Adaptive Insights - an easy to use time saving solution
March 21, 2018

Adaptive Insights - an easy to use time saving solution

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

Overall Satisfaction with Adaptive Insights

The user interface is simple but effective, and the organisational structure can be easily modified to reflect changes to the divisional hierarchy within the company. Most of the entry of data, which is largely what non-administrative users are doing on the system, is no more complicated than simply entering into cells in Excel so very little ongoing training and support has to be given to users.
We primarily use Adaptive Insights for financial planning and analysis. Administration is handled by finance but we have users in various departments across the business who are able to manage their budgets and view their cost reports through Adaptive.

In finance, we produce the management reports (i.e Company P&L statement, cash flows etc.) for our board pack in Adaptive Insights - rolling forward these from month to month is much quicker and easier than in previous years, when we would have to export all the data from our accounting system into Excel and spend hours producing graphs and charts.
  • Allows the user to easily slice their data in many different ways.
  • Simple to set up allocation formulae (i.e for overheads) that save a lot of time and complex calculation.
  • Easy to give various budget owners different licences with distinct levels of permissions and access.
  • Sometimes support responses can be a bit generic which is a little frustrating, having been a customer for a couple of years now.
  • It's still tricky to exclude accounts/levels from reports - it's normally then a case of having to drag in each specifically.
  • Drill-down functionality can be a little illogical/confusing at times.
  • Reduction in man-hours for producing reports
  • Allowing finance and budget owners to work together more closely
  • Greater accuracy in multi-year forecasts
Improved accuracy - drill down functionality allows for quick and easy comparison between budgeted and actual spend - is key, as are a reduction in man hours in the time it takes to produce the reports. Scenario modelling is also extremely quick and easy using the many different versions in Adaptive.
My role was very much focused upon producing reports when I joined the team and Adaptive has definitely seen an improvement in my workload. With the system saving a lot of time when it comes to rolling forward and exporting the reports month to month, I've been able to spend a lot more time not only on analysing the meaning behind the reports, but also on business partnering and supporting cost owners.
Adaptive is well suited for producing a variety of reports on a monthly basis, from simple cost reports for budget holders to modeling forecasts for a variety of planning scenarios in the next five years. Easily creating multiple forecast versions from which assumptions can be quickly tweaked makes it quick and easy to model the effect of revenue growth on certain costs, amongst a plethora of other examples. The Discovery module makes producing charts and graphs simple that very quickly show trends and variances and can be taken immediately into board meetings using the presentation mode.

Workday Adaptive Planning Feature Ratings

Long-term financial planning
9
Financial budgeting
9
Forecasting
9
Scenario modeling
9
Management reporting
10
Financial data consolidation
Not Rated
Journal entries and reports
Not Rated
Multi-currency management
8
Intercompany Eliminations
Not Rated
Minority Ownership
Not Rated
Local and consolidated reporting
Not Rated
Detailed Audit Trails
7
Financial Statement Reporting
Not Rated
Management Reporting
Not Rated
Excel-based Reporting
Not Rated
Automated board and financial reporting
Not Rated
XBRL support for regulatory filing
Not Rated
Personalized dashboards
Not Rated
Color-coded scorecards
Not Rated
KPIs
Not Rated
Cost and profitability analysis
Not Rated
Key Performance Indicator setting
Not Rated
Benchmarking with external data
Not Rated
Not Rated
Flat file integration
Not Rated
Excel data integration
Not Rated
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
Not Rated