When Aimbridge Hospitality merged with Interstate Hotels and Resorts in 2019, not only did the company’s portfolio size triple, but they realized that Aimbridge had retained unique standards of each previous merger and acquisition resulting in disparate processes. “With the sudden increase in entities, we needed a more efficient, standardized and automated way to manage financial operations across 1,200 hotels,” says Mandy Strider, Director of Accounting – BlackLine, at Ambridge Hospitality. “Having worked with BlackLine at Interstate since 2012, I saw an opportunity for transformation.”

While Interstate had gradually increased its reliance on BlackLine, they were still “far from getting the most from it,” says Strider. “I knew that BlackLine could provide a solution to provide visibility and standardization of our balance sheet reconciliations and also scale with us as we continued to grow.”

Strider and her team, in partnership with consulting agency RSM, optimized BlackLine Account Reconciliations, Transaction Matching, and Task Management and implemented Journal Entry across the entire organization.

Post merger the number of accounts reconciled at Aimbridge in BlackLine tripled from 38,000 to 105,000, across 1,200 entities. The company doubled the number of BlackLine users, from 250 to over 500, quite the feat considering user adoption challenges and comfort in long-standing routines had previously plagued the company.

Strider hopes Aimbridge’s experience will resonate with organizations that are considering BlackLine but are concerned about expending time and resources.

“We first implemented BlackLine in 2012. We started our company-wide transformation in 2021. So, our story isn’t one about fast wins but persistence. It’s worth putting in the time: reinvesting in BlackLine enabled us to break through a stagnant status quo and truly transform our financial operations.”