BlackLine Unveils New Tiered Strategic Alliance Program for Consulting Partners

Responding to the tremendous growth in the number of global and regional advisory firms over the last several years, BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL) has unveiled a new tiered program to generate additional value working more closely with its strategic consulting partners. The new program combines BlackLine’s existing Affiliate and Enterprise Consulting Partner Programs into a single, expanded and unified BlackLine Alliance Partner Program designed to provide an even greater level of expertise and service to enterprise and mid-market customers undergoing digital financial transformations.

“Gartner research shows that 72 percent of organizations have plans to leverage the cloud for financial applications in the next three years.”*

“We believe that the Gartner forecast presents an incredibly compelling opportunity for BlackLine and our partners,” said Michael Otto, vice president, global strategic alliances, BlackLine. “By combining our market-leading financial close platform with the expertise of leading financial advisory firms, we provide customers access to a best-of-breed solution coupled with extensive thought leadership. As a result, customers can leverage BlackLine and our partners as true strategic advisors in their digital financial transformation journeys.”

Based on a clearly defined tiered model that rewards success, five new partner tiers provide growing degrees of go-to-market enablement, incentives, funding, training, recognition and marketing support. As partners drive results, they obtain greater access to additional BlackLine benefits and resources. Tiers include Select, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum and have either a global or regional designation.

Achieving a specific tier is based on a partner’s volume of business in assisting customers with their finance transformation journeys using BlackLine’s solutions, as well as the degree to which partners scale their practice with the required level of training, marketing, practice-building and go-to-market investments. BlackLine consulting partners can further set their practices apart with industry expertise, geographic focus and the delivery of other integrated solutions. Partner tiers will be awarded on a yearly basis.

Going into 2019, Deloitte and EY have each achieved the highest tier as global Platinum Partners, based on strong growth both in the number of customer engagements and substantial investments in their BlackLine services.

In North America, tenured BlackLine partners UHY and Vaco each have achieved Platinum status for this year, with RGP and Clearsulting reaching the Gold level. Silver status has been obtained by RSM in the United States, and also by Improven BV in Europe.

For a full list of active BlackLine Alliance Partners or to learn more, please review the alliance partner section on BlackLine’s website at https://www.blackline.com/partners/strategic-alliance-partners.

*Smarter With Gartner, “3 Things to Know Before Moving Financial Applications to the Cloud”, May 20, 2019, https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/3-things-to-know-before-moving-financial-applications-to-the-cloud/