BlackLine's cloud-based financial operations management platform unifyies data and processes, automating repetitive tasks and enhancing accountability. BlackLine solutions for financial close, accounts receivable, and intercompany accounting support large enterprises and midsize companies.
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D&B Finance Analytics
Score 9.3 out of 10
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D&B Finance Analytics is a global credit-to-cash solution that provides Dun & Bradstreet data, analytics, and technology to help improve cash flow, increase operational efficiency, and mitigate risk. This AI-driven solution comprises two platforms – D&B Credit Intelligence and D&B Receivables Intelligence powered by GETPAID – that together help finance teams transform their operations and reduce cost through insight, automation, and enhanced customer experience.
BlackLine's functionality is richer and broader. However, it is not as user-friendly as FloQast. I wish BlackLine would take on re-platforming the User Interface and Experience as a major initiative. This will enable BlackLine to explore new market segments such has High Tech …
Frontier is the product that we had before going to BlackLine. There are some parts of BlackLine that don't stack up well but overall BlackLine is slowing becoming the product of the future now that is is address some of the issues that have been a problem us - again have a …
I like that BlackLine has things built OOB versus in OneStream everything is configurable, which is a pro and a con but I mainly see it as a con. I like that there are recommended processes and configurations from BL OOB so our team doesn't have to figure everything out from …
BlackLine is more advanced with the SAP Connector that we are using from a timing perspective. Being a global company, they couldn't meet our volume requirements that we set forward.
The API functionality is one that was very important to our landscape, and they weren't ready …
BlackLine does not match reconNET for high volume transaction capabilities and does not have some of the additional modules leveraging the data e.g. cash sweep, research module, GL extract etc. BlackLine and Cadency are fairly even products. Both have advantages and …
I would prefer Nexis Diligence + as it is more accurate as far as providing newer results for various points, such as company zoom calls with update financials and regulatory agency filings. Furthermore, I found the UI for Nexis Diligence + and the entire Nexis suit to be for …
We chose to stay with D&B rather than go with a competitor because the reports we get from D&B are comprehensive, customizable, and in-depth. Other companies offer similar options, but D&B is typically more accurate and up-to-date. From the administrative side, D&B is easy to …
This isn't precisely the software we used, but this is closest of the options presented. We used Experian almost exclusively for small firms not fully represented under D&B, in particular Canadian firms which Experian had a more robust reporting regimen. Customers in Canada …
Our organization uses CBC Innovis Credit Reporting to assist in underwriting loans, leases, and grants through its personal credit reports, RiskView, and ID cross checks on business principals. No other products or services have been reviewed or considered recently as a …
D&B has the most robust trade payment data of any product that we considered. For us, it was between D&B and Creditsafe. D&B not only provided most complete trade payment data, the product was easier to use and had better functionality compared to Creditsafe.
D&B Finance Analytics stacks up against them because I find this software easier to understand and to work with. It is important to sometimes have a software that is self-explanatory. It is so easy to analyze a customer and gain knowledge of their financial habits without …
I have to say that in terms of what we use D&B Finance Analytics for, I have not tried to find another company because it works perfectly for what we need. If there's research that we need to do on a company that's broader than let's say their payment records, we have other …
We do not use any other programs that I'm aware of, all other methods of verifying for us are based on public information and conversations we have with businesses, their references and banking institutions. I think this speaks for itself as we haven't seen the need to use any …
Our team in Canada uses Equifax instead. However we find that they're often asking us to pull data and reporting from D&B instead. D&B's Finance Analytics data is more detailed, easier to use, and can quickly be saved & shared. This makes is easy and FAST for our business to …
Each solution offers similar data in separate segments. The depth or breadth of the data pool differs, but based on the reliability of D&B Finance Analytics multiple solutions could be used for a lower cost.
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.
D&B provides insight into the viability of a customer who is looking for open terms and large orders on credit. It helps us determine the risk when lending to customers with whom we don't have much history. It's also helpful to see what types of liens/lawsuits they have pending at a given time.
Finding Companies through Search or Advanced Search. It's got an easy search bar. And then for example, we have companies all over the world that come to us. And so we can just choose the country, for example, and then write the name in there and it'll bring up a lot of different companies that maybe are exactly that name or close to that name. And when we see what we believe to be the actual company, we can click on it and then know whether they are credit worthy.
Great UX on the website - fast and easy to use. The speed with which it operates is really terrific and very important for us because we usually have to make that decision right away.
Using something as objective as a numerical score simplifies decisions about offering credit. We have to make a decision usually on whether to offer credit to an advertiser quickly. So what's wonderful about the process is that we don't have to be searching around on Google or any kind of review site and then try to discern whether they're credit worthy. We simply open up the D&B Finance Analytics tool.
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).
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
D&B Finance Analytics reports have just about everything. You can see a full company profile including legal forms, history records, employee count, years in business, paydex scores, delinquency scores, viability ratings, state of incorporations, naics codes, CEO or business owner names, etc. There is a lot that pulls up in this report
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.
I would you rate the D&B Finance Analytics's overall usability a 9 because it is super easy to use. The only reason for a 9 is there are a lot of features that I didn't realize were there and was not sure how to actually use them or what kind of information I could get
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.
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!
This is a great resource for us on the sales and accounting side of our company. The graphs and ratings based on Paydex, Failure Score, and Delinquency Score are so useful. This tool has endless ways to help a company be protected against things that can be damaging to their financial situation.
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.
The online training was worth it. We did an online training with our team and an account rep from D&B. They walked us through the entire interface and answered all of our questions.
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
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.
Our team in Canada uses Equifax instead. However we find that they're often asking us to pull data and reporting from D&B instead. D&B's Finance Analytics data is more detailed, easier to use, and can quickly be saved & shared. This makes is easy and FAST for our business to make more informed decisions. D&B blows the competition away even from an international perspective.
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.
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.
Reducing risk by pointing out potential issues at the outset
Hard quantification of certain metrics, in particular the Paydex stat, as well as failure and delinquency likelihood.
Assists with lowering DSO (sorry, no hard figures available) by letting us know when there is a potential issue from the beginning, or when we update our records.
