BlackLine vs. SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation)

BlackLine is well-suited for us when it comes to the bank reconciliations, as our systems feed right into BlackLine, and the various match sets reconcile the data effortlessly. BlackLine would work to its fullest extent if all departments utilized it, so you can take advantage of all the various products that are available.

For a large company trying to bring processes and functions together with one tool, SAP BPC is a great solution. It requires hours of effort to implement and configure, which would not be appropriate for smaller companies. SAP BPC also requires dedicated resources to maintain the system on a day to day basis, as well as an administrator type personnel who can troubleshoot slow performance or issues with the system. You also need users who are willing and exciting to use this system and actually trust that this is a solution.

Incentivized

• Maintains certification records, clearly showing reviews and approvals of tasks and reconciliations.
• It has multiple reconciliation templates, allowing the user to find the best template for their needs.
• It includes useful metrics and visuals to help the user keep track of their assignments and tasks/reconciliations that are coming due.

Incentivized

• Allows for full integration of data to be analyzed in real time. Although we still load actuals on a delayed basis (2 business days after month end), when developing the budget, we not longer have to do a full loading process from a different application into BPC prior to being able to report and analyze the current budget status to prior budget versions or actuals.
• It is easy to learn basic report building. The hardest part is learning the available dimensions and the different possible combinations and their results, but that will also vary from company to company depending on the complexity of the industry.

Incentivized

• On the home page I can see Team Assignments usually first time not My assignments.
• JV posting is slow.
• Many error emails about failed JV with the same context.
• We receive emails about task certification. Can we receive the list of reconciliations monthly?
• Posted/prepared JVs cannot be deleted from the to-do list (there is only one extraordinary case, where we had a BL issue and the JV was booked but without a Document ID).

Incentivized

• When a change is needed in the EPM reports it is not very flexible and needs IT intervention
• Performance sometimes is an issue when consolidating more then 20 entities specially at quarter end
• Script logic complex to handle and always needs BPC consultant when changes are requiered even if minimal - has very high costs

Incentivized

Because this is a great tool with many possibilities and cool perks. Plus, as an admin - because I am both user and admin - I can say that this is easy to handle, you don't even have to be able to write a single piece of code to do so

Incentivized

There are some processes that we currently use that cannot be done in BlackLine. Our users don't want to change their processes or learn new processes even though it would make their jobs easier. We have very few users who have adopted BlackLine fully, and management has not made it a requirement to use the application.

Incentivized

Unlike other SAP traditional products, SAP BPC was meant to be simple and familiar to financial users

Incentivized

We never experienced an outage with BlackLine. The only time the system was unavailable was during planned outages for updates and upgrades usually Friday evening after 6pm pst until Saturday morning at 6am pst.

Incentivized

BlackLine performs rather quickly considering the amount of data we were pushing in and out of it.

Incentivized

In my experience, the support team is beyond exceptional. They are incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated to the customer. You can expect prompt, professional and succinct responses. I have been working with the support team for BlackLine for more than ten years where I have been a customer four times. If anyone does Support right, it is definitely BlackLine. Not only can you trust your financials, but you can trust the team to support you through all your objectives!

We need a big support team with various skillset like BPC, ABAP, BW, HANA, FICO etc

Incentivized

SAP BPC training content and trainers are very good. The training is structured and provides a very good understanding of the product features and functionalities. I attended 6 separate training sessions of week-long or more. I had very good experience in all the sessions. The training is organized very well.

Incentivized

Trainings are available for all topics on the BlackLine U portal. These were incredibly helpful when first starting with BlackLine to get the hang of it. Trainings are useful for any module. I have personally used this to teach myself how to use the tasks and variance modules, which are now fully utilized by my organization. The support team is also very helpful in training our team on anything additional we have needed.

Incentivized

SAP Training contents are very good, informative and exhaustive.

Incentivized

You will have to meet up with your final users, approver, internal auditor and accounting policy holder. Everyone has to agree. When you have a well written process, workflow, policy, approval requirement, and control, your implementation process will be much easier

The implementation was carried out in two phases spread over a period of 4 years with 2 upgrades in between. We also had multiple upgrades to HANA.

Incentivized

I have not used any of the other products, but we did evaluate them during our discovery phase. BlackLine was the "Cadillac" of the product offerings. You could get a similar product, and maybe even at a lower cost, but we wanted the best of the best, and that's what BlackLine is. We wanted a product that we could grow into, rather than a product we would outgrow over time as our organization grows. We have only touched the surface with BlackLine so far, and we've already reaped the benefits.

Incentivized

Sage BPC is very much ahead of Dimensions in multiple areas. The speed and ease of reporting with Sage is very good when compared (although the bank reconciliation task is one thing that i feel is much more effort on Sage and takes more time than previous). We selected SAP BPC (Business Planning and Consolidation) as we have multiple foreign entities and a team in India producing reports so needed one package that could reliably provide information in one currency and show it clearly.

Incentivized

After implementing BlackLine our company acquired another large company with multiple operations. We were able to use the COVID shutdown to bring them on board with BlackLine with little effort in the setup and training of the users.

Incentivized

• Improved visibility into reconciliations & tasks.
• Ability to centralize certain functions across the team into one role, as opposed to having multiple team members perform the same function for their entities.
• While not a negative impact, it's important to note that getting the best use of BlackLine is a time commitment. The time, resources, and energy you put into it will determine how successful you are at utilizing BlackLine to transform how your team gets the job done. This optimization journey is a continuous evolution and will not be an overnight transformation.

• When originally implemented (as the predecessor product Outlooksoft) BPC took ASU from trying to budget and forecast for a 2B enterprise out of spreadsheets and into a far more consolidated tool. It has saved us considerable time over the years and paid for itself several times over.
• BPC also allows us to present our budget in multiple different views to support management, board and departmental reporting.

Incentivized