Item: Workday Adaptive Planning
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Adaptive for our annual planning process and interim forecast updates. We have also started using Adaptive for ad hoc reporting and will be transitioning our monthly and quarterly reporting decks to Adaptive over the next couple of months. Currently, only our FP&A department utilizes Adaptive, but we plan to expand to the Accounting department, at a minimum over the next 3 - 6 months.

Pros and Cons

The product is very intuitive
We were able to customize our instance/installation to meet our specific needs
Customer support is very responsive
Product enhancements are happening regularly (e.g. the addition of level attributes to Office Connect)

Lacks the ability to have multiple organization structures (this would be helpful for reporting in multiple years, when a re-org happens, etc)
For our company, the licensing cost is somewhat prohibitive to roll out to all our locations managers (e.g. 200 additional users)
I would like to see drag-and-drop capabilities in lists (e.g. org structure, dimensions, level attributes), instead of clicking an up/down arrow

Alternatives Considered

Cognos - capabilities are very similar. Cognos does allow a "push-down" (e.g. current rollup of Outside Services is $600k, enter $1mm at the highest level and the additional $400k is spread to the lowest level based on the existing spread).

We also looked at A3 Solutions, Budget Maestro, Halo, Host Analytics, Prophix, Steelwedge and Axiom. A3 Solutions and Axiom made our short list with Adaptive. Axiom's capabilities were very similar to Adaptive, but the cost was more than 2x, so this wasn't a justifiable solution. A3 Solutions felt more like glorified-Excel and didn't really offer the necessary capabilities.

Other Software Used

MS SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics GP

Data Integration

My specific rating is related to our automated connector between Great Plains and Adaptive. We went through a implementation project with two Adaptive representatives. Our implementation was not clean-cut, but I had a great experience with both consultants.

With the connector implemented, we have a nightly load of actuals scheduled, so I have updated financials when I get to the office. If I need to manually run the connector for updates during the day, the entire load takes about 10 minutes, so this is not prohibitive.

As a comparison, before the connector, it would take almost a full day to pull all 8 instances out of Great Plains, consolidate the data, manipulate the data, load the data and tie the data out. This has saved me a significant amount of time and make our reporting much more flexible and real-time.

Collaboration and Sharing

I like the ability we have to isolate access by specific users, but we can also have standard reports available for all FP&A users to access. We have only minimally used Adaptive Office Connect, but are excited to implement with the addition of level attributes.

I would like to see the ability to automate reporting to locations, such as SharePoint, even in pdf form. This would be very helpful in terms of report distribution and time savings.

Likelihood to Recommend

From a cost perspective, I find Adaptive being better suited for a smaller user base. I would find it difficult to justify 100-200 users in our organization.

I would also suggest considering implementing an automated connection to the general ledger (either summary or detailed) for actuals. Finally, I would recommend using an Adaptive or 3rd party consultant for the implementation. I learned a great deal from our implementation consultant that I have applied in the use/administration of Adaptive.

Users and Roles

11 - Finance / Financial Planning & Analysis.

Support Headcount Required

2 -

We have two individuals tasked as Administrators of our Adaptive instance.

Having some technical background is helpful, but not absolutely required. Experience in the Finance organization definitely helps with the implementation and directing towards the end result. The beauty of Adaptive is that the product can be 100% Finance owned - we do not have to burden the IT department with implementation or maintenance.

Future Planned Uses

Utilize Discovery for dashboarding, both for existing users and for additional management.
Add additional details to our actuals for further analysis (e.g. transactional info from our data warehouse, general ledger data, etc).
Progression to monthly forecasts, at a minimum, or even rolling forecasts.

Business Processes Supported

Moving our annual planning cycle and interim forecast cycles out of a spreadsheet.
Reporting is much easier than in our legacy system - simply drag and drop fields and refresh the report. Very simple.
We also utilize Office Connect for Excel, which is a powerful reporting add-in which allows refreshing of multiple worksheets and has eased our reporting burden.
Utilizing Discovery for dashboards is on our short-term horizon.

Products Replaced

Yes -

From a planning and forecasting perspective, Adaptive replaced Excel. Although Excel is flexible, scaling to 200 retail locations and ~40 overhead departments simply wasn't feasible.

From a reporting perspective, Adaptive is in the process of replacing Management Reporter (MR). MR is a very cumbersome, time-consuming, inflexible reporting tool that has grown obsolete for us.

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Third-party Reviews

Product Features - the various capabilities of Adaptive really caught our attention. Being able to utilize various dimensions and unlimited level attributes was very appealing to us in that these features allowed for a variety of slicing/dicing of our actuals, plans and forecasts. We are also excited to utilize the dashboarding capabilities in Adaptive and we will be implementing Office Connect as level attributes are now available (currently in beta test).

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Honestly, the only change I would make is talking with existing customers. I certainly don't expect that this would have changed my mind, but perhaps would change the timeline on when certain aspects of the product were implemented and utilized (e.g. connector for pulling in actuals). If I had to make this decision again, I would certainly select Adaptive again. If I ever make a career move, companies using Adaptive, or even considering Adaptive, will earn a much higher spot on my list of prospects.

Implementation Rating

I would recommend tackling via an internal team approach, even if this only entails a weekly recap. This can help keep the project moving in the right direction towards achieving the desired end results.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Professional services company

Rapid Performance, LLC located in Wilmington, DE.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - My primary lesson learned from the implementation was that our timing was less than ideal. We implemented Adaptive during our annual planning cycle, which made the process even more challenging. In a perfect world, we would have started the implementation 3 months earlier and had time to review/tweak our instance before we jumped into our annual plan.

Implementation Issues

First and foremost, my biggest issue was allocating sufficient time to the implementation. I was the only internal resource working on the implementation and conflicting priorities made the process tough.
Determining customization for individual portions of the implementation was difficult at times. There are basic sheets, layouts, etc that can be utilized, but a big positive of Adaptive is that it can be customized for individual needs. In hindsight, having a better view of the desired end product would have been helpful.

Support Rating

Response times are normally very quick. In one instance, I had a crisis over a weekend. I dropped an e-mail to the Adaptive support center, fully expecting that I would not receive a response until sometime Monday morning. Much to my surprise, not only did I receive a response that same day, but also my issue was completely resolved.

On the downside, sometimes I do feel like I can receive varying direction depending on whom I talk to about a given question. That being said, the flexibility of individual instances/implementations available with this suite make it understandable that hundreds of unique scenarios can arise.

Workday Adaptive Planning Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

No - Most issues we've experienced are able to be handled by first level support, so premium support isn't necessarily needed. In addition, we couldn't justify the additional expense at our initial licensing and simply have not seen the need to add subsequently.

Bug Resolution

Exceptional Examples of Workday Adaptive Planning Support

As mentioned previously, the support team resolved a significant issue for me on a weekend, when I didn't anticipate receiving a response until the following Monday. This may seem like a small thing, but resolution of this issue saved me a great deal of time and avoided countless headaches. I'm truly grateful for the quick fix.

I will seek out companies using and/or considering Adaptive whenever I make my next career move!

Overall Satisfaction with Adaptive Suite