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

Overall Satisfaction with Adaptive Suite

Usability

If you are proficient in Excel modeling then it is not too difficult to use. There are probably ways to create more shortcuts to see frequently used views. I did not need any extensive training to learn how to navigate the program.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use adaptive suite for budgeting and variance analysis. It is being used by one department within finance. It enables multiple users to access the budgeting tool and gives us the ability to look at different scenarios by locking and unlocking our budgets.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Adaptive is good for cross-collaboration. The ability to see updates real-time expedites the budgeting process. Afterall, in coming up with a consolidated P&L forecast, there are inter-dependencies. For example, some departments' spend is allocated out.
Adaptive is good for looking at the intersection of subsidiaries, departments, and expense accounts. The ability to pivot a one line item is business critical.

Cons

Sometimes it takes a while to load.
I would like to change the time scale shown in a simpler way. I need to take several steps to change views such as on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. I change views so often that I wish it was just one click of a button.

Return on Investment

It’s been really helpful for version control. Once a month we lock a version which is important for variance analysis so we can course correct if we are deviating from plan.
Adaptive is good for bottoms up budgeting. You can include as much detail as necessary.
Adaptive is good for pivoting. Understanding how expenses are being allocated into different department, subsidiaries, and accounts are super important.

Reporting

Adaptive has enabled reporting and analysis for my team. It has been beneficial to see actuals piped in to compare against different versions. Auditing features are helpful to dig deeper into the details, whether the variance was coming from a certain subsidiary or a sub-department.

Role Impact

The budget versus actuals template has reduced the time that I could be using to do formatting. Moreover, little features such time stamp makes version control much easier.

Alternatives Considered

Anaplan

Adaptive was easier for me to learn than the competitor product. The other product requires custom development, which takes time. However, once up and running it is easier to do analytics with less steps by using more formulas. The caveat is that it requires considerable amount of time to learn how to use the other product.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adaptive is great for collaborative work since it is in the cloud. For example, we have multiple people managing budgets that are for different departments. These inputs need to be consolidated on a timely basis. Adaptive is good for that since it allows for multiple users to collaborate on the same platform. I do not typically work on ad-hoc financial analysis in Adaptive, however. I typically download the information and analyze outside since it’s easier for me to pivot outside of the system.

Workday Adaptive Planning Feature Ratings

Comments

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Adaptive is user-friendly and easy to deploy