Workday Adaptive Planning Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easy to implement and maintain. Easy for end users to understand how to use the software and the models. Give you instant access to "the whole picture". OfficeConnect is great for reporting.

Cons

Some admin functions are still a little tedious. The built-in reporting module needs some upgrading, but it's adequate.

Pros

software is very productive for forecasting and doing deep financial

Cons

Learning curve, it's not that easy to learn and you have to get used to the product. Can be more user-friendly and there can be more improvements.
can be expensive for some users.

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Pros

This is a solid software base that my firm uses to consolidate forecasting data and pull those forecasts for board review. It is a great platform to use for data warehousing and to pull massive subsets of data. Those pulls can then be used and pasted into Excel or whatever template that you need to generate the proper metrics.

Cons

The functionality is not as user friendly as you would like. The customized reporting is complex and hard to understand. I would recommend sitting in on a seminar or tutorial before committing to it. It isn't quite user friendly and, for us, we don't use it for anything but generating massive paste fills to be dumped into our reporting templates.

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.

Pros

Easy to navigate and use. Process for uploading and downloading are nice and simple.

Cons

Very basic reporting features, lacks more robust reporting capabilities. Would be nice if they added a screen freeze feature to lock the initial view when scrolling.

Pros

AI allows for you to build a highly customized model for real-time scenario planning, forecasting and analysis of not only financial metrics, but on the overall operation as well. Through intuitive dashboards with visual analytics that provide drill down capabilities, users can easily participate in complete performance management. The software has allowed finance to become a strategic partner with the rest of the operation.

Cons

I have not found anything negative about this solution.