BlackLine at Citi’s 2025 Conference: Strategic Shifts and Growth Plans

On Wednesday, 03 September 2025, BlackLine (NASDAQ:BL) presented at Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference, offering a strategic overview that highlighted both promising growth opportunities and challenges. The company is focusing on finance transformation and innovation, particularly in AI, while navigating leadership transitions and market dynamics.

Key Takeaways

• BlackLine is strengthening its relationship with SAP, focusing on a "finance first" approach.
• The company is targeting a 13-16% growth rate between 2027 and 2029 through new pricing strategies and product innovations.
• AI development is a priority, with an emphasis on auditability and customer value.
• Therese is transitioning from co-CEO to a founder-focused role, ensuring continued involvement.
• The public sector presents a significant growth opportunity, facilitated by FedRAMP certification.

Financial Results

• Full year guide projects approximately 7% growth.
• Q1 and Q2 growth were 6% and 7%, respectively, with Q3 expected to exceed 7%.
• Implied Q4 guidance suggests growth of over 8%.
• RPO and billings growth are both at 11%, while CRPO and ARR growth stand at 9%.

Operational Updates

• Therese’s transition to a founder role is accompanied by the addition of two former CEOs to the board.
• David Henshall has been appointed as the lead independent director.
• BlackLine has reset its relationship with SAP, creating a "golden architecture" for joint sales efforts.
• The company is working with auditing firms and regulators to develop AI solutions with robust validation tools.

Future Outlook

• BlackLine aims for a 13-16% growth rate from 2027 to 2029, leveraging new platform pricing, Studio 360, and international opportunities.
• AI is expected to drive a shift from user-based to platform and consumption-based pricing.
• The company plans to expand its market share and capitalize on its SAP relationship to boost momentum in 2025.
• FedRAMP certification will be used to access new markets, including the public sector.

Q&A Highlights

• The ERP upgrade cycle is gaining traction with a "finance first" approach from SAP and other players.
• Product innovations like Studio 360 and AI capabilities are tailored to customer needs.
• AI adoption in finance is expected to be cautious, focusing on accuracy and auditability.
• Studio 360’s monetization will leverage partnerships with companies like Snowflake.

For more details, readers are encouraged to review the full transcript of the conference call.

Full transcript - Citi’s 2025 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference:

Steve, Interviewer: Alright. Awesome. Well, welcome everybody to, day one of the of the team from BlackLine. So Owen and Matt, wanna thank you so much for for for joining us today. Thank you for

Matt, BlackLine: having us.

Steve, Interviewer: Good to be here. Maybe just to to start, I think, Owen, you’ve been in the CEO seat about two and a half years now. Yeah. Something like that. Maybe just, you know, in that time here, how has the opportunity opportunity evolved?

And and maybe what have you seen over the past past couple of years as as CEO? Well, that’s that’s a good question.

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: There’s a couple pieces to it. So the the market has evolved where we’re starting to see customers get back on finance transformation journeys. I think for a while, things had sort of slowed down a little bit. And from what we’re seeing and experiencing in the conversations we’re having with customers directly with the big ERP players and then, very importantly, the consulting firms for what they’re doing and what they’re seeing, you’re starting to see that companies are trying to get more out of the monies they have spent in technology and and working with companies like BlackLine and others to then try to figure out how to get more out of it. And and so that has definitely been the biggest shift.

Now, obviously, AI has sort of left everybody with lots of questions, both seeing opportunities and threats in all of this. We see it much more as an opportunity than a threat, particularly for where we play in the office of the CFO. So that’s probably the biggest thing. I think the other thing that we’re seeing in our business a little bit more is there’s certain things where North America, The U. S.

In particular leads the world and then other parts of the world follow along. And I think what we’re seeing in Europe and parts of Asia would would sort of show that the the opportunities there are starting to get richer. That’s why we’ve asked Therese, our my co CEO, to spend more time in Europe because we’re seeing more opportunities begin to emerge there.

Steve, Interviewer: Okay. Maybe let’s touch on touch on Therese a little bit. Yeah. You know, recently announced that she’s moving away from a co CEO, and you’re the the sole CEO now. And she’s gonna be focusing on her founder role, think, is how she how she put it.

But maybe can you how is it different from a a day to day perspective in terms of how the the business is is run? And and maybe what are some of the implications of some of the leadership and other kind of board changes that have have happened over the past couple of quarters?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: So so I’d like to believe that Therese and I have broken the mold that show that co CEOs can work because, you know, it’s been a phenomenal partnership. And even though her title is gonna change, the way we interact won’t. I speak to her pretty much every day, sometimes three, four, five times a day as we’re trying to work through different different things, and I wouldn’t expect that that would change so much. You know, for her, you know, what she really loved doing is spending time with customers and innovating with customers. And what she doesn’t like is, like, sitting in chairs like this and having to answer questions and and deal with HR matters and all the other stuff that goes along with it.

So she’s she’s probably the happiest I’ve ever seen her when when she said she didn’t really wanna, you know, do the co CEO role any longer. But I I think she’s gonna continue to be a great contributor, in the leadership team. She’s still staying on our executive committee. She’s still gonna be on our board of directors. And I think if she were sitting here, she’d say to you, oh, and I haven’t had this much fun since I’ve just founded the company in the last two years.

So hasn’t been easy, but, you know, I think, we’re gonna keep on on moving on. They’ll change some of the reporting lines a little bit in the leadership. So previously, you know, sort of she had the product and tech leaders reporting to her, and I had everybody else. We’ll obviously take responsibility for them, but, you know, not much of a shift there. And then from a boardroom perspective, we have made a number of changes to the board.

We added two former CEOs in the last couple of months. One was the CEO of Delay Consulting, the other CEO of a of a a SaaS technology company. And and what we’re really looking for in the boardroom, there’s people that that have walked in these shoes, understand the issues, and can help to really drive, change forward. And then the other thing that we did was we asked David Henshall, you know, somebody that many of you may know from the investor community, to take over as our our lead independent director. Our current lead independent director was is 80 years old.

He’s, you know, said, I don’t want him to meet me. He said, I don’t wanna be Joe Biden. And so it’s time for me to to step aside. And so he’s still on the board. I’m hoping that he continues to to wanna be on the board because he’s a great resource, but, you know, that’s the other change we’ve made.

Okay.

Steve, Interviewer: Alright. Makes that that makes complete sense. Maybe talk a little bit about the ERP upgrade cycle, that opportunity, and and the I think you as you mentioned earlier, kind of the, you know, financial transformation is starting to kick off a little bit again. Just maybe what have what have you seen out there from the customers that are that’s given you kind of confidence in this opportunity, and maybe how has,

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: you know, the dealer environment shifted over the past past few quarters? Yeah. I I think the the thing that’s been most remarkable for BlackLine is the mindset that we’re seeing from the big ER players, but particularly SAPs, which are who is our most important strategic relationship. And know, as we as we have shared, we went through a pretty major reset at the end of last year with SAP, and then throughout this year, that’s continuing to evolve. But I think there’s a couple of things that that have happened that that will benefit BlackLine.

So, the CEO of of, SAP, Christian Klein, a great guy, he’s he’s very hands on with customers. He experienced firsthand the concept of finance first. So the big ERP system integrator on that project, which was a combination of Deloitte and ClearSalting, they really encouraged Exxon to move forward with with finance at the core because just doing a big ERP lift and shift doesn’t add a lot of value, but you can get a lot of value out of what what what BlackLine can bring to those customers. That was great to have. It was a great success.

But what really then propelled that was two things. One is unbeknownst to any of us, the CFO of Exxon got on their earnings call in May and and talked about the power of BlackLine and what that had done for their organization from a accuracy of information, the timeliness of information, the confidence that she and her team could have in making decisions based on really reliable data was very important. And then they they there was the Sapphire conference for SAP where both Delta and Exxon did these case studies, and Delta’s another really great success. And so what’s happened is the the quota carrying reps at places like SAP have now said, wait a minute. You know, if I start with finance first, there’s this really powerful tool.

There’s these great solutions out there that is going to help me to help my customer more. And so that’s been the shift. It’s not necessarily a larger percentage of of deals that SAP and other ERPs are pursuing, but where we’re positioned in that narrative has changed dramatically. And I think we’ve shared with you, previously, BlackLine was sort of almost like an opt in on a bill of materials. If you ever had the displeasure of having to read one, they go on and on and on.

And in the last couple of items, there is something like for, you know, what BlackLine would bring. That’s now more of a it’s an opt out versus an opt in. So a customer literally has to say, no, we’re not gonna go with BlackLine again, positioning us more importantly because of the importance of finance first and the transformation. So that’s the biggest shift. We’ve seen that in our conversations with Workday and some of the other ERP players that are out there.

So that’s it more than anything else for us.

Steve, Interviewer: Okay. I mean, that that’s interesting. I mean, you know, Exxon, probably a great reference customer that that that can begin to or that’s using you, and I’m sure that probably gets the message out there a little bit more so in in kind of the opt in versus opt out kind of dynamic. I guess with both those things going on, like, when does that maybe start to to show up a little bit more? How do you

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: think about the time line of of of what that could actually look like? So, you know, again, you you kinda gotta go through the reset, and I I try to remind people. January ’24, SAP made some pretty big strategic decisions about reducing a lot of people in their organization. Then in July, our key sponsor left. And that’s when in August, Therese and I, went over to see Christian and say, where where do we wanna go with this relationship?

What can we do? And we built we built that literally over, you know, the last, you know, nine, ten, twelve months. So then how does that begin to manifest itself? Well, if you start to look internally at what we see, it’s the number of opportunities that are now showing up with SAP. It’s the size of those opportunities.

It’s the positioning. Their sales cycle is long. BlackLine is, you know, roughly nine to twelve months. SAP is even longer than that. But you’re starting to see that now working its way through.

I’d like to see some positive news in the fourth quarter. Remember, SAP does 40% of its business in the fourth quarter of a year. Mhmm. And then, again, as we start to get into next year, I think that’s when we really will see even more of the momentum. But everything that we would want to see is working its way through the pipe, the teaming, the collaboration, getting to a golden architecture that we go into the market, which, you know, in the past, this might sound odd to you, we’d go into a room to to pitch SAP and BlackLine, and it wouldn’t be on one page.

You’d have an SAP page, a BlackLine page, and you left the customer to figure it out. Now we’re able to sort of show that in a in what we call a golden architecture, and I think that is, again, gonna start to show up meaningfully, you know, in next year, but I’m expecting, you know, some good results for us in the fourth quarter. Okay.

Steve, Interviewer: No. That’s, that that that’s great to hear. And maybe we will start to then connect this to, you know, the medium term, longer term model that you that you have out there. Guess, you help us maybe bridge the gap in terms of what maybe you know, does the macro need to get better for for you to be able to make that happen? Is are we kind of seeing, like, the early stages of it with this pipeline development that you’re talking about that maybe that helps kind of, you know, get back to a low to mid teens kind of growth outlook?

Just can you help us bridge the gap there from from where we’re at?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: So Matt knows I say this. I don’t ever blame the macro for anything. It’s you know, listen. There are macroeconomic realities that we all have to deal with. But I think for us and we Matt and I will tag team on this because he can maybe walk you through the bridge.

But what we’re seeing, you know, in our pipeline build is is better opportunities with the right customers. Our win rates are starting to improve, because if you pick the right customers, you’re gonna generally have a better chance of of driving success. So that’s all sort of taking place in the market. I, you know, I I would have my head buried in the sand if I didn’t worry about tariffs and what might go on with the interest rates and Federal Reserve and geopolitics and all that other stuff, but those are the things we can’t control. But what we can control is can we deliver a world class platform to our customers where they can really achieve greater returns on investment and drive down total cost of ownership.

So I’m a bit maniacal on certain things. And and so for me, when I think about what can make BlackLine successful is what can we do for our customers, and that is for us to continue to innovate. We’ve got a a slew of announcements next week we’re gonna share with AI and why that’s a beneficiary tailwind for BlackLine versus a headwind. And then also, how do we drive that that value into our customers quicker through our partners, through our own experiences with professional services, our customer success team, all empowered by agentic implementation and optimization tools that will accelerate, you know, the capture value much more quickly. That’s the the big reveal for next week, so now you gotta sneak pre sneak preview.

But, Matt, you wanna talk about the

Steve, Interviewer: Yeah.

Matt, BlackLine: So on the bridge, I think last November, when we had our last analyst day, we talked about the path to that 13 to 16 growth in that twenty to twenty twenty seven to 2029 time frame. And so kind of there’s a lot of component pieces, you know, across existing customers, new customers, and pricing and packaging, how we delineate there. So if you think about all the different investments that we have made and some of the initial results we’ve seen, things like our new platform pricing model starting to show up, Studio three sixty and the release of that earlier this year, our industry initiatives, our new market, like public sector that we had our first win for sponsorship and moving forward with the federal authorization process there. International opportunity. Net new innovation, things like high frequency recs, operational recs, and the AI announcements that will be coming next week.

So there’s six, seven, eight different levers, if you will, that support growth going forward. And the interesting thing, and I’m sure everybody can appreciate, there’s not one big bet that is 90% of the growth. It’s fairly evenly distributed, half a point to a point and a half of incremental growth coming from all of those different buckets, knowing, of course, some will outperform, some may underperform a little bit. And, of course, there’s different time horizons as well, right? Pricing showing up this year, FedRAMP, SAP probably more materially in ’twenty six and beyond.

But you’re seeing sort of the early indications of that inflection point building. Right? Our full year guide is around 7%. We did 6% in q one, seven percent in q two. Guide for q three is seven plus.

Implied guide for q four is eight plus. You kinda take that and correlate it to a lot of the forward looking metrics that we delivered in q two across RPO of 11% growth, billings of 11%, CRPO and ARR at 9%. And you take what you just talked about from a pipeline perspective. And so it gives us a lot of confidence in terms of continuing to build off of the initial acceleration we’re seeing this year and into ’26 and and into that 13 to 16% target range. Okay.

I do wanna keep this inter interactive. So if there’s any questions in the audience, we wanna wanna make sure to, to to get to those. But on the, on the revenue side of the equation, yeah, you

Steve, Interviewer: did talk about an acceleration in the second half. As maybe we think about, you know, ’26, 27, what are maybe the things we should be thinking about or keeping in mind as we think about a a further potential for acceleration, especially as you have all these kind of newer initiatives ramping up?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: Yeah. I I think maybe Matt and I can tag team because we don’t always give the same answer. So I I think from my vantage point, what our customers are asking for us to to do and what we are doing with them is continuing to cocreate, ideate, innovate, whatever word you wanna use, solutions that matter to them. And, you know, we shared, you know, the first large win we’ve had with what I would call nonfinancial, accounting solutions. Right?

So working with very large oil and gas major to to to handle all their wrecks, and inventory counts and things of that nature, not from, like, the dollars, but all the other things that are associated with the actual accounts of those things. That opportunity for us is very, very large with our customers, whether they’re banks with security accounts or whatever they may be. There’s all these kinds of things that we we’re starting to see the opportunity that we’re creating with our customers based upon their demand. I think, again, what we’re gonna share from an AI perspective, and and the tools that will further you know, you we don’t release AI as a separate thing. We’re just I said to somebody this morning, you know, our AI approach is like the old BASF commercial.

It it’s not gonna make our product. It’s gonna make it better. And that’s what we’re trying to do, and we’re still gonna allow the humans to still control what what the AI does. But that is going to be a big differentiator for us, and I think it’s gonna accelerate the shift from user based pricing to platform pricing and consumption based pricing, which is an important piece for us to to move forward. The federal space is a very, very large opportunity, and it’s not just in the US federal government.

It’s Government is the largest industry everywhere in the world in every country. And so plenty of opportunity for us to, once we complete our FedRAMP certification here, to use that in other marketplaces. Industry has been a huge accelerant for us. When you serve eight of the top 10 oil and gas majors or eight of the top 10 media and entertainment companies, pick your favorite eight of anything. And when you can get those customers to talk to one another and share experiences, and you can also show your customer, hey.

You’re only doing half as well as these other customers. Do you want me to connect you? Or we can connect you to your peers and help you figure out how to get more out of BlackLine, and we can help you do that, or your partner can help you you do that. So those are the things that that are just gonna drive the the the revenue growth. And I think we’re we’re we’re pretty confident that, you know, absent some great, you know, market catastrophe, we’re we’re well on the way for what we should be, what we said we would do and are doing.

And and, you know, I think we’re gonna

Steve, Interviewer: be taking market share from others. That’s great. I guess while we have you and and we’re talking about the Fed side of the the equation, Can we talk a little bit about that opportunity and and maybe what’s you know, what BlackLine can do in that space? Maybe why is now the right time to kinda go after the the federal side of the, of the equation? Just how do you kinda think about executing on that?

Yeah.

Matt, BlackLine: I mean, it’s it’s the public sector broadly, fed, state, local. And we’ve had, you know, call it dabble. We have some customers, some quasi, government entities that we’ve had for for a while. But, really, from our perspective, it looks and feels a lot like our enterprise, mega enterprise base maybe a few years ago. They’re a little bit behind on the technology curve.

They have a lot of disjointed processes and systems that they’re using in their financial systems landscape. And one of the bigger things that has kinda come to fruition, at least with the latest administration, is using more technology instead of, you know, just hiring people. And then two is to prepare for, achieve, maintain auditability going forward, which is a huge piece at the federal, the state, and the local level. And so our financial close solutions sold into that large market where we have, you know, de minimis penetration today It’s really all greenfield net new opportunity for us, sizable deals. You know, our first customer sponsor, right, is a one of many component parts of a larger agency.

And so it’s very natural to continue to spread amongst that agency as they implement and use and see benefits from it. And so it’s it’s us doing it directly, but the partner network that we’ve spent years cultivating, whether that be the big SIs or even SAP, have large footprints in that space. So it just helps us to move quicker and to speak the language of the public sector, which, to be fair, is a bit different than the commercial sector in terms of their needs, demands, and requirements, more importantly, whether that’s security, whether that’s, you know, the types of people that can interact with those agencies, etcetera. So we’ve seen the success other companies have had. There’s no, you know, doubt that it’s a big opportunity set.

So from our standpoint, we like what we see. We’ve had a lot of really good progress in a fairly short amount of time, and we’re just gonna continue to leverage that success going forward to not just serve the civilian agencies, but also look to serve the noncivilian, more defense related agencies as

Steve, Interviewer: we move forward. Okay. That makes sense. I’m gonna pause there to see if there’s any, any questions in the room here. I wanna ask on, the product side a little bit a little bit more.

It does feel like there has been quite a lot of innovation that’s that’s come out over the past few years, and it seems like the pace has definitely picked up quite a bit from from that perspective. Just I I guess, what has maybe changed internally that’s enabled that? How much of that is driven by some of the AI initiatives that’s that that are supporting that? And just how do you think about the future road map and what the products that looks like from from here?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: Yeah. And and we’re gonna share a lot of the product road map again next next week. But so what’s changed? Look. When when Theresa and I came back into the company, remember, I was sitting on the board.

She was on the board. We could see the company was not as focused on innovation through the lens of a customer. We were innovating, but not necessarily on things that were gonna resonate with customers. So we really got back to the roots of what is it that that customers need. We changed out, you know, a large percentage of our their product and tech team.

Tried to get people that were focused on, again, what mattered. There’s a there’s a rigor and discipline to what we what we’re trying to do. We manage. Again, I’m a recovering consultant. Like and so it’s all about the discipline and rigor of getting stuff done and and meeting the milestones.

And so, yes, we’ve created more it’s a it’s an approach culturally, philosophically, and and we’re testing it with our customers and our partners all along the way. So there’s very little wasted effort on things that are not gonna have some level of market receptivity. So we’re not just innovating for the sake of innovating. So that’s probably the biggest the biggest change, that accountability. We’ve got a great, great, you know, chief technology officer in Jeremy.

I’m I couldn’t be more pleased with what he’s done. Great here in our product side, Charlie Gauke, and she’s done an an unbelievable job. So we’re we feel pretty fortunate. I think the hardest thing for us is we’re innovating so quick, keeping our own organization up to speed, and then keeping our partners up to speed. And then how do we tell that to customers who you know, they got them you know, they all have day jobs.

Right? So how do you make sure that what you’re creating get into into their hands and they can use it? And, again, for me, that’s that’s been the biggest thing I’ve been trying to focus on the last six months or so is how do we just make it easier? How do we help our customers take what we’re creating and get it into their organization recognizing the constraints that they’re all operating under? And the better we can demonstrate a lower cost of ownership and a higher ROI, the better off we’re gonna be to help them succeed.

Sure.

Steve, Interviewer: I guess with all those products, is is there been anything that has been maybe resonating a little bit more so recently with, with with with customers? Or as you kind of, like, look at the pipeline, like, what what areas are maybe showing a little bit more right now?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: I think, the thing that’s most interesting for us right now is Studio three sixty because it’s not it’s not your traditional record to report or invoice to cash. And, you know, I’m I’m finding that we have to spend a fair bit of time explaining the power of what it does and what it can go do because it’s you gotta look at Studio three sixty almost like the universe. It’s gonna continuously expand. It’s never gonna be done because of all the things we’re trying to do that we can connect it to, the information it can take and analyze. And so that is the thing that’s most promising.

We’ve got, you know, I wanna say maybe a 100 or so customers at this time in various stages of of using it, and we need we’re trying to accelerate that that even more. But that that does take us, you know, trying to get a little bit higher in our organization because it’s not the users. It’s, like, it’s more of interest to more senior executives. So that’s certainly the one with the most interest. Obviously, we’ll share, you know, our AI story next week, which we’re very confident is gonna re receive well in the market.

And then and then interestingly enough, you know, it’s it’s been the enhancements we’ve made to our core products. You know, the volumes that we can handle today, you know, compared to where we were twenty four months ago, the frequency with which things can be done is significantly different and better. And those matter to industries like retail and financial services where, you know, it’s billions and billions of transactions being done, you know, quite quite right early. And so, you know, that’s it. And then I think the other thing that the tariffs may have a positive impact, we’ll see.

We’ve certainly had some good successes, so far year to date is in intercompany. You might say, why? Well, you know, if you think about supply chains and how they’re being disrupted, and one of the things with our intercompany solution is it helps you to minimize your tax liability by taking your tax strategy and then making sure that the accounting follows all of that so that whatever your lawyers and your accountants and other people come up with to create, you know, your tax minimization plan, BlackLine software can be configured to support that. And that saves, you know, companies a lot of time, money dealing with auditors. You know, if you wind up paying a tax bill in country a and you overpaid in country a, good luck trying to get your money back from country b if that’s where you thought the refund was coming from.

You’re never gonna see it. And so we’ve been able to sort of really demonstrate some very good value to our customers in in in that regard. So those are probably just a few, like picking which your which is your favorite child.

Steve, Interviewer: Yeah. I guess I’d say, it’s a bit of a good problem to have.

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: Right. We’re yes. Right now, we’re not good good problems.

Steve, Interviewer: Yeah. I wanna touch on Studio three sixty a little bit more. I think I think for a while, that seemed like that was Teresa’s Teresa’s baby, and and she really, you know, kind of kind of owned that. But as you think about kind of the next step in terms of monetizing that, getting that into the hands of customers, it seems like it is a bit more of kind of a platform. Customers need to kinda figure out how to how to utilize and leverage it.

So how do you make that easy for them to understand the the use cases, how it can really kind of help enable them and make them, I guess, more productive?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: Yeah. I mean, I think, again, that’s where the partnership with Snowflake came in. So I I don’t know the exact numbers, Matt, but I’ve I you know, we’re probably gonna have more than our more than half of our 4,400 customers now using some combination of, you know, Snowflake with BlackLine’s Studio three sixty, if I have my facts right on that. That and so the the the thing that that Studio will do is it’s going to allow the CFO and the controller and she and her teams to to see everything across the office of CFO. And, you know, it started with SAP, BlackLine, and it’s expanding into Oracle and Workday.

It’ll explain it’ll expand into, you know, FP and A tools and treasury tools. Interestingly, you know, we’ve had a number of CEOs come talk to us about being trying to connect in some way, shape, or form for for what their solutions are. Because remember, what’s important about BlackLine and all this is we are sort of the single source of truth. You know, we’re as close to the headwater as you can be to keep information and data right. And so, if you’re further downstream, our information’s gonna flow into your solutions, and there’s a real power to that.

And and so, again, we’re engaging in those conversations, but that’s what what’s gonna be most valuable, to to our customers.

Steve, Interviewer: Okay. That makes, that that makes sense. I wanna ask on the AI opportunity for for for BlackLine. I I guess, how do you think about where the portfolio sits today and maybe how customers, you know, would think about leveraging those capabilities from from BlackLine?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: Again, we’ve got a lot of announcements we’re gonna share next next week with all of this. You know, some people said, why why is BlackLine taking so long to get more out in the marketplace with AI? And the answer to that is it’s not that we’ve taken longer. It’s we’ve kinda done it what I view as the right way. Remember, for what our our solution is, it can’t be 95% right.

It has to be a 100% right. Because the risk if you have a blow in your financial statements is anything from, you know, significant deficiency, material weakness, restatement to somebody’s going to jail. And and so for us, we’ve been building our AI capabilities in conjunction with conversations with the world’s largest auditing firms, working through them with regulators trying to understand. So I was on the phone yesterday with the head of, audit and regulatory for one of the big four firms, and we were talking about, you know, the the criticality of what we’re releasing next week and how they feel good about the the auditability, the transparency, the reliability of what we’ve been able to build because auditors can’t take things in a black box. Management certainly can’t, and the regulators will never accept a black box.

And so what makes BlackLine unique in this regard is we understand what it takes for all those different constituencies to sign off, and we built our capabilities that way. So you’ll see, you know, a solution next week, which, you know, does all the work for the user, and then she she or he can say, show me the work if they wanna see it, and then they can sort of validate and check all that. It’s kinda like the old days when you’re in school and you had to show your math work. Like, you couldn’t just give the answer. You had to show how you got there.

And and that’s what we’ve built in, and and that’s what matters to finance teams, to the auditors, and to the regulators. And and so I don’t I’m I’m sure no one else has done what we’ve done because we’ve talked to the firms. They’re our partners, and I like to brag about the fact that if you take the largest firms in the world, almost all of them run on BlackLine internally. They all rely on BlackLine for all the audits, and almost all of them implement BlackLine on behalf of customers from a consulting perspective. So that to me is is what is our competitive advantage of what we’re we’re going through here.

Steve, Interviewer: Yep. That makes that makes sense. I guess maybe high level from, like, an AI adoption perspective. To your point, like, this is something that needs to be a 100% right. You can’t risk it.

We think about the cloud transition historically that was maybe a little bit slower within the, you know, ERP finance Coming to an end, Steve.

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: I promise. Coming to an end. Come hell or high water.

Steve, Interviewer: Wait. With that context, how do you think about what the AI rollout will look like within the office of CFO? Like, how do you think about the the risk versus the opportunity around that? Yeah.

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: So I I happen to sit on the public a board of a public company, and I asked our audit partner for I said, you know, John, what are you guys telling your customers, you know, your CFO customers about the adoption of AI, and their advice is to go slow and be careful. And I think, you know, you’re gonna hear next week. So we have a panel discussion, at Beyond the Black with a, a chief accounting officer and what he or he is using his business, what the head of a big four regulatory practice is advising customers, and then a consulting partner that runs technology for Ernst and Young. And all we’re gonna talk about how that’s all evolving in the marketplace. I think it’s gonna start slower, and then it will accelerate.

I think it’s been cautious so far. Even things like our document summarizer, which we rolled out a little over a year ago, which basically takes, you know, contracts and information, just write you a summary so you don’t have to write it. It’s progressing, but it went slower than we thought, and people were just very cautious. You know, right now, it’s, like, I think it’s about 65% acceptance rate for those that are using it. Say, they don’t even change a word.

Mhmm. And that keeps getting better month by month. But, yeah, there’s just still a cautious nature of of that. And that’s you know, I would say that’s a pretty low risk value proposition having something summarize what what’s been written. So when we start to do reconciliations and matching and other things using AI, I’m sure there’s gonna be just a little bit more of, you know, the Missouri approach show me.

Like and that’s why we built the software the way we have so that you can see it versus just relying on on what the output is.

Steve, Interviewer: Okay. We got about a last minute here. Get on the blocks next week. What should we be looking forward to? What are you kinda most excited about?

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: Yeah. So I think we’re we’re most excited about, you know, what we’re gonna release around the, the product road map, both, know, for things that are now in the market and then and things that we’ve got coming over the next next, couple of quarters. So that’ll be one. The second will be some of the announcements we’re making about how we’re gonna help drive time to value for our customers through implementation and optimization tools. And then the third is, you know, many of you have not met our new chief commercial officer.

So I think you’re gonna really in enjoy him. He brings an intensity to the business that that I feel really good about, and and our team really is enjoying the privilege of working with him. So I think those would be the three things that may be the most exciting. And if you’re a gambler, maybe he’s gonna win some money.

Matt, BlackLine: Yeah. Sounds like a sounds like

Steve, Interviewer: a plan. I think we’re we’re out of time here. But, Owen, Matt, wanna thank you so much for, for being here, and, wanna thank everybody in the

Matt, BlackLine: room for for attending as well. So thanks again. Thank you

Owen, CEO, BlackLine: very much. Thanks, Steve. Thank you.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.