Workday Adaptive Planning

Pros

It does everything and FP&A team could ever wish for.

Cons

It takes quite some time and training to learn how to use.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Workday Adaptive Planning

Pros

A very good corporation management website.

Cons

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

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!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Workday Adaptive Planning

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Workday Adaptive Planning

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.

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.

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

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

Pros

It has good functionality and more affordable compared to similar products.

Cons

User experience interface can be developed a bit more.

Pros

Being able to generate reports.Also I liked the monthly and quarterly budgets.scenario plans the use of AI

Cons

Takes time to learn but backed with help . It can be a lil difficult but once honed in worth the investment

Pros

Very easy to use. User friendly reports.

Cons

I guess it was expensive. We didn't have it for very long.

Pros

FP&A core functionality is outstanding!!!

Cons

Visualization functionality is a kludge!

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.

Pros

I love the ease of creating a budget and the ability to quickly create a new forecast. Adaptive has created a formula wizard that is similar to excel, which makes it easy for excel based planners to easily adapt. Adaptive also has an excel interface for reporting, OfficeConnect which makes reporting even easier. They have also created an upload feature to easily maintain your hierarchy, dimensions and attributes. For a company as large as ours it makes the maintenance of the system easier.

Since Adaptive is Cloud based there is no sharing excel files. I can work with anyone in my organization from anywhere and we are all able to access the same file. Since everything is housed in Adaptive we are able to collaborate easier and make better decisions.

Cons

There is always room for improvement and Adaptive is always listening to its customers. There are some features that make reporting a little clunky, rollups. They recently updated the reporting tool within Adaptive, but it doesn't seem as user friendly as the older version. Hopefully over time it will be easier to use.

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.

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.

Pros

I loved the user experience as a whole. The interface feels very modern and as easy to use.

Cons

I wish it had more functionalities to easily do project level budgeting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pros

Easy to run scenarios. Copy the forecast and make changes as necessary. Reporting is a breeze and no problems to do all kinds of variance analysis.

Cons

It's complicated to get up and running. You need a dedicated resource to take the time to learn the product. I would say my biggest issue is the weak help manuals.

Pros

Easy user adoption. Customizable. Reporting is sophisticated but not complicated.

Cons

N/A

Pros

I mainly used workday when I was working for FedEx. It was useful when organizing bank statements and schedules. Keeping up with benefits and Tax information was a plus as well.

Cons

The only thing I had an issue with was after the update of the workday; there was not a clear enough explanation of how to navigate the apps. The new dashboard shows you everything on the main screen. You still needed to somewhat navigate through the site yourself and figure things out on your own.

Pros

It is simple in work plan follow up of tasks and team work engagement.
Accurate accounting and bank reconciliation.
Proper prediction and budgeting.

Cons

No drawbacks for a while now and it keeps improving.

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

Pros

We have all data related to our job in one place where we can work with them and put them to analysis.

Cons

The navigation is sometimes hard especially when the dashboard have a lot of information.

Pros

Very informative and accessible application.

Cons

Technical error may cause to bug the application

Pros

Once you get familiar with Workday, it is every easy to use.

Cons

Figuring out where everything is that I need.

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.

Pros

We use Adaptiv for our budgeting purposes. Their importing function makes it easy for users to upload data for analysis. Adaptiv planning has made our budgeting planning easy!

Cons

There were a few bugs in the past, but they have been resolved.

Pros

Workday was used to help build structure to plan schedules etc.

Cons

What I liked least about the workday adaptive planning is that , it does not offer a calendar that can be edited to submit task for that day.

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

Pros

It has great and intuitive features and adapts well.

Cons

It is a bit expensive, especially for smaller companies.

Pros

it runs without interfering with other programs.

Cons

does not have any issues that I am aware of.

Pros

Workday is an easy and clear app. We can manage our professional life.

Cons

It's not something really essential, but I couldn't close the signs of alerts even when I check the messages, because it is not clear how to do it.

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.

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.

Pros

Our employees were used to working with Excel spreadsheets. We considered such an approach not completely effective, so our choice turned next to Adaptive Insights. There are no restrictions on the size of the documents. This program is synchronized with other applications, including such important for us solutions like SAP and Oracle. We like the high accuracy of the reports we can create on the tool’s base. It is also important that all data are in one place and don’t require much effort for their processing and analysis. Adaptive Insights is a multifunctional tool with a robust and well-thought-out suite of features. This application allows our employees to track finances, budgets, sales, resources, and labor contribution. With its help, our company’s managers are also able to collect divergent data, make various kinds of reports, build models, and make optimal business decisions.

Cons

It would be better if Adaptive Insights had an opportunity to filter for specific months while working with spreadsheets. This lack of functionality makes our work a bit confusing sometimes. We wouldn’t mind adding more advanced features to the planning tools as well. We believe it would behoove this product if it had several tutorial videos on how to use it to the full extent. Even though we find this tool user-friendly, it doesn’t mean at all that it is so for every company.

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.

Pros

Reporting is good, and also the ease to run the report.

Cons

Metadata maintenance is a bit complicated, and also customisation is also not at par.
UI and admin features can improve.

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.

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.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Workday Adaptive Planning

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.

Pros

Feature set is very strong.
Customer support is among the best in the industry. Highly responsive to detailed technical questions.

Cons

Like any new platform, it took our team a few months after go-live to really utilize the power of the tool, but now it simply a resource that we can't live without.

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.