BlackLine Systems Wins Prestigious Patrick Soon-Shiong Innovation Award

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Enterprise-class financial software company BlackLine Systems was honored last week with a Patrick Soon-Shiong Innovation Award, recognizing the company for innovation stemming from the simple concept of leveraging technology to optimize and automate accounting processes to help companies save time, reduce costs and make life easier for those working in corporate accounting and finance departments.

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The Innovation Awards, presented annually by the Los Angeles Business Journal (LABJ), emphasize the importance of supporting innovation in order to foster the economic competitiveness of the Greater Los Angeles region. A past recipient of the LABJ's "Business Person of the Year" award and Innovation Awards sponsor/donor, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong knows as well as anyone that innovation, coupled with passion and hard work, is the engine for success in business.  Dr. Soon-Shiong's groundbreaking concepts for curing diabetes led to the first nanotechnology-based breast cancer drug, Abraxane, which is credited with saving thousands of lives. Now, for the fourth year, his love of innovation has prompted him to once again join the LABJ in handing out the prestigious Patrick Soon-Shiong Innovation Awards.

For years much of the work within accounting departments has been rote and manual-labor intensive. As a result, there's been a tidal wave of outsourcing designed to cut costs. But by outsourcing accounting jobs, companies often lose the valuable analytical skills and strategic value that accountants should be adding.  

By developing software (for the first time) to automate critical accounting processes, BlackLine Systems CEO and Founder Therese Tucker has helped improve the lives of accountants around the world.  BlackLine clients rave about how the software has "given them their lives back" – allowing them to spend more time at home with their families and also to focus on more important strategic issues at work.

BlackLine's innovation comes from bringing new technologies to support existing (and often mission-critical) accounting practices by offering software that automates the entire account reconciliation and financial close processes for Fortune 1,000 organizations. Accounting/finance managers and compliance executives around the world use the BlackLine Financial Close Suite to optimize processes that traditionally have been manual, labor-intensive and spreadsheet-driven. In addition to improving quality of life, BlackLine clients say the software has drastically cut costs (anywhere from 20 to more than 50 percent) and increased business performance and efficiencies, while providing complete visibility company-wide.  

BlackLine continues to add clients at an aggressive pace with a long list of global companies already on board including Achmea, Aflac, AT&T, Boeing, Eurostar International, Lafarge, Northrop Grumman and Qantas Airways.

The complete list of Winners and Finalists will be featured in a special section in the Nov. 25^th edition of the LABJ.

About BlackLine Systems
BlackLine Systems was the first to develop and offer a commercially available Balance Sheet Account Reconciliation solution. An experienced provider of software to companies from the Fortune 100 to beyond the Fortune 1,000, BlackLine provides quick-to-implement, scalable and easy-to-use applications that automate the entire financial close process to help improve financial controls for companies of all sizes. With more than 75,000 users in over 100 countries, BlackLine software applications complement existing Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

Though ERP-agnostic, the BlackLine Financial Close Suite for SAP® Solutions is an SAP-endorsed business solution – joining the ranks of fewer than 40 software offerings globally that are endorsed by the enterprise application software leader.

BlackLine offers clients its enterprise-class financial software in a simple and secure SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform. With a proven track record and a commitment to customer success, BlackLine seeks to reduce the burden the financial close places on accounting and finance professionals. 

BlackLine headquarters are in Los Angeles, with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, London, Melbourne, New York City and Sydney to serve the company's growing global client base. For more information, please visit www.blackline.com.  

Media Contact:
Kimberly Uberti
Director of Corporate Communications
BlackLine Systems
[email protected]

SOURCE BlackLine Systems