A privately held company involved in a vast array of agricultural products and research initiatives, Simplot still struggled with a highly tedious, Excel-based financial close process. Various divisions of the global company relied on unique accounting practices, severely hampering big-picture visibility. The use of different accounting tools also complicated matters. According to Glenda Viste, senior director of finance optimization initiatives at Simplot, “Our entrepreneurial values created a lot of non-standard and decentralized accounting practices. Over the years, we had moved to a more consolidated model, but many accounting practices still varied by business unit.”

Simplot’s strong employee retention rate, while a boon for the company overall, also threatened business continuity. With so many different accounting processes and tools, the loss of even one employee meant also losing significant institutionalized knowledge. “Our employee longevity is very long and when transitions happen, there is simply too much information lost,” says Viste. “We knew we had to find a solution that efficiently tracked accounting purposes, procedures, documentation, and historical records.”

According to Viste, a “failure” compelled the team to implement a new close solution. “A remote location had neglected to perform reconciliations. A great deal of rework, auditing, and management time was spent recovering information and analyzing results. The wasted effort could have been prevented with better visibility,” says Viste. “The first reaction of all our managers was ‘How can I ensure this never happens on my watch?’ BlackLine was presented as a technical solution.”

Simplot partnered with BlackLine’s implementation team and KPMG to ensure a timely rollout. Users were trained over several weeks using BlackLine U. “Our IT team had no problems building the necessary interfaces,” says Viste. “We averaged about eight hours of training for each user. And proficiency was effortlessly achieved due to BlackLine’s ease of use.”