Workday Adaptive Planning

Powerful

Comments: It helped us to give real time reports to management that helped them to get financial planning solutions.

Pros:

Very easy to use reporting and real-time consolidation that helps planning ahead. Mostly used for reporting to high management, and each time it provided fast and amazing solutions. Has lots of features.

Cons:

Limited customisation and overall pricing could be the only con but works really well with large companies.

Workday Adaptive Planning is a must for growing organizations!

Comments: Absolutely love workday adaptive planning, has taken our financial and budget capabilities to a whole new level!

Pros:

Workday allowed us to do all of our financial planning in one central hub. We can easily budget, generate financial statements, and run many different what if versions for all revenue and budget scenarios. Super user friendly for all planning options!

Cons:

It was slightly tough to implement and get things started in the system, just very different than other financial planning tools I’ve worked with. Once you get it implemented, everything is smooth sailing!

Good platform for planning

Comments: So far, so good. Handy platform to book time off. Possibly only request would be to receive an email notifcation

Pros:

This was a new platform for me, I loved how easy it was to navigate ands start booking time off

Cons:

No cons found yet, everything seems pretty straight forward.

Not great on lower level user side

Comments: I don't love it, but eventually got the hang of it. We use it for budgeting, and it's not the easiest to understand or plug things in. For team members that are new to the process in general, it makes it worse than it needs to be, which isn't my favorite. I hope it has better benefits for other team members though.

Pros:

It looks nice, and it theoretically should have capability to use data year over year. That would be nice, for the future.

Cons:

It's hard to use, understand, navigate, and figure out what is going on. For an onsite team member doing data entry, it's just way harder than it should be in my opinion.

Workday Review

Pros:

A very good corporation management website.

Cons:

I had used workday and i don't seem to have any problems.

Adaptive Review

Comments: It was good. I will definitely work on Adaptive again in the future.

Pros:

The architecture is really good. The ability to save the data and propagate it throughout the system was a plus. Additionally, the dimensions in reports and seeing differences between the dimensions were very useful.

Cons:

The personnel and TBH list were in two different model lists. It is preferred if the employees, titles, etc were dimensions s nice that is the largest expense of our business. The reports by the employee and by account were difficult to use.

Great budgeting and forecasting solution

Pros:

Seems like it is built similar to the excel spreadsheet model where you can really make it anything you need.

Cons:

Requires more training at the front end compared to other more robust (and expensive) systems. Doesn't seem to have two-way communication with Sage Intacct with regard to real time data pulls.

A Powerful and Resourceful Software

Pros:

With this tool, we have an easy time planning and automating budgets. It is a great EPM

Cons:

With Workday Adaptive Planning, no major challenges

Workday use

Comments: Very easy to use and search up things and submit hours as well.

Pros:

Easy to access and navigate and easy for other coworkers

Cons:

I have nothing bad to say about workday its very easy for me to use

Workday planning

Pros:

I liked its very helpful ui system and its various options regarding companies Intregation

Cons:

Its password protection. It can be change to receive otp

Robust Financial Planning

Comments: While the core features are strong, some advanced functionalities may require additional customization or integration with other Workday products.
8/10

Pros:

As a widely adopted solution in the realm of corporate planning, it offers a range of features aimed at improving financial planning and decision-making

Cons:

Sometimes it can be complicated but usually ok

review

Pros:

it runs without interfering with other programs.

Cons:

does not have any issues that I am aware of.

Best financial tool on the market in my opinion

Comments: I use Adaptive as a replacement for excel in some aspects of my job. I mainly use it as month end communication to send out financial status reports pertaining to actuals vs budget vs forecast. Adaptive Discovery is one tool I utilize to aid in visualizing data in multiple ways through the use of graphs, gauges, pie charts, tables, and many more.

Pros:

Allows so many different ways to breakdown data. Great customer support. The respond quickly and are very knowledgeable. Easy to manage users with different access levels. Adaptive is always working to enhance or update features. The platform develops continuously, which is great for the large user base. Hosts free webinars every so often. Can be accessed from anywhere as long as you have internet access.

Cons:

The learning curve is steep, it takes a lot of time to really get comfortable with the platform. Not a lot of video tutorials. The terminology can be confusing sometimes. Adaptive is open to technical/programming suggestions but often take time to be enacted. You sometimes have to wait for the next release to get the issue resolved.

Awesome product for a great value. Takes budgeting and forecasting to a new level.

Comments: There are several benefits from using this software. The biggest benefit is that once your initial model is built you get stability compared to doing your forecast in spreadsheets. When we used spreadsheets most of our time was spent making sure formulas were correct and that there were no bust in the model. With Adaptive, you have confidence that once you test your formulas you can add/takeaway/and modify data and your calculations will work. The other benefit is that if you have a champion and insist that new data be loaded as soon as possible you always have a good/latest view of what the company expects. By doing this forecasting becomes built into your processes and not the annual/quarterly drag that the organization dislikes. Information is kept in a nice concise format that is easy to read.

Pros:

The product if very adaptable. We recently went through a sell process where we were sold by a public company to a private equity firm and back to a public company within a two and half year period. Adaptive was very key to providing the analysis and financial information required for the sell process. While with the private equity firm we changed to a fiscal year but they required us to report both fiscal and calendar year numbers. We also had to push the various EBITDA adjustments back into the financial statements for comparative purposes. I also like the customer service and the fact that Adaptive pushes out a couple of major releases each year to add new functionality requested by the user community.

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.

Strong Tool that Keeps Improving

Pros:

I like that adaptive has continued to innovate and improve their product over time. The basic plan option is solid for a SMB, though there are some individual bells and whistles that I would like it to have like Office Connect that require a more expensive membership

Cons:

Learning to speak the adaptive "language" is a big barrier to entry from an employee perspective, we become afraid to change the model for fear of breaking it so we aren't leveraging all we have available to us.

Great software to project us into the next level of strategic finance.

Comments: Overall, Adaptive Insights has been a great software to work with. AI has increased the FP&A departments productivity during month end close and review by multiple days.

Pros:

- The software is a cloud based, so you will have access anywhere you have the internet. - No more “this worksheet is locked by another user” message. - Imports and Exports to/from excel seamlessly…for those of you that like to work out of excel. - Dashboard capabilities for more real time department metrics and visibility to spend. - Rolling forecasting capabilities that allow us as a company to focus more on the future and less on the past. - Instant Company budget/forecast results. - Audit trails…never have to worry who, what, or when someone changed a number you budgeted or forecasted. All changes will be tracked. - Company-wide visibility to Personnel and Capex planning that drives the cost of benefits, IT equipment, and supplies.

Cons:

- Software enhancements are only every 4 to 5 months. - Levels (Organization Departments) can be restricting to planning across multiple departments - Noting variances in a report can be tricky at times.

Flexible and Comprehensive Planning and Reporting

Comments: I've been using Adaptive Planning for 4 years and at 2 employers. The software has not only improved the accuracy and accountability of our budgeting, forecasting and reporting, but has saved thousands of hours of time.

Pros:

The software is flexible. It can be developed and managed internally or you can work with external experts if needed. I like that the cloud software is continuously improving and developing to meet the needs of its customers. There are new releases every six months that improve its functionality based on customer needs and requests. And more importantly, all updates are done on the cloud so that there is no need for the IT department to get involved.

Cons:

There aren't many things specific to the software that I don't like. I would say that the most difficult part about using this software is managing the requests from management so that it doesn't compromise the value of the software.

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.

Powerful software, makes life easier, business insights more accessible

Comments: I have previous experience using Hyperion, Peoplesoft, and Microsoft Excel to create and maintain financial models. As flexible as regular spreadsheets are, it was always hard to get everybody on the same page, referencing the same numbers, using the same version. I have been using Adaptive Planning for about 1.5 years now, with about 1 year as a systems administrator for the product. FP&A has truly become simplified. This tool has saved hours upon hours every month, as well improved accuracy and timeliness of reports. This allows us to function better as a business unit, and make more proactive models and decisions. My one gripe with Adaptive is their customer support. I have had a hard time getting several issues resolved in a timely manner. Nonetheless, I would highly recommend Adaptive to anybody stuck in "spreadsheet land"--there really is a better way.

Pros:

One source for all models and reported numbers. Interconnected data makes it easy to see the full effect of any changes, large or small.

Cons:

Customer support needs to work on responsiveness.

Improved Reporting

Comments: Our Budgeting and Forecast process has significantly improved and can be identified through the additional value added to each of our departments through customized, timely, accurate and flexible reporting. Additionally our Financial Analysts (system end users) have increased their capacity to provide more in-depth timely analysis to the organization and their support department especially with the drill down capabilities and customizing reports.

Pros:

The System is easy to use, developer friendly and customizable

Cons:

Reporting functionality within the system could be enhanced. We currently use templates created in excel to house formating or additional formulas that are not available in Adaptive but are requried for our reporting.

Great tool for budgeting

Comments: An excellent tool for budgeting once you have put in the time to learn to use it, you always have the feeling there is more to the software than you know how to use.

Pros:

It is super flexible, allowing the user to enter costs by category, department/dimension/cost centre and easily switch between views. You can write little formula to budget by run rate, uplift by a percentage or similar to prior year phasing. You just need to learn a few rules.

Cons:

It does not interface well with Workday itself, there was no way I could import staff basic salary into AP from Workday by department and employee for instance.

Powerful but quite a decadent interface

Comments: Quite effective but very sloppy interface for getting financials. The design is decades old and seems frustratingly under developed. The reporting is there but it does not have advanced functionality that you would expect from such a pricey product.

Pros:

Powerful - allows you to create custom reports, filter by various parameters, create different views Reliable - Stable and does not crash Light - Able to work through web interface which makes it a breeze even on thin clients Compatible - with most browsers and does not have hangups

Cons:

Interface - looks like 2 generations old. Very barebones and non intuitive GUI - the design is extremely sloppy - and requires you to know your way through. Lack of advanced functionality

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.

Great integration for the Workday enviroment

Comments: It's a great tool for managing datasets via your browser. Downloading enormous datasets for changing only one or two things just to upload it all again it's a big pain that Adaptive saves you from.

Pros:

Adaptive is the next best thing you can have when managing large sets of data right from your browser. Instead of having to download big spreadsheets, it can do the heavy lifting for you right from your browser. Tools like pivot tables are easy to do and feature-rich.

Cons:

When dealing with very, very large datasets, it can take some time for processing each requested step in Adaptive, giving you sometimes a lengthy loading screen.