G4S is a global security firm providing security personnel, consulting and risk management services, and technology systems such as access control, alarm networks, video monitoring, and drone surveillance. The London-based company is a key part of Allied Universal, with over 800,000 employees across 90 countries.

In the past, accounting staff at a shared services center in the UK handled balance sheet reconciliations manually in spreadsheets. The process was slow, cumbersome, prone to human error, and did not provide visibility into status or exceptions. With similar challenges in journal entries and other areas, G4S recognized that its traditional manual approach was not sustainable and began exploring finance automation solutions.

BlackLine emerged as a preferred solution partly because of its pre-built integration with SAP, G4S’s ERP platform. "One of the big selling points was that BlackLine provides pre-configured connections with SAP that you just implement, and the two systems speak seamlessly,” says Daphne Sherriff, finance process lead at the UK shared services center. “That is a big, big benefit.”

Once live, G4S found it straightforward to integrate an upgrade to SAP’s S/4HANA platform with BlackLine and has enjoyed cost transparency and strong support. “I’ve worked with a number of software companies, and BlackLine is definitely easier to work with than the others,” Sherriff says. “BlackLine is very transparent on cost, and staff is very friendly. If they don’t know an answer, they’ll find it."