Item: Workday Adaptive Planning
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adaptive Insights is currently used across the entire organization. It is used to help financial planning, budgeting, and reporting. Our organization has a cycle of one annual budget, and a monthly forecast. Adaptive Planning allows us to keep multiple versions active - we can work on budgets and forecasts. We also import actual data and run variance reports between budget and actuals, and compare multiple forecasts. The biggest problem that Adaptive Planning helps us to address is quick review of data. It is easy to import actuals and to keep reports updated.

Pros and Cons

Formulas are easy to understand and to write. It is helpful to work with a consultant to get started, but once you are started, you can maintain the system on your own. (I work in the finance office, so it is easy to manage, even for non-technical staff.)
Ad-hoc reporting is great - the drag and drop feature makes building reports quick.
Customer service is excellent.

Discovery could use more flexibility. It would be good to give users access in Adaptive Discovery that is separate from their data access in Adaptive Planning. Also, the headers for time or other areas can't always be changed. (For example, I can't change "2014-2015" to show as "FY2015" on some dashboards.)
Adaptive Insights is currently working on this, but Java is frustrating. It seems to break at the most inopportune times. I will be glad when Java is completely removed from the system.
Reports are limited to 15,000 rows, which is sometimes too small.

Alternatives Considered

IBM Cognos TM1 and Prophix

We selected Adaptive Insights for two reasons:
1. They are cloud based. With the software being managed on the cloud, we do not need to worry about managing servers, broken data tables, or other back-end concerns. We also don't have to wait for our (already taxed) IT department to rewrite queries or fix problems. Adaptive Insights takes care of all of that for us!
2. Their customer service is excellent. I have always been treated with respect. Their response time is amazing, and they are always working to help find solutions.

Data Integration

We've had help from a consultant in setting up our data sources. I don't think it was something we could have done on our own. That being said, it has been a good experience, and we have been able to bring in data quickly. We bring in data from two sources: our HR system and our general ledger.

Collaboration and Sharing

Their security features are good. It is easy to give appropriate access to staff based on organization structure. If your access levels are not based on organization structure, then it may be more difficult to set up the security features. Report distribution is easy, but we have set up a self-service function. Reports are always available, and users can go in and run the reports themselves.

Likelihood to Recommend

I would recommend meeting first with someone who is currently using the product to see how it is running for them (if at all possible). If that is not possible, I would show Adaptive Insights the current reports your company is using, and ask them to re-create them in a sample for your company.

Definitely ask if there are other similar organizations or companies currently using the product. Being able to collaborate with similar organizations is one of the best features. So if you are the only company in your field using Adaptive Insights, you won't have the same sense of community or feedback.

Insights into Adaptive Insights

Modules Used

Overall Satisfaction with Adaptive Suite