Workday Adaptive Planning

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

A very good corporation management website.

Cons

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

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

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

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

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.

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

FP&A core functionality is outstanding!!!

Cons

Visualization functionality is a kludge!

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

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

User friendly and adaptable. Will help keep you organized and get the job done. Budgeting and forecasting creation was excellent. Helped with a focus on KPI's and benefitted from building dashboard. Great experience with customer service. Very friendly and quick to respond.

Cons

Set up took awhile. Slight learning curve. At times page loading slow. As a netsuite user I have had data integration issues. Adaptive did its job. No other complaints.

Pros

The ease of creating forecast versions provides a quick way to develop multiple scenarios during the forecasting process.

Cons

The performance, in terms of responsiveness, in rendering of the sheets and reports, is quite slow. Also, setting up model account calculations, is not as easy.

Pros

User friendly, cheap, good customer support

Cons

Somewhat limited functionality in areas, but they are constantly releasing new updates with added functionality and other improvements

Pros

Flexible, cloud based, user friendly

Pros

Full-featured software with all the bells and whistles. It has unlimited flexibility in reporting and analysis options. The reporting features are extremely easy to use, and they can be customized and shared with ease.

Cons

Requires a lot of training to use, but it's worth it in the long run. The software is expensive, and it does require assistance with implementation since there is so much to do to get it up and running.

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.

Pros

Flexibility

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I love the adaptability and ability to gain access to various information. It has allowed much greater access to analyzing our Key Performance Indicators.

Cons

For items that are not uniformly put into our accounting system, there are some workarounds needed to figure out how to display the correct data.

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

Workday makes it super easy to manage all aspects of my job from scheduling to time off and payment elections and tax withholdings anywhere at anytime.

Cons

The task workflow process seems a bit drawn out and unclear for some things. There are a lot of options that still appear even if not enabled by the administrators.

Pros

everything- ease of use

Cons

none

Pros

it runs without interfering with other programs.

Cons

does not have any issues that I am aware of.

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

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

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

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 best things about Adaptive Planning are its ability to integrate actuals and budgets/forecasts, its reporting capabilities, the fact that it's cloud based, and the ability to create complex financial models to track and report on business in a dynamic fashion.

Cons

The only issue our company has with Adaptive Planning is that our business model is very complex and hard to duplicate in the Adaptive model. That is not Adaptive's fault, but more so in the implementation and due to ever changing and more complex expectations from management.

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.