Item: Workday Adaptive Planning
Rating: 8
Author: David Dunkley

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using the Adaptive Suite as a budgeting tool for all the departments within our organization. We had been using Excel which worked back when we were a small company, but as we grew, we realized Excel could not scale with us. The Adaptive Suite gave access to the budget owners wherever they were located and created an audited single source of truth.

Pros and Cons

Accessibility. The tool is accessible to all of our budget owners around the world because it is on the cloud.
Easy enough to use. Once we built out the infrastructure, the users had no problems going in and putting in their budgets.
Version! I love being able to make as many versions of the budget as I need with a push of the button.

Currencies. I have departments that have individuals from different parts of the world that budget their part or at least their compensation in a different currency. I had to create separate departments for those individuals because you could have multiple currencies in the same department.
At the end of the day I need to produce an income statement the way board members look at financials. Meaning grouping things into Sales and Marketing, R&D, and G&A. It should be easier for existing functionality to have an IS template that builds out that way without having to go and custom create it and then maintain that custom report with every change.
There are some complexities in the implementation that are probably unavoidable while building the infrastructure. A good implementation team helps you get through it though. Problem is however, in the future, if you make any significant changes you may be purchasing additional hours.

Other Software Used

NetSuite, Salesforce.com, Workfront

Data Integration

We connect with NetSuite. Unfortunately, we are dealing with a bug right in the integration with NetSuite. Other than that, we do not have any other integrations to other sources of data.

Collaboration and Sharing

The access control is great within the Adaptive Suite. We have been able to set up controls for the exact needs of different users. Rolling data up to an exec owner had to be done at a reporting level and not at a summary level while working in the system due to multiple currencies, but that is just a function of our needs. Reporting is easy and accessible to all.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think if you are a SaaS software company, the Adaptive Suite will be very intuitive. I don't know how well suited it is for manufacturing or anything else only because I have not had to implement it for such companies, but it works well for the software industry.

Perfect for moving off Excel and into big-boy budgeting

Overall Satisfaction with Adaptive Suite