Preparing for Finance Success in 2025 with BlackLine’s Studio360 Platform

Finance departments within SAP organisations are under increasing pressure to deliver enhanced operations and data-driven insights to guide decision makers. Yet many companies still struggle with siloed systems and outdated processes.

SAPinsider’s recent SAP S/4HANA Finance State of the Market benchmark research report found that the demand for improved reporting, planning and insights from finance is the top driver of how companies organise their SAP S/4HANA finance strategy. Yet all too often, companies struggle to manage their data, generate actionable insights, and implement new workflows that can benefit their organisation.

Studio360

To help organisations overcome these issues, BlackLine offers the BlackLine Studio360 Platform. This new solution is designed to link and streamline all finance operations within a company, providing users with a comprehensive and integrated solution.

“Studio360 is the new gold standard for digital finance transformation. It reflects BlackLine’s two-decade commitment to empowering the Office of the CFO with innovative, customer-driven solutions. Studio360 offers our customers an accurate, efficient, and intelligent approach to financial operations that gets them future-ready,” said BlackLine co-CEO and Founder Therese Tucker.

The BlackLine Studio360 Platform has five components, all designed to bolster financial operations in different ways:

1. Studio360 Integrate – Integrate links data from SAP systems and their related applications. This gives users a single source of truth for all financial data. Additionally, t also helps users to cleanse and harmonise the data, allowing them to use the data to generate insights.
2. Studio360 Orchestrate – With Orchestrate users can optimise and automate finance workflows across the entire SAP ecosystem. Making operations more streamlined and accessible helps essential tasks run more smoothly and quickly.
3. Studio360 Visualize – Modern organisations need a high-level and comprehensive view into how their organisation is operating. This information, gathered through Visualize, helps leaders keep track of operations and uses AI to highlight exceptions and ensure KPIs are met.
4. Studio360 Blueprint – Often, organisations often feel unprepared when adding in new processes like record-to-report or invoice-to-cash. In this scenario, they can use Blueprint’s list of process best practices templates to optimise workflows and seamlessly enact new processes.
5. Studio360 Control – Many finance teams have concerns about keeping pace with compliance requirements. This is where Control comes into play – helping companies keep track of financial governance requirements and enforces policies and certifications. This allows users to make risk management a priority. Also, when linked with the rest of the data throughout SAP, Control has a holistic view of all financial information, ensuring all regulations are met.

What This Means for Mastering SAP Insiders

Companies run better with a holistic view. Without a centralised dashboard, companies will likely struggle to gain an accurate understanding of their finance processes. Companies should invest in solutions that provide a detailed and accurate picture of their operations.

Siloes can be damaging and should be removed. Over the years, many SAP organisations have workflows develop in disparate locations. Gradually, these important tasks drift apart, resulting in many siloed data sources and depriving decision makers of the opportunity to look at one clear picture of how their organisation is performing. Solutions like Studio360 remove these siloes, gathering data together and providing a holistic look at the enterprise so leaders can make better decisions.

Automation is the key to efficiency. Many organisations have yet to embrace automation. This is likely holding them back from running at maximum efficiency. Therefore, when companies automate repetitive tasks, they reduce errors and free up workers to focus on important tasks.