Before their transformation, Delta’s finance team managed a demanding close process characterized by "brute force effort," often involving late nights and weekend work. This manual, spreadsheet-heavy approach consumed valuable resources that were needed for high-impact initiatives and analysis, most notably, the company's upcoming ERP upgrade.

Recognizing the need for change, Delta’s Controllership Innovation team embarked on a mission to create process efficiencies, enrich financial data, and strengthen internal controls. Their vision was clear: implement a solution that could not only deliver these outcomes but also de-risk and accelerate its long-term finance transformation journey, moving beyond tactical workloads to a high-value finance function.

Delta's strategy was to build their transformation into deliberate layers to drive standardization and automation across the close. They began by establishing a stronger foundation of control and visibility, first streamlining account reconciliations to better substantiate the balance sheet, then rolling out task management to achieve an end-to-end view of the process.

With that clear line of sight established, the team pivoted to high-impact automation. They tackled the complex challenges of manual journal entries and eliminated time-consuming, repetitive work by automating high-volume transaction matching. This transformation was powered by SAP Financial Close Solutions by BlackLine, chosen for its deep integration with Delta's existing SAP environment. The comprehensive approach was by design, as Tyler Fenwick, GM of Controllership Innovation at Delta, explains: "From the beginning, we decided that we were going to use BlackLine to its fullest potential…we quickly realized that the real value of using this tool came from using all the modules together."

This approach delivered several key advantages:

• De-Risking the ERP Migration: By cleaning up data and standardizing processes in BlackLine first, Delta simplified its future ERP upgrade. "We are currently on the ECC version of SAP and implementing BlackLine prior to our [ERP] upgrade has been helpful in identifying where there were processes that we need to change in addition to master data that needed to be refreshed or updated," states Linda Jensen, Director of Controllership Innovation at Delta.

• Future-Ready and Limited Rework: Building automation was a "no-regrets move that can enable any future finance transformation," says Fenwick. Because the improvements are ERP-agnostic, the investment is protected. "We are confident knowing that the solutions and automations we're building in BlackLine today are future-ready for whatever transformation initiatives we may undertake with SAP in the future."

• Business-Owned Transformation: Having a “low and no code" platform empowers the finance team to take direct ownership of its transformation. This was a critical requirement for Delta. "We look for low and no code tools that allow business users like us in finance to... operate and develop solutions largely independently of IT,” notes Fenwick. This autonomy creates a win-win, accelerating progress while freeing up IT resources.

• Seamless, Certified Integration: The tight integration was a critical factor. BlackLine’s status as a premium-qualified SAP Solution Extension, along with its SAP Clean Core certification, provided confidence that the solution was future-ready and would remain seamlessly integrated through every innovation. "The partnership that BlackLine has with SAP and the components that are already available certified by SAP... helps us solve for that last mile to have a tightly integrated tool that works with our ERP," notes Fenwick.