FloQast Brings Transparency, Automation and Ease of Use to Cision’s Highly Acquisitive Business

Headquartered in Chicago, Cision is a leading global provider of earned media software and services for public relations and marketing communications professionals.

In Q2 of 2017, Cision became a publicly traded company, creating a sense of urgency around the need for controls involving the Monthly Close. Not long after, the team implemented FloQast’s Finance and Accounting Operations Platform, optimizing the Close in the process and establishing and documenting the controls it needed. Today, the company is privately-owned, backed by Platinum Equity, a private equity firm out of Los Angeles.

Victoria Weng, Assistant Corporate Controller, was brought in to help manage the Month-End Close at Cision. Although the company is in the office three days a month, Victoria has found FloQast to be extremely helpful in her top-down visibility over their multi-entity company.

“FloQast provides tremendous visibility into how everyone is doing with their Close checklists and reconciliations.”

– Victoria Weng, Assistant Corporate Controller

Supporting an Acquisitive Environment

Since implementing FloQast, Cision Group has made five acquisitions across several countries. The support team at FloQast has been essential in helping map the workflows across these separate instances, ensuring a sustainable and repeatable Close process. Recently, the Cision EMEA teams were added to FloQast and Victoria has only heard “good things about the whole implementation process.” Additionally, Victoria said she works closely with the FloQast team to ensure that all of Cision’s global entities are reaping the platform’s benefits. According to her, having FloQast in place has helped provide transparency across the different entities at Cision, giving them both a holistic and granular view of processes, status, and driving accountability.

Head-to Head: FloQast vs. BlackLine

While working at a previous employer, Victoria implemented BlackLine as their Close management solution. When asked how the implementation went, she recalled “It did require a little bit more effort on the user side to work with the IT team and the BlackLine implementation team.” On the other hand, FloQast implementations take ~3-5 weeks, with most of the work done on the back end so that only 5-10 hours of client time is necessary. When Victoria started in February 2022, even though she was unfamiliar with FloQast, the software’s ease of use allowed her to hit the ground running – with no training involved after being given access. 

Enabling Accurate & Tight Reporting Packages

As a private equity-backed company, Cision Group reports financials to its sponsor, Platinum Equity, on the 15th of every month. By leveraging FloQast, the team at Cision feels confident in the numbers they are presenting given the preventative and detective controls in place. When asked about the confidence in her financials, Victoria reported that she “[doesn’t] know how we could even sign off on reconciliations without FloQast.”

Before utilizing FloQast, the team had a goal of closing their books in 8-10 business days. Today, the Cision team closes in 5-7 business days (~30-37.5% reduction). The extra time between having the books closed and sending the formalized reporting package ensures Cision can have strategic oversight to examine results and have a firm grasp on financial implications of the monthly activity.

Meeting Accountants Where They Work Today

According to Victoria, FloQast’s ability to integrate with NetSuite and Excel gave the team visibility to easily see if there was any variance between the GL and the Excel workbook. She attributes this transparency to the team being able to keep the Close process so tight, consistently.

Additionally, FloQast’s integration with Microsoft Teams has helped to remove much of the manual work that the Cision team would otherwise go through. When a task is completed and sent upstream, the Cision team can get those notifications directly through Teams, creating more accountability back to the team and an audit trail in FloQast.

“Absolutely I would recommend FloQast to other portfolio companies.”

– Victoria Weng, Assistant Corporate Controller

The Results

According to Victoria, the rapidly growing Cision team is enjoying their ability to quickly onboard new employees, consolidate their entities as they go through acquisitions, and having greater control around financials. Since joining the team, she said she has had a great experience working with FloQast and our team and is looking forward to continuing to continuing to do so in the future.

“Absolutely I would recommend FloQast to other portfolio companies,” said Assistant Controller, Victoria Weng “It just helps your close process and reconciliation process work more efficiently and more effectively.”