Middle-Market CFO Interview: Charles Best of BlackLine Systems

As the CFO of a firm whose software offerings are designed to help other middle-market CFOs cut loose from the day-to-day grind of manual processes, Charles Best of BlackLine Systems is passionate about the availability of new tools for finance professionals via the cloud. MME asked Best about how he views the cloud’s impact on his own day-to-day role.

MME: It seems that more and more middle-market firms are getting turned on to the economics behind cloud computing applications. What have cloud applications meant to your finance department?

Best: It’s wonderful to know that as a CFO, I now have the tools to serve some very specific needs, allowing me to focus on more strategic concerns. The cloud has made this possible. My background was in manufacturing, and the complexity of the close process always made it a big focus. With these tools, the data is there, and rather than worry about a close, I already have a full analysis of data that I can provide to other people so that they can make decisions. Putting individual applications together and having them communicate automatically or through automated steps is where the business world is moving.

MME: What types of skills and experience are you now looking to bring into the finance department?

Best: I’m not looking for debit and credit support staff. Instead, the people I’m looking for now are people who are skilled in the applications and tools area. My team here does quite a bit with tools, and they reconcile very efficiently how data moves from one tool to another. I need people who are effective at managing data and reconciling data from one application to another to validate that our processes are working as opposed to entering an invoice into an ERP system only to pull it back out to write checks. We write very few checks here. Our staff is small because the tools help us to get things done. These are staff and senior accountants who do a lot of different things … people with an accounting finance background, but who also know how to use tools. We really don’t have someone from the IT department helping us to implement these tools. They are relatively easy to implement.

MME: The finance function was originally designed to look backward and report the numbers. How have you retooled finance to look ahead?

Best: We bought a tool from Adaptive Planning that integrates with Salesforce.com and integrates with ADP. I have someone who is responsible for managing the process within the tool, and we have 8 or 10 people who now have access to that tool. They monitor and manage their portion of the forecasting activity. In the past, you’d have to send an Excel spreadsheet and send iterations back. Now we have this work flow tool that allows us to stay up to date and is so much more efficient.

MME: As a fast-growth firm, how are you able to keep track of new hires?

Best: Like any functional area, hiring has gotten more sophisticated. I can see into our 43 departments right now and view where we are from a headcount point of view, compared to budget. Our ability to see the information is now real-time.

MME: Compare the culture inside BlackLine’s finance function to that of older, more established firms. What are some differences?

Best: People adapt to SaaS tools here very comfortably, whereas in older companies that are more well established, there can be a hurdle when it comes to these gaining acceptance. We now have a culture or a mind-set that begins with the question, “How do we get data as quickly as we can?” As a CFO and a member of the management team, I want to think about where we want to be in 3 to 5 years. Finance involves a lot of the back-end processes. The question I look to answer is, “What will be required of these processes in 3 to 5 years?”