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Forecasting Replacing Excel Made Easy
Updated July 29, 2022

Forecasting Replacing Excel Made Easy

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Workday Adaptive Planning

Adaptive Insights is being used primarily as a shared sales forecast tool for one of our Sales Categories. The outside sales team input sales numbers directly and then we use that data to generate a monthly sales forecast. We also update actual sales information in Adaptive and report out based on actual-versus-budget/forecast.
  • Adaptive eliminates the need for Excel sheets for budgets.
  • Adaptive uses the cloud to share similar data and have data updated simultaneously, where with spreadsheets you might have to wait for someone to enter data into a spreadsheet or someone manually copy data into a master file. Adaptive becomes the master file.
  • It helps store history quite well when wanting to compare things from previous periods or to look at trends.
  • When looking at totals on average selling prices, the sheet tries to average all of the selling prices instead of calculating total sales dollar and volume.
  • We used Adaptive to replace an Excel based forecast for one of our biggest sales categories. We have multiple outside sales reps that can enter the forecast without having to wait for others to finish.
The basics of Adaptive are pretty easy to grasp. For more complicated reports or setup, it might be necessary to use outside consulting.
I don't know as I haven't looked deeply at other packages.
Adaptive Insights is really good for reporting, budgeting, forecasting and eliminating Excel. Adaptive Insights is not so good with large amounts of data and can be cumbersome with part numbers or categories that change regularly.

Workday Adaptive Planning Feature Ratings

8.8
Long-term financial planning
8
Financial budgeting
9
Forecasting
10
Scenario modeling
8
Management reporting
9
Not Rated
Financial data consolidation
Not Rated
Journal entries and reports
Not Rated
Multi-currency management
Not Rated
Intercompany Eliminations
Not Rated
Minority Ownership
Not Rated
Local and consolidated reporting
Not Rated
Detailed Audit Trails
Not Rated
8.3
Financial Statement Reporting
9
Management Reporting
8
Excel-based Reporting
8
Automated board and financial reporting
Not Rated
XBRL support for regulatory filing
Not Rated
8.0
Personalized dashboards
Not Rated
Color-coded scorecards
Not Rated
KPIs
Not Rated
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
Not Rated
Benchmarking with external data
Not Rated
8.0
Flat file integration
7
Excel data integration
9
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
Not Rated
BI Standard Reporting ()
Not Rated
Ad-hoc Reporting ()
Not Rated
Report Output and Scheduling ()
Not Rated
Data Discovery and Visualization ()
Not Rated
Access Control and Security ()
Not Rated
Mobile Capabilities ()
Not Rated

Using Workday Adaptive Planning

5 - Sales, accounting, and management
2 - Accounting personnel. We worked with an outside consulting firm for support.
  • Sales Reporting
  • Forecasting
  • Budgeting
  • Profitability by Sales Rep and Customer
  • Eliminate shared excel spreadsheets
  • Streamline the forecasting process
  • Expand the budget use
It functions as the sole forecast function for a major product line.

Evaluating Workday Adaptive Planning and Competitors

Yes - It replaced excel spreadsheets.
  • Product Usability
It had to be easy to use.

Workday Adaptive Planning Implementation

It replaced an outdated sales forecasting system on excel. We did not go the whole way with budgeting due to licensing costs.
  • Third-party professional services
It was a preferred partner from the Columbus, OH area. I believe the company was bought and owned by a bigger company now.
Yes - We implemented the 3 different sales products separately, then added financial data.
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation
  • How to match the excel sheets for some sales categories that did not have quantity but sales dollars

Workday Adaptive Planning Support

We had a good working relationship with our outside consultants who were preferred partners of Adaptive Planning.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Not kept informed
No. We did not.

Using Workday Adaptive Planning

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
Requires technical support
  • Forecasting
  • P&L upload/download review
  • Budgeting
  • Advanced Sales Categorization