Workday Adaptive Planning Reviews

Great Product

Comments: We are going into our third budget cycle using Adaptive and it has made our process much more efficient. Prior to using Adaptive we played budget ping pong, bouncing spreadsheets back and forth and then once we landed on a final version the Finance team consolidated the numbers. Adaptive is great because you can see the impact of a change to the consolidated budget in real time. This is a great software for the Finance team as well as the budget / business managers.

Pros:

There are many great features including: audit trails, notes, role permissions and security, the ability to quickly create versions, great technical support, and it’s cloud based.

Cons:

There is a report builder in Adaptive and it’s easy to use. However, I do feel like they have focused on making improvements in other areas and the reporting hasn’t made as much progress. I do think this is one area that could use some improvements.

An FP&A Dream Tool

Comments: I will always recommend Adaptive to FP&A professionals. Once you use it and truly understand it, I'm sure you will do the same. There is little wonder why they are a leader in the SaaS space.

Pros:

A cloud-based tool that enables you to forecast and budget different scenarios. OfficeConnect (an add-on feature) allows you to create reports directly in Excel and increases overall team efficiency.

Cons:

Setting up Adaptive Insights is a crucial, timely, and difficult process. However, the time you put into building your instance initially saves time and pays dividends in the future.

Good platform for planning

Comments: An easy and good program that works efficiently in preparing the budget and financial affairs in general, with good customer service.

Pros:

A good tool for planning and managing the financial analysis of institutions. It helps in preparing spreadsheets and setting the budget. It helps in developing a plan to match resources, financing and services. It helps in setting the budget.

Cons:

Some development and improvement should be made to the reporting method, and some features that improve the performance of the platform should be added.

Sophisticated, but slow software

Comments: The actual forecast model is very nice, but I wish the software could be more user-friendly, and faster.

Pros:

Adaptive Planning is very sophisticated. There are so many ways models can be created, and it supports so many different versions which I love. I can create a forecast for every single GL account for every different department of the company.

Cons:

First, the software is very slow for a company at around 1000 size. If you make even a slight forecast/formula update, it can take 30mins to an hour before you can start using it again. Also, the formulas are very difficult to learn. The formula assistant feature definitely helps, but the way the formula is structured, it's almost impossible to use without the assistant.

Reliable service

Comments: I feel that the software is bright and easy to use. I like how the widgets and the placements overall of the dashboard makes it easy to find what your looking for.

Pros:

Workday is aesthetically appealing and easy to navigate. As someone who is not tech savvy I appreciate when things are straight forward and not complicated. On a random note, the very unique logo makes it easy to find on a clutter computer dashboard.

Cons:

I have been using this software for almost a year and have no complains to share at this time. I truly recommend this product.

Adaptive User

Comments: excellent tool for forecasting, budgeting and reporting

Pros:

Very easy to use and set up as well, also easy to able to be deployed across the business and user training required is minimal.

Cons:

to start with it is cloud based and very easy to begin with

Adaptive provides meaningful insight into our financial data!

Comments: Using Adaptive is a great experience! It's easy to learn, and once you try it, you will love it. I can forecast monthly , quarterly or whenever I like. Because my operational metrics, which drive our revenues and expenses, are also in Adaptive, I feel we get closer to our actual's each month. We have simplified our monthly reporting process from 6 days, to about an hour and a half. That extra time can be used to analyze the data, which is much more rewarding than ticking and tying numbers to a report. Our dashboard is solid and tells a story for our leaders. I love it!

Pros:

Ease of use Speed (refreshing and processing) Automatic load of our financial data using a connector Office Connect - an excel add in that allows me to run my financials in an instant Adaptive Insights support personnel are amazing! I get a call back very quickly if I have a problem, and I don't feel like I'm being rushed when I ask other questions

Cons:

The sheets, which display our data across time, would be fantastic if I could add a YTD column anywhere I like. I would like to see my sheets display some simple graphs, which would allow me to display trends pictorially while reviewing with my customers.

Adaptive is great for small to medium sized enterprises

Comments: I use adaptive for 5 year planning, strategic modelling & scenario planning

Pros:

The ability to build a bottoms up budget/forecast is an attractive component on this software. It is an assumption based model that is easy to follow and update in the backend

Cons:

There is some functionality that it lacks for assumption sheet creation.

Reliable and easy to use tool for data business planning

Pros:

It has easy-to-use features that are good for reporting, planning, and data visualization.

Cons:

The only that I don't like with this software is that it freezes and crashes on my computer. But I think I need upgrades on my computer. Overall, the software is good.

Review

Comments: My experience of using Workday Adaptive Planning is very good since my work is related to analyzing data's of financial planning's etc.

Pros:

Workday Adaptive Planning is very convenient to use especially when it comes to financial planning solutions and enterprise planning, they really provide it.

Cons:

I don't see any downside or lack of this product and that is why I rated it 10.

Amazing planning software for non-profits!

Comments: Implementing Adaptive Insights has made me feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Every new feature or discovered capability is a wonderful gift giving me my time and sanity back. I am the only FP&A for a mid-size company. We had outgrown Excel but had a hard time finding a planning software that could handle the allocations fundamental to non-profit accounting. We found Adaptive Insights and haven't looked back. The sales team is amazing, They are not only no pressure, but extremely helpful. We wanted to make sure our entire management team would be on board with new software. AI sales came out and did a personal demonstration for us and answered all of their questions. They also introduced us to great implementation consultants to help us set the instance up.We just finished our first year of planning in Adaptive and it was easy and user-friendly. I love Adaptive and will use it throughout my career.

Pros:

The user-friendly interface, customization, regular updates and wealth of support and information. Reporting is also easy to use and very powerful. One of our main challenges is accurately planning and reporting our allocations. AI makes it easy.

Cons:

There is nothing I dislike about this software but there are a few things to be aware of. Unless you have 2 people exclusively working full time to set up the instance it will take you much longer than you think. Allow yourself a few months to set it up and know that a full, complete roll-out will probably take a full budget cycle.

Adaptive Planning Review

Comments: Overall we have been pleased with Adaptive Planning. We originally transitioned to Adaptive from excel based reporting due to increasing data allocation requirements. After several months of implementation we were able to start populating our weekly financial reports entirely from data exported from Adaptive. The end result has been a significant decrease in reporting time, even though we now splice our data by more dimensions than we have looked at in the past. This would not have been possible in excel, and we now have more time to analyze our information instead of being stuck in the reporting cycle.

Pros:

The best part of the software for me is the ability to quickly create reports based on any selected dimensions, levels, and timeframes. This is something that historically would have taken us a significant amount of time and is now done in minutes.

Cons:

My least favorite parts about the software are the difficulty in navigating the data sheets and the inability to lock formulas and values in historical versions while updating formulas going forward. I would love to see greater functionality to search in data sheets by specific columns.

The software will change you life...Seriously!

Pros:

This suite of products have changed the way we inform our leadership of the state of our operations each month. We no longer spend days and days preparing dry financials. Now, we are generating useful statements in seconds along with instantaneously seeing that same financial and operational data visualized in Adaptive Discovery in our interactive scorecard. The ease of use, and the level of support are the two greatest things about Adaptive.

Cons:

The tools do everything we ask of them, and more. The monthly load of data from our GL and the operational data from other source systems being a manual process is my ultimate least favorite thing. We are implementing the Adaptive Discovery connector so that the data will be loaded in the future at the push of a button. That should take care of it, though. I think if I had to identify my next least favorite thing it's probably the high bar that it sets for all of our other reporting from other systems.

Adaptive Planning eval

Comments: We use Adaptive Planning as our primary Budgeting and Forecasting system. Many of the functions are intuitive, but requires some time to get comfortable with the many functions that are available. I would not recommend the native reports, as they are difficult to generate quickly and easily without formal training. But their Office Connect add on tool is a nice enhancement to have to generate more custom reporting and also provides some degree of automation once the linked cells are set up properly.

Pros:

The software behaves like a specialized version of Excel, however is limited in other areas that requires data to be exported into Excel to analyze more extensively.

Cons:

The native reporting is not that easy to use, would prefer better canned reporting functionality.

flow and transparency for FP&A

Comments: I've been using Adaptive since 2011, and I am fully satisfied with the Adaptive suit. Every year they are improving and developing the suit of services and product. I might be biased but the ease of use of the platform is really what's important for me. The flow and transparency of the data is equally important. I don't think I could be as good as I am when it comes to FP&A and reporting if it wasn't for using Adaptive.

Pros:

everything- ease of use

Cons:

none

Easy collaboration while building out the year's model was key to improving our efficiency.

Comments: Faster build and modify time of my model. Easier buy in from contributors to the model because they had access to build their part directly in the system.

Pros:

Easy to gather, audit, and lock down inputs from key contributors. It was also very easy to create multiple versions and scenarios.

Cons:

Struggled a little to get it to connect the way we wanted with our ERP, but that had to do with both sides. Not just Adaptive. It also does take a little time to understand how to build things out.

Super fast and easy to use

Pros:

I have been in FP&A for for 5 years and have become somewhat versed in different systems and adaptive has been the best. Super fast updates with the ability to create different forecast scenarios.

Cons:

Some of its features don't work on Macs, but otherwise nothing to serious here.

Good basic functionality for financial planning & reporting

Pros:

Pros: ease of use in that the software is cloud-based. It was also relatively easy to implement with approximately 50 users. Good customer support.

Cons:

Cons: sometimes pages take too long to load, which is frustrating to users. But otherwise there are few complaints.

AI Review

Comments: This tool enables the user easily develop (with minimal time) a nicely tailored template for what-if and Actual situational planning, forecasting and reporting of a variety of metrics. Project / performance management is assisted greatly through liberal use of intuitive dashboards and analytical tools.

Pros:

> Strong, secure environment - clearly developed with an appreciation of how to treat company sensitive data. > Appropriate security levels are easily established and maintained. > Cloud-based connectivity is the only way to go - AI does a nice job of leveraging this platform.

Cons:

> Some effort is required for setup as programming keys are built on a one-by-one basis and thus training is essential for the new user. > From an international perspective, the consolidation of multiple currency / FX data needs additional development. > MS Office connectivity is too limited and the user is tempted to use other sw apps where integration is superior to AI architecture.

Flexible, User Friendly Software

Comments: Our Finance team switched to Adaptive Planning from another software that was very inflexible and required both outside consultants and house IT staff on a regular basis. Adaptive Planning was a very smooth implementation. It allows great flexibility in your planning models without the heavy reliance on consultants and IT. The ad hoc reporting and additional benefit of Office Connect have been very valuable in our planning processes.

Pros:

Flexible, cloud based, user friendly

Adaptive Insights

Comments: I use adaptive planning for corporate budgeting and long term forecasting. It is a great tool that is very flexible. Being able to build the financial model in a collaborative, team based manner instead of in numerous different excel models is a much better process.

Pros:

[1] Version comparison is easy for variance analysis [2] Adaptive office connect is a very useful excel based reporting tool [3] Flexible system based planning and scenario analysis accelerates planning cycles and reduces data integrity issues

Cons:

The biggest issue that i have run into is the way actuals flow into locked plan versions. If you have a formula in a locled plan version that references actuals and you change the actuals data, then it will change you plan numbers even though the period is locked.

Very Flexible

Comments: We love the many options and flexibility that we have with Adaptive. Everyone that we have worked with has been awesome!

Pros:

Flexibility

Easy-to-use, finance owned, superior to Excel. This must be reviewed.

Pros:

It is easy-to-use so we don't need any expensive technical people to maintain it. Our management and finance team own the entire solution. It is also very scalable from small organisations to large multinational multi-billion dollar revenue organisations. Scalable in the context of - price, performance, functionality and integration.

Cons:

A few months ago I would have said the reliance on Java, but that has now been removed. It's happy days for us Adaptive customers.

Adaptive is overall a great tool. I'd like to see the UI improved to be more on par with new tech.

Comments: Makes my job a lot easier. I was able to distil the core KPIs of my business and report on those instead of simple reporting top-line and bottom-line without strong data behind these numbers

Pros:

Good versioning and flexibility Import/Export is simple Easy to collaborate Nice customization options

Cons:

User interface is frustrating and dated Lack of simple undo Cell history should save information from prior versions

Awesome tool for budgeting and forecasting. We don't even maximize the product and still love it!

Comments: The ability to ditch Excel for our annual budget process

Pros:

The ability to track payroll, depreciation, and other "sheets" to roll up in the data. Also, we load actuals from our G/L to help with forecasting. Overall, an awesome product.

Cons:

Not to much to say here, but there are some complex formulas that need to be written at times. Need to be very careful the data is pulling from the proper sheets when creating a new version(s).