Aug 11, 2020 / 06:40PM GMT
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Okay. I think we are live. My name is Koji Ikeda. I am a SaaS applications analyst here at Oppenheimer. I am thrilled to have the entire BlackLine management team with us for the conversation, our virtual fireside chat. We have Therese Tucker, CEO for a little bit more; Marc Huffman, CEO in a little bit; and Mark Partin, the CFO. So thank you very much, all 3 of you for joining this conversation today. So just on a logistical standpoint for the listeners out there, you guys know the drill. (Operator Instructions)
I'm going to run through a couple of questions here, and then I'll run through whatever buy side questions come in through the application here.
Questions and Answers:
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior AnalystSo just to kick it off, some big news earlier this week or last week. Last week, when you guys reported Therese's CEO succession plan, your shift to executive chair, promotion of Marc H. to CEO. I guess big picture questions. Why now? What is the thought process? How are you thinking about the transition? And really, I think for the investors out there, how do we think about any potential execution risk during this transition?
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
Well, I think the most important way to consider this, Koji, is that this is a process that is taking multiple years to execute. Of course, Marc Huffman joined us 2.5 years ago. And when he joined, I was very excited about his values, the fact that he was excited about a software company that took care of our customers and our employees. And I was excited about his resume. But we weren't -- we had to work through some things.
And really, over the last 2.5 years, he has just done such an amazing job, bringing all of the experience that he has around bringing a SaaS accounting software company to over $1 billion in sales. It's just so relevant to BlackLine's growth, BlackLine's history, BlackLine's future.
So over the last couple of years, Marc and I and the other Mark as well have worked very closely together to really upgrade the management team and really to think about what our strategic direction is, what our road map is, where we want to go with product, where we want to go in terms of geographies and just lay out a strategic road map for the future.
Now what's interesting is what we all didn't expect was the pandemic. And so there could be, I suppose, argument for not moving forward. But what I saw internally, I saw Marc really take on a completely new level of leadership role within BlackLine with this pandemic happening. Communications to all necessary parties, gathering the management team together, making sure that we had the right programs in place to support our employees.
And so really, just seeing his ability and how he stepped up his game to handle the pandemic, I feel really good about just handing off the leadership and the running of this company to Marc to go forward. Now we certainly -- I feel like we gave 5, 6 monthsâ notice that the role was going to change. But given how closely that Marc and I collaborate now, I don't think that you're going to see any wild shifts.
Now in terms of risk to the company, the reality is, is part of my -- the biggest part of my role as Executive Chair is to make sure that Marc is successful, right? I mean that is -- he's got everything that he's going to -- I'm going to give him everything I've got in order to make sure that he's successful in his new role as the CEO. That's job #1 for me. Job #2 is -- and by the way, that, I think, seriously mitigates any risk with any kind of transition.
Job #2 is I get to actually contribute in areas that I feel really passionate about, our product, our vision, how to transform the industry of accounting, what does digital transformation really mean to companies. So I think I can help Marc also be successful by contributing in that area as well.
So I'm pretty excited about this transition. I think it will be really good for the company. And really, we're both very excited about what comes next.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Great, great, great. Really appreciate the color there. Wanted to switch the conversation a little bit to the tone on the last call, cautiously optimistic. Any of you can answer this question.
On the earnings call, it seemed like BlackLine is taking a very prudent and very cautious approach for the outlook for the remainder of 2020, which is -- can be categorized as a bit different than maybe some of the other software peers out there operating it in different categories. So can we dig in to what you're seeing in the end market that is maybe driving that more cautiously optimistic view?
Mark W. Partin - BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
Yes. I'll start with a bit about the approach that we took for the second half and what informed that and where we think sort of the game changers are and then we can take it from there. But our -- what we saw in Q2, Koji, was a ramping demand, particularly in May and June. We were pleased to see the large transactions, large digital transformation companies come to fruition. We were also very excited on the lower end and mid-market to see that demand start to pick up.
There are still areas when we finished Q2 that remain challenged going into the second half, including certain geographies like Europe, which has been lagging on the demand side and also in our -- in sort of the large digital transformations as well, the number of them and the demand there.
So as we go into the second half, our guidance was exactly what you said, prudent. Our view is that we want to be able to execute with confidence on that range. And with the macro uncertainty, felt that prudence was the right approach.
I'll also say that cautious optimism is we have an opportunity to execute with our partnerships and continued execution with the mid-market on some of our campaigns there and to see some of these large deals move through. And we are feeling confident about those areas of the business.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Okay. Wanted to dig in a little bit on the EMEA side. So you got a pretty big partner based out in EMEA. They have been talking about their business recently, too. And I guess thinking about the demand side, how tight is EMEA to SAP? Is that causing some of that softness out there? Or is there other dynamics at play within EMEA that we should be thinking about?
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
Well, clearly, EMEA did not perform to the same extent that other parts of our business did. Mark mentioned it just a moment ago. We were pleased with several large sort of transformation opportunities that sort of came to fruition. We were pleased with the investments that we had made in account growth through our account management and success organizations that we continue to see building and then some strength that we saw in the mid-market.
Europe was a laggard for us. Our European business is slightly more tilted towards an SAP business. I'm not certain if those are one of the same in terms of any headwinds that we're seeing in Europe, but it's certainly not performing to the same extent that our North American business is.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Okay. Okay. Got it. Guidance. So the 2020 guidance, you initiated guidance, definitely that's a positive, implies your visibility is improving out there. But it did come in a bit lower than Street estimates, and it does imply slowing growth in the second half of 2020. Can you just dig a little bit into the thought process of the guidance? It does go back to the cautiously optimistic tone, too. And then how should we be thinking about levers that could drive potential upside to that initial -- or I'm sorry, the reinitiated 2020 guidance?
Mark W. Partin - BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
Yes, Koji. Great question. And I normally don't do this, but in the event you have some new investors on the call, you don't have to go very far back to see some really positive momentum in our business. 5 quarters of increasing revenue, 3.5 quarters of accelerated billing demand above 30% on the trailing 12 months and that continued right up to the moment that the pandemic hit the business and the market in March.
And so our view is that we can -- will return to that level of demand that drove our business. We have felt really great about our ability to execute probably now more than ever. And what we're really focused on for the second half, first is, is that demand and when can it return to normal and then accelerate from there as companies realize they need to invest in back end automation. And so it's really a short-term timing where you're finding this pragmatism for us, but also, again, a great platform for us as that demand returns.
So the second half is predicated on that pragmatism of timing for demand. And then, secondly, on just the air -- the revenue air pocket that has already begun for us, where in March and April and then the demand environment in Q2, even though it's strengthened, hasn't returned to normal, and that does affect our revenue growth for the second half.
But again, our ability to execute and accelerate out of this pandemic, we feel very good about.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Therese, question for you. Thinking about the pandemic, prepandemic, postpandemic and thinking about the time line of where accounting automation was supposed to go or is still going in the next 5 to 10 years. Prepandemic, there was a clear vision for what this all means. And now the pandemic happened, it's been disruptive for pretty much everybody out there. I mean here we are sitting in virtual rooms doing this conference today. But does this change the time line, your vision of where accounting automation was supposed to go? And what does that mean for the next 5 to 10 years? And is it a tailwind or a potential headwind for what the accounting automation opportunity is supposed to become?
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
I think with everyone, because of the macro uncertainty, it's going to be a bit of a headwind. But I really believe that long term, this is -- can be a huge catalyst for us.
We have had so many customers say, "Oh, my God, we cannot imagine trying to close our books without having BlackLine." That is just unfathomable to try to figure out how to do this with e-mail and spreadsheets and what would normally be paper and binders, it's not sustainable. This type of manual processes are simply not sustainable over the longer term. So hearing that kind of feedback from our customer base, from our prospects, where there it's almost like the lights coming on.
I don't think there's going to be a return to, "Yes, you know what, paper seems to be fine. We're getting through with that." I really think that long term, this is going to be a catalyst for the ability to be able to do virtually everything in your accounting and finance department remotely and electronically.
So great, great long-term catalysts. It's making the point for us that manual processes are not sustainable. It's making it in a way that's far more effective than anything we could have done from a marketing perspective.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Got it, got it, got it. Got a question here from the buy side. Thinking about win rates in the mid-market versus enterprise. How does the mid-market customers' product and feature requirements differ from the enterprise? Are you selling the same products and features in both markets? Or are they slightly different? And then how do we think about those win rates versus the competition in end market and at enterprise?
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
Great questions. So I'll start with mid-market specifically. So we introduced a program called the Modern Accounting Playbook. And we're sort of fortuitous that we put that out and got our team energized and enabled on that just prior to the pandemic. And that is a series of use cases that is based off studying our near 3,100 companies the best way to perform certain business processes to close your books using BlackLine. And we turned that around and packaged it in a very efficient way such that it could be absorbed quickly and efficiently in a smaller organization with maybe more fixed resources than a large enterprise. And we did that at a time that leading into the pandemic, where fortunately for us, mid-market CFOs really started to value that quick time to utility and efficiency, especially those organizations that were going from a real manual paper-based infrastructure to doing it in a modern accounting platform like BlackLine.
And so that set out us having a record number of mid-market wins in Q2. We believe that trend is sort of continuing looking into the second half of the year because we've got the right solution for this, right time and style of customers.
We have a traditional approach into our enterprise new customer sales right now, which involves sort of assessing the unique needs of an organization and then mapping our technology and our business process expertise to that customer and trying to deliver a great outcome for them. The win rates, for obvious reasons, are going up in the mid-market, still have a real healthy win rate in the enterprise space. But the buyers seem to be valuing the same thing, quicker time to value, more digestible solutions based on the expertise of the vendor, and in our case, we've got more expertise than anybody else in our category.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Thanks, Marc. Got a question here from the buy side. Going back to the guidance, based on the guidance given for the rest of the year, Q3 and implied Q4, it looks like Q3 revenue is lower than Q2. Q4 revenue implied is slower than Q3. Is there any reason that makes you feel the growth environment is getting weaker in the next 2 quarters? Or are you merely setting guidance at a level with plenty of conservatism?
Mark W. Partin - BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
Yes. I think it's a little bit of both. We feel like our philosophy, if you go back since being public, is we guide with high confidence range. And then as we execute, we're able to step up that range and get more visibility. And so we feel like that sort of consistency, if you've been with us for a while, you have a sort of an understanding of that.
I think also, though, in this environment, there's a peak to trough that companies will go through in the demand environment. And some have different expectations of when that demand bottoms and then when it returns. Because we're a high subscription revenue business, we have visibility into our revenue and confidence in that, but also is impacted by the demand that we saw in Q1 and Q2 and then again, in Q3, which is, by the way, a seasonal quarter traditionally in our business.
And then Q4 begins the ramp. And so what you'll see in Q3 and Q4, as you work your way through our guidance, is that you'll have a peak to trough and then that demand returns, and we began to climb and accelerate when that occurs.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Question for Marc H. Thinking about the conversations you and the sales team are having with your customers and prospects, do you have any sort of high-level visibility or commentary that you could share of how your customers and prospects are thinking about when their work might return back to a new normal? Or is it really just unknown? Or is the new normal or whatever it could be is just going to be different than what it was in the past?
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
There's a lot of variety in those types of conversations, Koji. At first, the conversations are really about, "Oh, my god, what's happening here?" and then they shift into how am I going to perform these mandatory activities in a way that we've never contemplated doing them in the past. And that really sort of separated out the companies that were ready and not ready. Those companies that have some sort of incumbent solution or an organization structured in this way. Largely, a lot of those companies using BlackLine, those conversations are where they performed really, really well. And we're grateful that we were there for them, and we had our expertise available.
Our systems were all performing, and they can just count on us. Those that weren't as organized for it, some of those companies actually came into our pipeline, some of them accelerated. In the case of those mid-market organizations, some of them smaller have already closed and moved to a customer for us.
The other challenge that they've had is somewhat a bench and labor challenge in that if you're in an affected industry, as an example, I talked to a couple of CFOs in the hospitality industry, and they've had various staffing levels in the past 5 months. A furlough approach for a period of time, bringing some workers back to try to conduct really core, critical accounting functions, furlough again, bringing them back at different levels. And so you've got CFOs who have, in addition to sort of managing the new normal of the economic environment, are their systems and processes going to scale for it managing their labor supply?
The variety is that some of that causes people to accelerate, some of it causes them to reprioritize, and in the case of these large transformational wins we had, that was what we saw took place. And some of them caused people to stall because they're dealing with these other really critical matters. And that's why we've got this sort of cautious optimism.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Okay. Fair enough. That totally makes sense. I wanted to switch conversation to strategic products. Strategic products in the quarter, it was a big highlight. There's a lot of strength there and the growth there. And I guess the question really is, what was driving that strength? And are we at an inflection point now where strategic products are becoming a more meaningful driver for future growth?
Mark W. Partin - BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
I'll start. What drives the uptick of strategic products today is digital transformation. We've been able, successfully over the last 5 or 6 quarters, to really build up the partnerships, the internal expertise in team and sales team to deliver on that promise of digital transformation for accounting and finance.
And as they do that, their journey includes more of our core platform, but also some of these strategic products, which today, in this last quarter, represented 23%. Having said that, Koji, as we look forward in the near term, we think that balance really is the right one, around 80-20. And on a quarterly basis, it might vary.
And the reason for that is there's still a very, very large demand and core market opportunity for our core products and the strategic products are a part of that digital transformation wave, which is affecting many companies, but particularly on the large end. So that's the right balance to think of over the next near-term period of time.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Got it.
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
And as much as we've talked about these successes that we've had in the mid-market recently, which we're quite proud of and I think this will likely continue, the strategic products is an area we put a lot of investment in from an infrastructure and our ability to serve clients. We land these clients. We bring them on this journey towards finance transformation, modernizing their accounting processes. With that, it is a required expertise around process. And some of these more strategic products, like our matching engine, is something that is not user-based, but more volume-based. And that allows us to take a very consultative approach around very specific and unique business processes that someone might be interested in automating and improving in their environment, introduce that to them and continue to drive expansion in their footprint with us.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Totally makes sense. A question for Mark Partin. On RPO versus billings versus revenue growth, 3 different metrics, 3 different growth rates in the second quarter. Can you help us understand the mechanics that is driving the delta between the 3? And from a BlackLine perspective, for the investors out there, for myself, which of the 3 metrics should we really be focusing on as the best indicator of business health?
Mark W. Partin - BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
Yes. I think that's a great question, Koji. I would start first with saying that the RPO number is not a metric that we manage or run our business to. We know that it's become a metric externally. And I think it's important for -- to inform investors, but it's not how we run our business.
So I would point really to 2. First is when looking at revenue growth for us, we have the predictability and consistency there that I think it's particularly when we're giving guidance that a high recurring revenue, a high subscription business really accrues to the -- our advantage in understanding the business. This is where we're going.
If you look at revenue growth, it's a function of so many things that we're doing today and also our view of the near-term market. So I encourage that to be the #1.
I think when you look at billings, I don't like people to focus on quarterly billings. There's way too much variability when you have large deals and a variety of small deals. So it can vary from quarter-to-quarter.
But I do think trailing 12-month billing is a decent metric for looking at and understanding that metric on trailing 12 months as an indicator of demand and business growth, and then pairing that with our revenue growth forward as a guidance principle. Those are the ways to look at this business.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Okay. Okay. Got it, got it. Switching the conversation just a little bit to international. We did spend some time on EMEA. So totally get it there. But thinking about the other international parts of the business, what is going on out there? How should we think about pipeline generation and really, the conversations that you're having with customers and prospects out ex EMEA?
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
Well, ex EMEA, our international footprint is, I would say, still building. We've had a long-established customer base and success in Australia. But our Asia business is still in the building phase, if you will.
Our brand is building there. As you bring on new customers, get them successful, they start telling other people you can sort of count on them for reference. And we think that business normalized for pandemic will start -- it will continue to grow and build for us and be a future lever of growth. And that includes our Japan business, where in the quarter, we actually saw some success. It's a small, small business. It's a joint investment that we have in Japan. It's an area that we've sort of seeded and think the same thing. We'll build our brand, build our capability. We think that digital finance transformation is at the onset in the Japanese market, and we'll succeed there as well.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Sort of have a follow-up question for you, Marc. Just really kind of actually on the selling motion, why you guys are winning in this differentiation of BlackLine. Can you spend -- maybe spend some time and talk about what the differentiation is against maybe the larger legacy systems out there and maybe some of the smaller point providers out there, how does BlackLine compete, differentiate? And then really digging in a little bit more, how do we think about the business that's coming in more direct to you when you sit with them and talk about their pain points? And then on the other side, larger engagements where you're going with that more direct approach from the BlackLine sales rep force. How are those conversations and expansion opportunities going with BlackLine?
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
Okay. I'll try to start with the early part, and you may have to prompt me for the later part. So the enterprise business, so we sort of believe in these times right now. And certainly, the pandemic and the economic outcome, the value sort of accrues to the leader in the category.
And so we fall back on our 3,100 customers have experienced the fact that Therese created this company in this category that is still largely untapped. We have more experience than anyone else. Our brand is strong. The customer sentiment that exists between our employees and our customers is well known, and we rely upon that to be a strength.
And so when companies come to us, large or small, and we've got the right sort of mix of products and know-how put together based on our proven track record, we're going to be successful.
In the case of that mid-market success I've talked about, this is something I'm really passionate about. My prior experience, we did a lot of this. So we took it and you get enough experience across a large sample of customers, you start to identify the trends that are the best way to do certain business processes within an organization, where there's somebody who would say 80% of what we all do is the same. There's not a really unique value-add me as a company has to be a deviator from that mix.
And so we start to package that experience in leading practices into the deliverable in a very efficient way, almost like you've taken a race and you get to start 30 yards in advance of someone else. And it really resonates with clients.
And so we've done that really well with our modern accounting playbook. We'll continue to innovate and try to drive those kinds of experiences and expertise from our large customer base and to all parts of our business.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Got it, got it. Super helpful there. Taking a big picture or big step back here, a question for Therese. Barriers to entry for BlackLine, what is stopping me raising some money out there in the DC world and making Koji Line the next generation accounting platform? What is the differentiation from the technology standpoint that BlackLine has really made special over the past, gosh, almost 20 years now? Why can't someone just decide to enter this market tomorrow?
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
That's such a great question, Koji. And I think we have a perfect example of this with a very large, very well-respected company last year that publicized that they were going to come into our market. They were excited about the greenfield opportunity, and they were convinced that it's going to be a pretty easy go.
And that particular company, who we respect and admire greatly, just recently said, "You know what, we're not in the market that BlackLine is in." And there's some very, very good reasons for that. Our buyer is a special buyer. They are -- it's the accounting and finance, the controller, the office of the CFO. This is typically a buyer who has their own very specific business processes, very specific even business language. We have to work with any new account exec who comes on to help them with the language of the accountant, okay? They are a very conservative buyer. They want to know that if they -- I mean accounting and finance doesn't get a lot of budget. They want to be convinced that if they're going to select a new software system that, that system is going to be a success for them.
So they rely heavily on the validation from their peers, okay? And it's one of the reasons that BlackLine has been so successful is we focus so strongly on making sure that our customers are successful. And once you do that, they are more than willing to talk to other customers, other prospects that are out there and vouch for us as -- and say, yes, we had a great experience with BlackLine.
So it's the brand and the reputation that we've set up for delivering real value to our customers. It's the software platform. It is not a generic consolidation system with some extra add-on functionality. It is not an ERP. It's not a workflow system. It is a system that has built-in business automation that is very specific to the field of accounting and finance.
It is tailor-made for that group of people, and it's really hard to just gain that kind of knowledge overnight, okay? I mean we have more than 15 years of just accounting knowledge packed into our platform. And along the way, we've had the great fortune to hire people who are very much excited and really, really smart about -- we have many former accountants who have gotten excited about what we do and decided to make the switch over to BlackLine so that they could contribute more of their expertise into what we're doing.
It sounds so simple, and yet it really is a massive barrier to entry to anybody who just has got a bit of money and a couple of programmers.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Well, it makes sense, Therese. Super, super helpful. A big topic out there within the investment community is what the pandemic has done to drive a pull forward of TAM for different types of software categories. I've heard anywhere from 6 months to 2 years of pull forward.
When you're thinking about the accounting automation opportunity and all the disruption that pandemic has caused within the end market, from your lens, from the BlackLine lens, how much pull forward of TAM do you think has happened within the accounting automation?
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
In the near term, very little. I mean back to the accountants don't get a lot of budget for software and new things. So they want to be very, very sure.
So there's a lot of uncertainty in the near term. However, there's also a lot of pain happening around trying to close -- companies that don't have BlackLine, trying to close their books with spreadsheets, with e-mail, with getting rid of their paper binders. Now they're trying to use shared drives. It's really very difficult. And now they're faced with not just quarter end close, but many are realizing that they're probably going to have to do their year-end close as well.
We just recently launched a program around the remote audit. So if you've got paper, how do you get a year-end audit done with your auditors if you don't have that capability, if they can't come to you?
So there's a lot that's happening, sort of a wake-up call that the current manual processes really are not sustainable. That's going to result in the catalyst that I've been wanting forever because I keep wondering what's going to finally get people to move off of these really just painful processes into technology like BlackLine. And I think that this pandemic has the potential to be that catalyst.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Therese, another big picture question for you. Thinking about pain points for customers, and so the pandemic has changed the pain points, but it seems like the way that you're describing it, the near-term opportunity is up in the air still, but it seems like the pain points that you can address for customers in the future have exponentially increased due to all the change that's been happening. Is that the right way to think about it?
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
Yes. Here's the way to think about it. Our buyer is risk-averse. And being risk-averse, they don't like change. Well, this pandemic caused change to happen, whether they liked it or not. So now it's not a matter of stick with the old way and don't change or try something like BlackLine. Change has happened. And so now they're faced with the decision of how to handle that change.
And so that's really sort of we're past the point of trying to get people to change. We're in -- nobody knows what this new normal is. So what's the best way that we can serve our customer base, our prospects in terms of managing that change to mitigate and minimize the risk that comes with it? We've now become the mitigator as opposed to the source of risk.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Good place to be. Coming up here on almost the end of our conversation here on time. Just wanted to briefly touch on R&D priorities. Maybe this is a good question for you, Therese. Just thinking about pandemic trying to change your vision for the business and the products and the portfolio of products, what's top of mind right now? Any shifts in the road map decisions or product launches? Anything you could share there would be helpful.
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
I don't think we've had a lot of shifts because of the pandemic. We have been very thoughtful about what this industry needs to really just run more efficiently, run more accurately. And so we've got already a pretty long-term road map.
The common themes in that road map are around utilizing technology to bring more automation to what it is that our customers are trying to get done. And I'll give you an example that sort of falls into a couple of different categories. But one of the things that we've done that we'll be talking about a lot more at our user conference in November is there are still parts of the -- for example, there are still parts of the account reconciliation process that even with BlackLine, people will still go up and do in spreadsheets to try to figure out where certain things belong. We've started looking at the other pieces of what we do to see how we can bring technology in to automate further.
And so it's really interesting because even in something that has sort of been around this long now is account reconciliations, there's still potential for bigger and better gains for our customers in terms of efficiency and accuracy and sort of liberating them. That's area #1.
#2 is how do you better apply things like machine learning so that you can really take a lot of the grunt work off of people's shoulders, and they have the ability to become what they thought an accountant was supposed to be and be a value-added analyst for the company.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Got it. Therese, thank you very much for that overview. I appreciate it. We are all out of time, Therese, Mark P and Marc H., thank you very much for your time today. I really do appreciate you guys attending our conference. And thank you very much, and we will catch you on the next one. Thanks, everyone, for dialing in, too, out there. So thank you very much, everyone.
Therese Tucker - BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
Thank you, Koji.
Mark W. Partin - BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
Thanks, Koji.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Yes. Bye.
Marc E. Huffman - BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
Thank you.
Koji Ikeda - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Thank you. Bye.
Call participants:
Corporate ParticipantsMarc E. Huffman, BlackLine, Inc. - President, COO & Director
Mark W. Partin, BlackLine, Inc. - CFO & Treasurer
Therese Tucker, BlackLine, Inc. - Founder, CEO & Director
Conference Call Participants
Koji Ikeda, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division - Director & Senior Analyst
Refinitiv StreetEvents Transcript
Blackline Inc at Oppenheimer Technology, Internet & Communications Conference (Virtual)
Aug 11, 2020 / 06:40PM GMT
