Starbucks, Chobani, Finning, Light & Wonder, McKesson and Takeda Honored with 2022 Modern Accounting Awards from BlackLine

Leading organizations from around the world and across multiple industries recognized for embracing modern accounting to drive transformational outcomes

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1, 2022 /CNW/ -- Accounting automation software leader BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL) has announced the winners of its 2022 Modern Accounting Awards.  The company's fourth annual global awards program recognizes customers that have achieved transformational outcomes by going beyond traditional manual accounting processes to embrace modern accounting.  The 2022 winners - spanning multiple industries and regions - demonstrate excellence in using BlackLine's market-leading solutions for financial close, intercompany financial management and accounts receivable (AR) automation and join notable past award recipients including Domino's, SiriusXM and Zurich North America.

This year, BlackLine honored customers in six categories:

• The Unifier – For the company that has overcome the challenges inherent in a complex finance technology landscape by unifying data, processes and visibility to deliver accurate results faster.
• Takeda, the largest pharmaceutical company in Asia, won for using BlackLine's solutions to transition to a remote work environment, successfully reducing manual work and increasing controls compliance, while freeing up more than 60,000 team hours a year with auto-certification.
  
  
• The Accelerator – For the company that has automated routine accounting work to save time and refocus finance professionals on strategic business initiatives, revolutionizing finance and accounting use cases with process design and automation.
• Light & Wonder, Inc., the global leader in cross-platform games and entertainment, won for replacing a complex manual process with an automated one that takes just 30 minutes per day, while also consolidating data from multiple systems into BlackLine to increase efficiencies.
  
  
• The Closer – For the company that has embraced continuous accounting, distributing close tasks across the period to reduce month-end workloads, speeding up the close process and supporting the business in real time.
• Food maker Chobani, producer of America's No. 1 yogurt brand, won for transforming its financial close processes, reducing reconciliation time to just five days, increasing efficiencies to provide more accurate financial results faster, and empowering its teams to make decisions quickly and more accurately.
  
  
• The Capitalizer – For the company that consistently unlocks working capital, achieving operational excellence by unifying data and processes with the deployment of BlackLine's accounts receivable automation solutions.
• The award goes to global healthcare giant McKesson, ranked No. 9 on the 2022 Fortune 500 list, for creating a standardized process across the business that cut down on manual work and tedious tasks, increasing efficiencies for its AR teams and enabling them to focus on strategic, value-adding work. McKesson also improved its invoice-to-cash match rate to as much as 90 percent with no manual intervention, reduced unapplied cash and eliminated the time-consuming task of tracking down remittances.
  
  
• The Modernizer – For the company that has embraced modern accounting, moving from traditional, manual and chaotic processes towards a proactive, predictable and fast finance and accounting (F&A) function.
• Finning, the world's largest Caterpillar dealer and a global provider of parts and service for equipment and engines across diverse industries, won for saving 13,000 hours annually by eliminating repetitive manual tasks, empowering team members to redirect their efforts to value-adding activities. Finning also actively participates in the BlackLine Community, offering suggestions and innovative ideas regularly to help peers modernize and optimize their F&A operations.
  
  
• The Pioneer – For the company that is a modern accounting trailblazer, taking on new challenges to continually eliminate manual processes and elevate innovation through the creative use of technology solutions, advanced functionality and new capabilities and features.
• The award goes to Starbucks, the world's largest coffeehouse chain, in recognition of how its F&A teams fully embraced modern accounting. One of the first customers to explore new functionalities in BlackLine, such as dashboards and data source grouping, Starbucks increased its match rate to 99 percent, saved over 400 hours across its F&A organization each month, built a BlackLine Ambassador program, and more.

"We received a record number of submissions this year with impressive stories to tell, making it difficult to choose the best.  Each of these customers has truly raised the bar for modern accounting and set new standards for digital finance transformation," said BlackLine CEO Marc Huffman.  "We're honored to recognize all of the winners, as well as many of the other nominated companies, for making tremendous strides optimizing and automating critical processes in their finance and accounting organizations so they can deliver strategic value to the business."

Entries were evaluated and winners selected by a team of BlackLine digital finance transformation experts.  Award winners will be celebrated on the main stage at BlackLine's annual global conference BeyondTheBlack™ 2022 and also will share their transformation stories in featured breakout sessions.

For 14 years, BeyondTheBlack has brought together a global community focused on innovation and leadership in Finance and Accounting.  BeyondTheBlack 2022 will take place in person Monday to Wednesday, Nov. 7^th to 9^th, in Las Vegas, featuring over 100 sessions including more than 50 customer speakers.  A livestream also will be available featuring select keynotes and panel sessions.  Join us to find out what the best companies in the world have to say about using BlackLine to modernize their F&A operations. 

For information or to register to attend in person or virtually, go here.

About BlackLine

Companies come to BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL) because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable.  BlackLine's cloud-based financial operations management platform and market-leading customer service help companies move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility.  BlackLine provides solutions to manage and automate financial close, accounts receivable and intercompany accounting processes, helping large enterprises and midsize companies across all industries do accounting work better, faster and with more control.

More than 4,000 customers trust BlackLine to help them close faster with complete and accurate results.  The company is the pioneer of the cloud financial close market and recognized as the leader by customers at leading end-user review sites including G2 and TrustRadius.  BlackLine is a global company with operations in major business centers around the world including Los Angeles, New York, the San Francisco Bay area, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Sydney.  For more information, please visit blackline.com.

SOURCE BlackLine

Ashley Dyer, PR Director, BlackLine, 818-936-7166, [email protected]