the expansion of customers globally, employee headcount was shooting up, and Zendesk’s IT group was looking to add new cloud applications to their CRM and NetSuite ERP system.

All while Accounting was stuck using manual processes for reconciling accounts at month-end.

Key internal stakeholders—including Patrick Loughnane, Senior Financial Systems Analyst—at Zendesk knew that if they wanted to scale operations with their rapid growth and keep a competitive advantage in the industry, improving accounting processes and systems could not be left behind.

That’s where BlackLine’s finance controls and automation platform came in.

And to ensure they selected the best platform for their organization—one that would integrate seamlessly with NetSuite—Zendesk evaluated the following key areas.

For a company replacing manual processes with automation, it’s important for users to be able to trust in the new system. BlackLine facilitates that trust by integrating seamlessly with Zendesk’s other systems, including NetSuite.

In one demo that he performed for a new user, Loughnane was able to import spreadsheets directly into BlackLine.

The process, error-free as it was, surprised him. “I didn’t expect to be able to quickly import the Excel sheet she had been using, but it uploaded to BlackLine and it just worked. I ran a quick reconciliation. It was really easy.”

When evaluating financial close software, Zendesk needed a solution that was going to scale with operations—so flexibility was key. In BlackLine, configurable rules and filters make it easy for non-technical users to create accurate and effective matches when reconciling high-transactional volume balance sheet accounts.

“The BlackLine system can analyze multiple invoices to one payment, account for variances due to bank fees or foreign exchange impact, and anticipate independent payee assignments. And that’s just a small example of the power of its rules,” says Loughnane.

Previously, Zendesk’s close process consisted of exporting data out of NetSuite and into Excel to perform certain month-end activities. This increased the risk of having incorrect or untimely data across accounting operations.

Because the BlackLine platform works from a single, unified code base, numerical data is always up-to-the-minute accurate. There are no longer are concerns about the accuracy of the data.

“When you are focusing on an integration, you need something that is reliable, something that the users can depend on and be comfortable with,” Loughnane says. ”We need to know that the information coming through is the truth, working all the time, and always accessible. This is what we have with BlackLine.”

NetSuite is a powerful ERP system that was built for fast-growing organizations, like Zendesk. It can do a lot, but it can’t do it all.

BlackLine partners with NetSuite to deliver financial controls and automation to organizations that are looking to scale operations with growth.

Trusted by hundreds of NetSuite customers globally, BlackLine is the leading and preferred financial close solution for end users.

Join part two of our BlackLine for NetSuite webinar series to hear more from Zendesk about their finance transformation journey. You’ll learn how your organization can accelerate your reconciliation process, running NetSuite and closing with BlackLine.