BlackLine
Name the two other BlackLine partners at our tier level (Platinum).
Who are EY and Deloitte?
Clearsulting is a Platinum Partner and has been since the beginning of 2021. The only difference between EY and Deloitte's Platinum title is that they qualify as "Global Platinum Partner." We will not qualify for that until we influence revenue in APAC.
This is important because as we sell and expand BlackLine projects, tier can be leveraged as a differentiator. It, alongside our partner of the year awards, emphasize the depth of experience we have and the ability to collaborate with BlackLine effectively while implementing it at a client.
Who are two of the top Clearsulting competitors within the treasury space?
Who are Actualize and Deloitte?
Where do most clients start with Workiva?
What is SEC Reporting?
Is SEC reporting only for public companies?
Who is the typical sponsor/buyer of a OneStream project?
What is the office of the CFO and/or Head of FP&A?
Given OneStream's breadth of the platform, there could be a few different buyers and influencers in a OneStream initiative. Typical EPM/CPM customers include the FP&A organization (focused on budgeting / forecasting/ management reporting / data analytics) and Controllership (financial consolidation and external reporting). Typical titles that are involved may range from CFO, Director of FP&A or Planning, CAO, Controller, or Financial Systems.
Who is the typical buyer for Coupa?
What is the Office of Procurement?
There are two key metrics BlackLine requires we meet—ACV influence and ACV referral. What is the required ACV influence to maintain our current status (globally)?
What is $4.325mil?
This is the sum of the $4mil requirement in Americas and the $325k requirement in EMEA. There is no requirement for referrals, but it is beneficial to Clearsulting to make referrals as they contribute to our marketing development fund for spending next year. This fund pays for events like Wrigley Field, NYC, etc. We actually already hit the cap of $30k for 2023, largely driven by the Patrick Industries referral.
This matters because we should be hyperaware of the early stage conversations we are having that could be referrals. Those will result in more events in 2023. We also care to maintain partnership status to show our caliber as a partner and receive perks like the invitation to participate in SAP Insider. We will close Q2 with about $3mil ACV influence.
Who are Kyriba's top competitors in the market?
Who are Workiva's main competitors?
What is Audit Board, Thomson Reuters, and Microsoft Office?
Thompson Reuters - GSR
Audit Board - Integrated Risk
Microsoft Office - Wdesk
OneStream is a platform based solution which can support all EPM related processes like consolidations, budgeting & planning, management reporting and more. What are some examples of common EPM technologies? *Must get at least 3!
What is Excel, Planful, HFM, SAP, Oracle EPM, Tagetik, and Anaplan?
There are several technologies that OneStream competes with like Excel, Planful, HFM, SAP, Oracle EPM, Tagetik, and Anaplan. OneStream differentiates themselves by promoting the unified platform with extendable solutions, meaning a client can start with any single process and extend to other process areas.
How is Clearsulting tracked at Coupa?
What is a referral?
BlackLine has three key strategies for 2022:
- Acquisition of strategic logos and projects
- SAP alignment
- Leveraging technology to get ahead of compliance mandates / enhancing control in the UK
Name one key action Clearsulting is taking to ensure we are successful with the SAP strategy (there are multiple options).
What is:
SAP Insider Report
Upcoming thought leadership – S4!
Attendance at Sapphire
SAP subcontracting in EMEA
What is the GTM strategy for the Kyriba Alliance for 2022?
What is Mid-Market alignment?
Maintain and build upon Clearsulting’s brand and reputation as best in class implementation Partner within Kyriba and our mutual customers / prospects through targeting Mid-Market style projects. Offering flexible implementation options and account expansion.
Who is the typical buyer of Workiva?
What is the Office of the CFO?
Clearsulting’s two main strategies for OneStream this year are: (1) Power of the Platform (2) Healthcare Activation. What are some ways Clearsulting is activating those two strategies?
What is marketing initiatives?
For those of these strategies, we are activating them through marketing initiatives including:
-Content development
-Email Campaigns
-Socializing with prospects/reps
-Occasional enablement sessions and will look to do a webinar later in the year.
The Power of the Platform is a strategy to focus heavily on expanding our clients and current OneStream customers use of the platform (ex: Cru).
The Healthcare activation strategy focuses on leveraging the healthcare mini-book and one-pager that was developed last year to bring additional brand awareness to Clearsulting.
The Coupa alliance is still in incubation – what is the main strategy for Coupa in our first year?
What is brand awareness?
As Coupa is in incubation the main strategy is building brand awareness through establishing strong field alignment.
BlackLine outlined two priority products they are pushing in 2022. What are they?
What are AR and ICH?
BlackLine AR is an accounts receivable automation platform offered today, enabled by the acquisition of Rimilia in late 2020. Today it is inclusive of several products: Cash App, Credit and Risk Management, Collections Management, Disputes and Deductions, Team and Task, AR Intelligence.
The ICH product has been a priority for several years and with the recent acquisition of FourQ, won't be going anywhere. The tool is meant to centralize and streamline end-to-end intercompany accounting.
Why do you care? This is what BlackLine is pushing at your clients and prospects. As advisors, we need to be able to provide a perspective as companies evaluate technology for these business processes.
Clearsuting has recently closed two deals: Penn State Health and Newrez. What is a common theme amongst these two projects?
What is optimization?
What are other Workiva use-cases that Clearsulting can deliver?
What is Insurance Stat Reporting, Financial Reporting, Annual and Interim, Management Reporting, Fund Company Reporting, SEC/SEDAR Reporting (Public Company Reporting), Cash Flow Reporting?
What kind of OneStream deals are we targeting in the second half to upskill our team and move quicker through the partner leveling tier?
What are technical-led implementations of the core platform?
Due to some lessons learned in the first half, we are heavily focused on closing deals that are more technical-led and traditional implementations of the core OneStream platform. These types of deals will allow our team to upskill quicker and more efficiently, as well as get more projects under our belt to move up partner level tiering faster. In order to reach Gold partner level, we need to have 7 projects live and approved, as well as 5+ Senior Resources.
As we get our Coupa alliance up and running, we have been doing work at Howard Hughes. What was the main scope there and what has our team accomplished?
What is optimization?
Howard Hughes for optimization. The client went live on Coupa in October and were at 0% utilization of the platform at their 30 day benchmark. They also had hundreds of help desk tickets. Our team stepped in and stabilized Coupa and have signed multiple SOW since helping them further optimize their use of Coupa
What are the proper steps to take if you need to subcontract BlackLine hours for an upcoming project or need a quote to provide in a proposal?
What is call Hanna Cantwell?
See steps in study guide.
What is a common challenge that is faced within the Kyriba sales organization that directly impacts partners?
What is Kyriba's "land" vs "expand" mentality
What is Wdata?
What is the integration technology for Workiva?
Wdata allows clients to connect and consolidate data from multiple sources across the Workiva platform.
OneStream's core functionality includes consolidations and FP&A. However, they are starting to expand their MarketPlace solutions to financial close solutions like account reconciliations and transaction matching.
What is a common challenge that Clearsulting faces due to our technology alliance ecosystem?
What is Channel Conflict?
Given OneStream is expanding their financial close solutions (which is part of their marketplace solutions), they are competing with point solution technologies like BlackLine. Since Clearsulting is such a strong partner with BlackLine, we have had challenging conversations and navigated situations in which both technologies are in play (ex: Patrick / PLP).
This is important because while we have capabilities in both BlackLine and OneStream, a strategy we are pushing is full use of the platform due to our expertise in EPM & R2R (ex: core consolidations + acct recs)
What are the headwinds we are facing with Coupa?
What is:
-Disjointed alliance support
-A huge and largely net new sales force
-Small, deeply entrenched partner ecosystem