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Solid and intuitive planning solution
Updated March 14, 2024

Solid and intuitive planning solution

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

Overall Satisfaction with Workday Adaptive Planning

We purchased Adaptive Insights three months ago and are currently still in the implementation phase. We have our PnL currently up and running but it is our intention to build a full three statement model in Adaptive. The very intuitive interface allowed us to progress quickly with the implementation. At this moment all of our users are from the local finance teams but as we progress with the roll-out of our functional budgeting we will give other departments viewing and reporting access as well.
  • A very intuitive solution from a budget contributor point of view. The sheets are clean and the drag and drop functionalities make it easy to get started.
  • The many different custom dimensions and attributes make it easy to slice and dice the data to your liking.
  • The Adaptive logic is different than the Excel logic so it does require you to revise your current Excel models to bring them onto the platform.
  • We are still trying to figure out if, and how easy it is to bring more complex models to Adaptive (predictive modeling, Monte Carlo simulations etc).
  • The time used for data gathering and consolidation can now be used for data analytics.
Adaptive seemed to be the most user-friendly, easy to implement, and cost-effective solution.
I believe Adaptive Insights is a great solution to make your overall budgeting and planning process more structured, efficient, and less error-prone. The sheets are clean and easy to get started. Version control is a big advantage compared to regular excel files. The workflow planning allows you to assign specific tasks to different users to keep track of your overall budgeting cycles. What we have not implemented yet are more sophisticated predictive models like regression models and/or Monte Carlo simulations. We are still trying to figure out what the possibilities withing Adaptive are.

Workday Adaptive Planning Feature Ratings

8.0
Long-term financial planning
7
Financial budgeting
9
Forecasting
9
Scenario modeling
7
Management reporting
8
7.0
Financial data consolidation
8
Journal entries and reports
6
Multi-currency management
7
Intercompany Eliminations
Not Rated
Minority Ownership
Not Rated
Local and consolidated reporting
Not Rated
Detailed Audit Trails
7
8.0
Financial Statement Reporting
8
Management Reporting
8
Excel-based Reporting
9
Automated board and financial reporting
7
XBRL support for regulatory filing
Not Rated
7.4
Personalized dashboards
7
Color-coded scorecards
7
KPIs
7
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
8
Benchmarking with external data
Not Rated
9.0
Flat file integration
9
Excel data integration
10
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
8
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

300 - Primarily the financial planning & analysis teams in our local markets (US/UK/CA/NL/ANZ/etc) and our holding company in Berlin. Some folks from our accounting and tax teams have access as well. There is limited usage from other non-finance-related teams.
6 - We have approx 6 people that perform admin-related tasks, two in the US and four in the holding in Berlin. Two of these admins were part of the Adaptive implementation team back in H2 2019. Skills differ between team members. There is a pretty clear separation of duties and some of the most common tasks are saving down new budget versions, uploads of actuals from Oracle during month-end close, user management, and model enhancements.
  • Annual Business Planning and Quarterly Reforecasts
  • Using OfficeConnect for Month-End Close Variance Analysis
  • Data repository for historical financials and budgets
  • Maintaining P&L consistency across all local markets
  • Budgeting on a very granular level across multiple dimensions (brand, account, cost center, location) using cube sheets
  • OfficeConnect has become our main go-to for reporting
  • Simplified budgeting process for Intercompany forecasting across entities using cube sheets
  • I'd be very interesting in a further integration between Workday HRIS and Workday Adaptive Planning to further improve our headcount planning process.
  • Dashboarding is still not very good in Adaptive. We still mainly rely on other systems (excel, tableau, etc) while there could be an opportunity to bring some of that onto the adaptive platform if it improves.
Great product. Easy to understand for new joiners. Frequent product improvements with quarterly release updates.

System is sometimes a bit slow. Integration with Workday HRIS doesn't exist (or has not been shown to me). Dashboarding/Reporting section in the Adaptive Browser is not good. Audit trail for admin changes and a report that would show all recent budget changes that had an impact on (for example) AEBITDA would be great too. With so many users on the system we often see AEBITDA change during budgeting so then we need to ask around to understand who made changes. Audit Trail is only valuable when you already know which input was changed.