Ahead of the curve.
March 23, 2018

Ahead of the curve.

Andy Clifton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Adaptive Insights

I think that it is very intuitive and once you get to know the system it is very user-friendly.

The reporting module is especially impressive with the drag and drop reporting - our business really loves this.

The system looks modern and "smart" and I never hesitate to show it off to stakeholders across the business.

Some of the "back end" formula set up can sometimes involve lots of heavy lifting as a power user.
We use Adaptive Insights for corporate budgeting, scenario planning and reporting financial information out to the business. Our FP&A group use Adaptive as the central database for financial planning internationally and are the main users of the system. Our stakeholders outside of finance also have a read-only view of the system.

The key business problems we have addressed by using Adaptive are:
- significantly improved budgeting and forecasting cycles (in terms of time and quality).
- Improved transparency with the rest of the business.
  • Adaptive handles the concept of "versions" very well. This makes budgeting, forecasting, and scenario planning particularly easy. You can compare actuals vs budget, vs budget @ different rate, vs forecast or vs prior year all at the quick click of a button.
  • Multi-user, multi-location, multi-currency handled with ease within the system.
  • Adding or removing GL codes, levels or dimensions is really easy and is updated across the entire model.
  • The reporting writing part of the solution is excellent. Once the data is in, you can report any parameter against any other.
  • For reforecasting (e.g. doing 3 + 9 or 6 + 6), it would be useful to do constant currency analysis for versions that are "hybrid" (i.e. contain actual and plan data). At the moment, the virtual version functionality only works properly for actual or plan only versions.
  • We are a company going through a process of changing financial years and trying to plan over multiple financial periods of different lengths. I have found it very difficult to handle this in the system elegantly.
  • It would be good if there were more "template" models for various common business scenarios (e.g. sets of standard modeled sheets available for personnel and fixed assets) or sets of standard cubes for revenue or projects.
  • Our budgeting and forecasting cycles are now faster, more accurate and can evolve dynamically throughout the process. This is especially important in our business which is experiencing rapid growth.
  • Our ability to push out bespoke reporting to business owners has massively improved.
  • For our most recent budget cycle, we were able to simply and quickly illustrate the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations to our board.
- Adaptive has allowed automated actual vs budget reports are now circulated throughout the budget owners of our organisation. This has freed up a lot of time for increased business partnering and analysis.

- Variance analyses are now available at the click of a button and do not have to be manually prepared in Excel = time saving for improved insight and analysis.

- Our board reports are now more useful to the KDMs of our business as they can be prepared with better data visualisation and faster. This enables us to spend more time on the "explaining" and "advising".
As a key business partner to a global organisation, I have found that Adaptive has enabled me to fully immerse myself in the aspect of my job that I love the most - talking to people and truly helping them make decisions.

I no longer spend hours worrying about Excel version control or formulas breaking. I can just load up Adaptive and write a quick report and spend more time interpreting and considering the messaging for my business stakeholders.

I feel like using Adaptive I have been able to more easily explain and illustrate financial trends and outcomes that have fed directly into key business decisions.
To be honest - Host Analytics seemed relatively similar to Adaptive. However, Adaptive was our number one choice because:

- The Adaptive suite looked a lot better. It seemed smarter and "sharper" and the data visualisation was better.
- The people from Adaptive throughout the selection process were more helpful and insightful. This was confirmed throughout the implementation where we had really excellent service and help from Adaptive.
Adaptive Insights is very fit for us as a global company of c.600 employees. We have offices in multiple countries and have multiple users who need to access the data simultaneously. We are going through a rapid period of expansion and change as a business and Adaptive is easily able to keep up.

For very small companies, Adaptive may be too much. For a very large organization, there may be other solutions that are more suitable.

Workday Adaptive Planning Feature Ratings

Long-term financial planning
8
Financial budgeting
10
Forecasting
7
Scenario modeling
9
Management reporting
7
Financial data consolidation
7
Multi-currency management
10
Local and consolidated reporting
8
Detailed Audit Trails
7
Financial Statement Reporting
8
Management Reporting
8
Automated board and financial reporting
8
Personalized dashboards
7
Color-coded scorecards
5
KPIs
5
Cost and profitability analysis
7
Key Performance Indicator setting
7
Flat file integration
8
Excel data integration
8