Active Query Builder vs. Bizview vs. Workday Adaptive Planning

This is a good framework to use if your project requires frequent database queries. The product is made for both complete amateurs and seasoned experts. Prompt, courteous, and expert assistance; any problems are addressed and fixed without delay. Relatively inexpensive Inadequate, if there are new people involved, delays due to a lack of documentation are likely, and issues with code completion may arise.

Incentivized

My favorite part is using if for analytical review reports, especially budget to actual reviews. I can make changes to the GL based on issues found during the review and the report updates immediately without having to update, re-key, verify changes, etc. I know it is going to be updated and correct every time.

We're a mid-size organization working with a shoestring budget and an IT skeleton crew...not much room to dedicate resources to a platform like this fully. Having it SaaS based is helpful for system management through their Helpdesk system, and a single platform also helps streamline the knowledge needed by our developers when integrating other business aspects to Workday.

Incentivized

• Pull data from SQL even if you do not know SQL.
• Provides clear database information.
• Works with multiple databases at once.
• Data access and security.

Incentivized

• Once a worksheet has been created, you can change a single cell and update the entire report. This makes it much easier than recreating a report every time you start.
• It draws data directly from our database that can be filtered down in various ways. This allows us to get the data that we really need quicker.

Incentivized

• It helps create dynamic plans for finances, operations and various functional units in an organization all under one platform
• It helps in scenario modeling to help analyze various business events and report by any number of business dimensions including channel, customer or product
• It can be integrated with any system including ERP, BI or CRM

Incentivized

• Features are good but lacks documentation
• It would be great it were adaptive to Embarcadero/Dev Express Skins that would be very cool
• Modifying SQL code is difficult

Incentivized

• Access to comprehensive training for new users is lacking. While the pay-based BizNet University has some useful videos it doesn't allow for other learning styles.
• Having to create a separate OCBC data source and linked server for each arm of business opened is sometimes a hassle.

• Dashboards are not the best for graphs/charts. However, I have heard of companies using the dashboards for forecasting/budgeting. I would like to see Workday Adaptive Planning demonstrate this part of the feature.
• Better security or locks to prevent deleting Actuals data - you are literally one click away from doing this.
• On the web-based reports, better functionality when needing to reverse the sign in calculations - right now it is only available for revenue vs. expenses.

Incentivized

Lack of communication from BizNet on new policies with the resellers, changes in the policies that affect the client aren't positive in my opinion

Incentivized

For one we're in way too deep to not move forward with Adaptive. We're integrated with Workday, we do a ton of reporting with Adaptive, and it's working very well for planning and forecasting. No reason to look back or change course.

Excel knowledge is a prerequisite to use BizNet well.

It is overwhelming at first, but once you really get to know it, you realize it is fairly simple and customizable, and then it has a lot more limitations than you first thought. Realizing those limitations and finding workarounds is when you know you've mastered the software.

Incentivized

There haven't been any lately. The only one issue I can think of is when there was an update in Adaptive that altered our reports. Before I realized there was an issue, Adaptive reached out to let me know, so that it could be fixed.

All aspects of Adaptive Insights perform well. One area that I wish was quicker was integration. When importing data from Intacct our accounting ERP platform, it can sometimes take 4 hours for the import to process. The earlier imports are done, the quicker they complete. My estimate for a quick upload is about two hours.

We have only had a few occasions to call on the support team over 4 years, but every time our need was met in a superior manner.

Whenever we have had any questions, issues, or concerns, the support has been quick and thorough. [This] allow[s] us to be able to fully resolve any issues, or be connected with the right group quickly to attain the result we were after; be it from simple formatting to adding new detailed reporting.

Incentivized

This was extremely helpful so that they could walk you through the model and teach you more about the complexity of various areas. It is most helpful when it is specific to your organization's model. The larger in-person trainings were helpful but they tended to be more generic and entry level. The trainings that are more tailored to your specific needs are the most helpful.

Incentivized

They often times tended to be way too generic or entry level. They would also become sales pitches to upgrade or get new Adaptive Planning products. The questions in the training would be very niche and specific to other organizations. They were rarely helpful to the group at large.

Incentivized

We went pretty seamlessly into BizNet, but could have had lots of trouble if the professional service was not aware of our set up and use.

Trust the expertise of very strong 3rd party implementers. Having deployed Adaptive at a separate company before, I thought I knew it all (hubris, I know). Fortunately, I began to (very quickly) trust the judgment of our Carlson implementation team, and they provided invaluable insights and best-in-class processes that have benefitted me and my team greatly.

Incentivized

I have used Flutter to begin and with flutter you need learn a language called Dart which is not needed with AQB, which is the main reason for us to pick Active Query Builder as a choice over Flutter. AQB supports all the merchant SQL databases with native syntax support, query optimizations and more

Incentivized

FRX - Great Plains Report Writer - These do produce financial reports but are much more tedious to set up. BizNet is much more flexible and easier to use. The functionality is an Excel add-on which allows us to use the powerful functionality of Excel as well as Biznet's functionality to do data retrieval from Sage 100 general ledger.

Incentivized

Workday became our choice because it is fully web-based and easily integrates with other systems. The learning curve for Workday was shorter than that of Dynamics. The reporting tools in Workday are more user-friendly than that of Dynamics. However Workday did not have Check Printing tools which are available in Dynamics. The organization started a project to digitize all financial transactions so it was not a priority feature. When it comes to scaling up the functionalities of Workday it was much easier than Dynamics.

Incentivized

Good read only seat access

Incentivized

We went from 2 users to 70+ users over a 2 year period of time. The application scaled wonderfully. 65 of those users were non-finance users so they were able to quickly learn the software and prepare budgets quickly and efficiently. That is the power of Adaptive and its ability to scale

This is now available in house at Workday which is convenient.

Incentivized

• better business decisions allow us to maximize revenue for the company
• awesome ROI

Incentivized

• BizNet continues to pay for itself.
• I am sure we haven't even learned to use half of what it is capable of and their customer service is top notch.
• I would say that BizNet continues to have a positive impact on our entire financial portion of our business.

Incentivized

• It's facilitated a better financial literacy and management by the non-financial managers in the company, giving them a much better ability to see what they're spending, control it, and plan better in the future.
• It's hard to quantify the ease of model and version management, but we could never do what we're doing now with our current staff. It would take a small army to replicate anything close to what Adaptive pulls off using Excel, if it's even possible.

Incentivized