Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.
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Workday Adaptive Planning
Score 7.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Workday Adaptive Planning(formerly Adaptive Insights) is a financial planning and reporting tool. It includes automated budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting, and other active planning capabilities, including integrations with third-party products like Salesforce.
Planful was a more cost effective approach vs our previous platform (Adaptive) and is able to be managed fully within the FP&A team (no IT resources or outside consultants post-implementation)
Sr. Financial Analyst/ Planful System Administrator
Chose Planful
We felt the platform was more user-friendly and had better functionality for our purposes. Since we already had Planful instance within our company, we already had in-house expertise on the Planful system, which gave us some consistency in tools.
Planful seems to have the best price to performance option against the tools listed. Some of the more premium options on the market have outdated UIs and dont get updated as frequently and other in the same price category dont seem to have the same level of options and "ease" …
Ease of use, integrations, price, and excel compatibility were the driving factors behind getting off of Adaptive and selecting Planful over these other competitors
Planful is lightyears better than Adaptive in the way it allows you to customize and do things on your own. It doesn't use it's own formula language so it's very intuitive for average Excel users.
Very similar; Planful looks cleaner, Adaptive seems less painful.
Verified User
Team Lead
Chose Planful
Planful (formerly Host Analytics) can be quick to implement and does not require an army to administer. It's multi-dimensional technology also allows for a lot more flexibility in it's design and use. It's reporting suite is the most intuitive that I have seen in the industry. …
We selected Host Analytics due to (i) strong out of the box feature set, (ii) best excel integration among cloud tools, (iii) no model size limit, (iv) simple pricing, (v) solid customer references
Overall we thought that Host fit our company better than Adaptive. We thought the tools that it had to offer were better. In addition, we liked the sales pitch better than Adaptive.
Vena was a close second in our selection process. We liked the smaller price tag and faster start up time. It s use of Excel was attractive. However, we did not feel that it would be able to grow with us. It was only good for the short run. Adaptive had some good features. …
Being a small company with limited cash flow, my goal was to evaluate what functions that are important and how much that we have to pay for them and last how easy it is to maintain without owning internal IT staff. I have evaluated Hyperion, Adaptive, Vena, and Host. …
Host Analytics was more robust than Adaptive Planning. Since it is built around Excel, our users did not have to learn a new "language" as they would have with Prophix and it is more nimble and easier to support than SAP.
Cheaper than Hyperion and a better platform that the other cloud systems. We also looked at some Excel based budgeting systems but they all fell well short of our requirements.
Host user interface was more "user friendly" so we felt it would be easier to train our users and they would actually use the system, especially as compared to SAP business Objects.
We demoed Adaptive Insights about a year ago and at that time it seemed Host Analytics was slicker and easier to use than Adaptive. However, in a recent release of Adaptive Insights, the software has jumped well ahead of Host in UX. I have not seen Adaptive's day to day …
Workday Adaptive Planning
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Workday Adaptive Planning
Adaptive seemed to be the most user-friendly, easy to implement, and cost-effective solution.
My decision came down to Adaptive vs Host Analytics. Host made the claim that because their sheets were just like excel, you wouldn't need to learn any new commands. Rather, I thought that was a downside. I didn't want another glorified version of excel, I was looking for …
I prefer Adaptive Planning in comparison to Planful and Data Rails. It feels like is has been easier to use with a quicker learning curve. The other systems were more intimidating for the nonfinance users, like the budget owners who would only need it for reporting or inputting …
All of the systems have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Workday Adaptive Planning as a system is further along in overall functionality and is a more user-friendly system compared to other EPM systems on the market.
Adaptive is much more flexible and powerful for our needs. It provides a wealth of reporting tools and capabilities that Cognos simply didn't or couldn't provide. The ability to have a team of one completely implement and manage the solution for a company is not unreasonable …
Adaptive Insights is well-positioned against the new tier of SaaS players as well as the larger, legacy, on-premise financial planning solutions such as Hyperion and IBM Cognos TM1. Its got an approachable user interface and relatively easy to use models and forecast …
When we were evaluating the software solutions we wanted: 1) A product that would efficiently consolidate our annual budget. 2) Something that would be easily adopted by the entire company.
Adaptive provided the best solution for the price given how we wanted to deploy the solution. For our size business they appear to the be best in class solution.
Host Analytics appeared to provide the same functionality, but was for a more distributed budgeting and …
We look hard at Host Analytics and softly at Longview and Prophix. Adaptive's advantages was ease of use, offered a full solution and pricing. We wanted to roll this out to the entire organization and felt Adaptive met those needs best and could grow with the company.
Adaptive has a much better interface and usability compared to all these systems. It is also less complex, easy to configure and install, and easy to teach. Adaptive is more affordable, both short and long term.
Adaptive Suite gave us what we needed and fit our use case perfectly. We did short list Host Analytics and they were neck and neck with Adaptive and it was a win/win for us and we would have been successful with either tool. My familiarity with Adaptive, the simplicity of …
We had meetings with several industry leaders and Adaptive was our choice in the end. We liked IBM and also liked Host Analytics for different reasons. In the end it was the combination of cloud, Excel add-in, Office Connect, Discovery, and cost that would ultimately end up …
We evaluated Host along with Adaptive, and chose Adaptive. We felt Adaptive was a better solution for our needs, which was primarily forecasting, and we thought Adaptive better handled our significant dimensionality all while maintaining a more user friendly interface. Our …
Adaptive was more flexible, able to be maintained without heavy IT involvement, cost effective, had no additional hardware requirements, and since it is a cloud platform, updates are automatic.
Cognos - capabilities are very similar. Cognos does allow a "push-down" (e.g. current rollup of Outside Services is $600k, enter $1mm at the highest level and the additional $400k is spread to the lowest level based on the existing spread).
We also looked at A3 Solutions, Budget …
Verified User
Manager
Chose Workday Adaptive Planning
I've implemented Host Analytics at a previous company. We performed an extensive vendor selection process and Adaptive Insights came out on top. Adaptive Insights allowing us to use a demo helped prove the functionality of the software. Since we've started implementation there …
I have used Oracle, Host Analytics, and Axiom. Adaptive Planning is far and away superior to Host Analytics on every stand point. Adaptive Planning is a much easier version to use over Oracle and Axiom on a budgeting and planning only standpoint. When we chose Adaptive we only …
Verified User
Director
Chose Workday Adaptive Planning
Host Analytics which we also reviewed in-depth (saw demos, had department heads and users to sit in on demos, talked to vendor supplied references with both companies, asked same list of standard questions)
Adaptive planning was:
Planful, formerly Host Analytics, and Workday Adaptive Planning are both Corporate Performance Management software with strong focuses on budgeting and financial management. While the products historically catered to slightly different markets, they have become more directly comparable in recent years.
Planful serves midsize companies and enterprises, and is designed with scalability across that size range in mind. Historically, Adaptive Planning, formerly Adaptive Insights, catered more to growing midsize companies that had outscaled Excel-based financial processes. However, with Workday’s acquisition of the platform, Adaptive Planning has been expanding into the enterprise market more heavily as well.
Features
Planful and Workday Adaptive Insights both offer robust CPM features for scaling organizations.
Planful stands out for its easy deployment and prebuilt capabilities. Reviewers highlight the platform’s out-of-the-box feature set that does not rely on heavy customization. Planful also adjusts well to mid-flight dynamic budgeting. This capability gives large organizations and enterprises more financial maneuverability.
Workday excels in its relative user-friendliness, especially among professionals that are not used to working in CPM tools. For instance, reviewers frequently highlight Adaptive Planning’s Office Connect capability, which allows users more versed in Excel-based corporate performance management to more easily transition to the Workday platform. The user interface is also more friendly and accessible for users.
Limitations
There also some limitations or drawbacks to Planful and Workday Adaptive Insights worth evaluating.
Planful has been criticized for its reporting and data visualizations. While dynamic budgeting is well supported, Planful lacks equivalent dynamic and customizable reporting features. Reviewers frequently describe using 3rd party visualization tools in conjunction with Planful.
Workday also struggles some with reporting flexibility. Reviewers specifically criticize the web-based reporting functionality, which does not feel on par with the Office Connect-enabled reporting abilities. The processes and functions in Office Connect are also not identical to Excel, which requires some lingering learning curve when transitioning to the platform.
Pricing
Planful pricing is available by quote from the vendor.
Workday Adaptive Planning offers two packages, each priced by quote from the vendor. The Standard package includes all the core features and capabilities, while the Enterprise package adds on unlimited storage, additional automation, and sandboxing. Workday also offers 3 license types, a Full Seat, or admins, which cost the most, Contributors, which are standard users, and Viewers, which can access data but not make changes.
Features
Planful
Workday Adaptive Planning
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Planful
6.6
33 Ratings
19% below category average
Workday Adaptive Planning
9.3
1 Ratings
16% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports
6.715 Ratings
9.01 Ratings
Customizable dashboards
6.729 Ratings
10.01 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates
6.327 Ratings
9.01 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.3
60 Ratings
12% below category average
Workday Adaptive Planning
8.0
1 Ratings
3% below category average
Drill-down analysis
7.958 Ratings
9.01 Ratings
Formatting capabilities
6.859 Ratings
7.01 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration
7.155 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages
00 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Planful
6.6
48 Ratings
21% below category average
Workday Adaptive Planning
8.0
1 Ratings
2% below category average
Publish to Web
7.012 Ratings
00 Ratings
Publish to PDF
7.044 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Report Versioning
5.428 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling
6.931 Ratings
8.01 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B