EY, the leading global professional services organization, and financial automation software leader, BlackLine, Inc. today announced the formation of a strategic alliance in India to offer finance process automation to businesses across a variety of sectors. The alliance in India follows the announcement last year of a global strategic alliance between EY and BlackLine.

The alliance will help expand EY’s process automation capabilities and finance transformation services offered to businesses in India to improve Finance and Accounting operations and help them govern and automate their risk processes. Also, as part of the alliance, EY and BlackLine will help businesses automate previously manual processes and support digital finance transformation.

“We live in the age of the digital organization wherein it’s become a necessity for the finance function to automate error-prone manual processes. EY has been helping businesses to design automation enabled transformation process that supports their journey towards becoming an agile and intelligent enterprise. Together with BlackLine, EY will enable businesses to stay adaptable, insightful and cost-effective offering a unique set of tools and modules including BlackLine’s ‘Smart Close’, that will help improve governance and transparency both within an organization and externally,” says Kamalanand Nithianandan, Partner, Advisory Services, EY India.

“Today, CFOs are at the center of driving performance improvement across businesses of all sizes. The EY and BlackLine alliance will help address CFOs’ challenges in the Indian market by increasing efficiency and performance in the finance function through the improvement and automation of critical finance operations like accounting, financial close, intercompany processing, reconciliations, and tax management. The alliance will further help CFOs reduce cost and risk and

Together with BlackLine, EY will enable businesses to stay adaptable, insightful and cost-effective offering a unique set of tools and modules including BlackLine’s ‘Smart Close’, that will help improve governance and transparency both within an organization and externally

free up resources to spend more time on financial planning and analysis, providing higher levels of insight to business decision-makers,” says Sibjyoti Basu, National Leader - Alliance and Ecosystem, EY.

EY will help businesses streamline their enterprise business processes using BlackLine’s Continuous Accounting capabilities. The offering leverages emerging robotic process automation tools, traditional enterprise resource planning systems and the capabilities of BlackLine’s cloud platform to help businesses automate manual-intensive Finance and Accounting processes for improved efficiency and a more predictable workload for finance professionals. The offering will continuously improve the quality and accuracy of reported financial information, and increase visibility and control over critical finance and accounting data. Besides, it will govern and automate the management of intercompany transactions and respond to increased regulatory scrutiny in this area.

“Our strategic alliance in India is a manifestation of our global go-to-market strategy and extends our longstanding partnership with EY. BlackLine and EY are uniquely positioned to help provide a foundation to CFOs for continuous improvement in their Finance and Accounting functions that supports their long- and short-term strategy and responds to rising competitive pressures. Together with EY’s in-depth experience and hands-on advisory services, we are confident that we will be able to meet the different requirements of Indian organizations,” says Terry Smagh, S.V.P & GM - APAC, BlackLine.

As part of the alliance, EY will provide its experience in data integration, finance and ERP technology and experience in tax and financial advisory to develop an end-to-end solution and a sustainable foundation for continuous improvement backed by BlackLine’s portfolio.