Franklin Templeton Achieves 191% ROI with BlackLine

Franklin Resources, Inc. is a global investment management organization operating as Franklin Templeton. Franklin Templeton’s goal is to deliver better outcomes by providing global and domestic investment management to retail, institutional, and sovereign wealth clients in over 170 countries.   Through specialized teams, the Company has expertise across all asset classes, including equity, fixed income, alternatives, and custom multi-asset solutions. The Company’s more than 600 investment professionals are supported by its integrated, worldwide team of risk management professionals and global trading desk network.   With employees in over 30 countries, the California-based company has more than 70 years of investment experience and $715.2 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2019.

The Challenge

Prior to deploying BlackLine, Franklin Templeton’s corporate accounting team was performing its account reconciliations with Microsoft Excel. The firm had established organization-wide standards around its reconciliations process, however there were regional variations around the format of the reconciliations and the determination of the risk rating of the general ledger (GL) accounts across the various regions.

 Further, there was a lack of transparency on the corporate accounting team’s progress during the close, even though there was no issue with respect to the timeliness of the close as well as the accuracy of the financial information. The lack of transparency resulted in the accounting team’s inability to demonstrate the timeliness of the performance of month-end related controls for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) purposes, resulting in manual workarounds for signoffs.

Lastly, all GL accounts were reconciled monthly and there was no consistent framework that could be utilized in order to identify the high-risk accounts, which should be the focus of the team early in the close process. As a result, a high number of accounts were determined as being high risk, resulting in a time-intensive process that frequently required personnel to work overtime. Matching of transactions between multiple separate systems was also performed in Microsoft Excel and due to the manual nature was completed after month end, at which time exceptions would be identified and followed up.

Why BlackLine

In 2017, the accounting team’s leadership conducted a global accounting survey to find pain points, gaps, and areas for improvement. Franklin Templeton accountants weighed in, and two large initiatives arose: a risk assessment framework and new technology.

The firm reviewed two solutions that would help with its reconciliations. BlackLine was selected for several reasons, including:

  • The ability to address several of the challenges in the accounting process while providing accounting leadership transparency into the close process

  • The flexibility of the solution to incorporate the accounting rules needed to implement the framework to assess the GL risk rating

 Franklin Templeton utilized a phased strategy to its implementation, focusing on the North and South American offices first, then rolling BlackLine out to its international offices in the second phase. This strategy allowed the firm to alter the way in which the software was implemented in the second phase based on the lessons learned from the initial phase. The company was also able to further utilize internal resources in the training component of the second phase, using a train-the-trainer model.

The Results

Key benefit areas seen as a result of the BlackLine deployment included: cost savings related to reduced staffing requirements and moving tasks to lower cost geographies, elimination of physical printouts of reconciliations, and increased productivity from an improved risk framework. Additional benefits included the reduction in high-risk accounts, and improved global control and quality assurance.

Reduced staffing requirements. With more efficient and consistent account reconciliation processes across the entire organization, Franklin Templeton was able to reduce the number of accounting personnel it needed and shift much of its month-end reconciliation work to low-cost offices.

Reduced printing and storage. Using BlackLine eliminated the need for accountants to print Excel spreadsheets each month. Instead of building and storing binders of account records, the company could perform its reconciliations and analysis through BlackLine’s cloud platform.

Improved productivity. The refreshed risk framework that Franklin Templeton established allowed accounting staff to reduce the overall number of high-risk accounts by 50%. This allowed for personnel to spend more time analyzing the accounts and adding value through their analysis.

Better visibility and transparency into the close process. BlackLine allows Franklin Templeton accounting leadership to view the progress of the close and allows the team to demonstrate the timeliness and accuracy of its close and reconciliation process for SOX purposes. The visibility gives employees better process control and improved overall quality control efficiency.

Industry

Financial Services

ERP

Oracle

Region

United States

Company Size

Enterprise

Business Impact

Reduced staffing requirements

Reduced printing and storage costs

Improved productivity

Reduced high-risk accounts by 50%

Increased visibility and transparency into the close process


Read Their Success Story
Don't take our word for it.
Request a customer reference.

In many cases we can connect you with a current customer for first-hand feedback on their experience with BlackLine.

Request a Reference