Workday Adaptive Planning – It’s Versatile!
Updated February 26, 2024

Workday Adaptive Planning – It’s Versatile!

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

Overall Satisfaction with Workday Adaptive Planning

We use Workday Adaptive Planning for budget and forecast planning, reporting (utilizing both web and office connect excel reports), and analytics. The system is primarily used by finance now, until we role it out to other departments in our business; which we’ve already begun to do. With Workday Adaptive Planning we are able to compile large amounts of data from the bottoms up but also have the flexibility of modeling at a high level. The system is versatile and can be used for not only financials, but headcount, and performance data as well.
  • Creation of Versions.
  • Reporting and Dashboarding.
  • Model Flexibility.
  • Web reports within Dashboard would be great.
  • Version to Version referencing within model formulas.
  • Calculations within reports that allow you to add data across different versions.
  • Streamlined planning process.
  • Reduced time in reporting through automation.
  • The ability to create versions.
I have not used these tools in depth. AI and ML are two areas that Workday is focusing a lot on in the past releases of new functionality. I think our organization will start to use them in the near future. We expect that the tools will help catch errors and improve our review.
Workday Adaptive Planning is centrally used in FP&A at this time. Therefore it hasn't hit many business processes outside of finance. As it relates to finance, Adaptive has helped improve processes around inputting data and reporting on that data efficiently for both budgets and forecasts. The review process for reporting and forecasting has also greatly improved.
Workday Adaptive Planning is overall very versatile and easy to use. The formula writing and syntax takes some getting used to but if you are intentional about how the system is set up then learning how to read and digest complex formulas can be straightforward. It’s also easy to navigate the system through sheets and assumptions, some systems aren’t that way.
I haven't used a separate planning tool in great depth like Adaptive. Our company used Host Analytics prior to Adaptive but I didn't have a lot of experience with it. The other software I've used for planning is Excel. Excel is obviously capable of a lot of complex lookups and calculations but it comes with plently of limitations.

Do you think Workday Adaptive Planning delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Workday Adaptive Planning's feature set?

Yes

Did Workday Adaptive Planning live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Workday Adaptive Planning go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Workday Adaptive Planning again?

Yes

Workday Adaptive Planning is well suited for building plans from the bottom up and involving other departments within your business. You can set up processes that allow you to track from within the system, the progress of the departments and imputing the data that’s required. The system is less appropriate for static planning, as the system is suited to be used for active planning and forecasting.

Workday Adaptive Planning Feature Ratings

Long-term financial planning
9
Financial budgeting
9
Forecasting
9
Scenario modeling
9
Management reporting
7
Financial data consolidation
8
Journal entries and reports
8
Multi-currency management
9
Intercompany Eliminations
8
Minority Ownership
8
Local and consolidated reporting
8
Detailed Audit Trails
7
Financial Statement Reporting
8
Management Reporting
8
Excel-based Reporting
10
Automated board and financial reporting
10
XBRL support for regulatory filing
7
Personalized dashboards
8
Color-coded scorecards
9
KPIs
9
Cost and profitability analysis
8
Key Performance Indicator setting
8
Benchmarking with external data
8
Flat file integration
10
Excel data integration
9
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
9

Planning, Alignment, and Use

We focus on a centralized planning team, so others outside of finance don't use Adaptive. I believe Adaptive has great tools to allow enterprise-wide planning, but I can't speak on how well it works. The tools we use for workforce, revenue, and operational planning do work really well for our purposes.
We perform a monthly reforecast using Adaptive and it works well for our strategy. We generate the forecast using different types of sheets and at times use planning dashboards to streamline that process. We are then able to publish the plans to workday to allow those forecasts to reach the business.
We regretted trying to integrate massive amounts of operational data. We wish we would've integrated our data at a higher, more simple level. The data that we tried to integrate was our inventory detaisl report which is a lot of information. It is better suited in Workday's other product called Prism Analytics.
I think there's a lot options for scaling Adaptive with your busiess. There's a way to do this with levels or dimension in a single instance. Or you can structure your model by creating multiple instances of Adaptive and then integrate your results to a parent instance. I think it's feasible to use the tool for a large organization.
The UI is easy to follow and understand. The integration has helped us move and validate data in new ways that saves time and energy. Our business changes regularly and we need to be able to pivot for that change timely and efficiently. The Adaptive integration, after having been set up and at times with the help of IT to connect with our systems, is finance owned and modified as we see fit. Having the integration understood by administrators of Adaptive is a valuable tool for solving complex reporting and planning needs. We find the integration to be very important to how we report and plan on our business.
We used Miscrosoft Excel prior to Adaptive Planning. The transition has improved our processes massively. We're able to plan TOGETHER instead of in silos. This makes it easier to communicate on the same page. The reporting functionality has been hugely impacted as well. It takes a matter of minutes to generate a deck where it took hours prior to having Adaptive.

Using Workday Adaptive Planning

25 - Operations, Back Office, Maintenance, Supply Chain, Revenue
2 - Data-driven, problem-solver, general curiosity about finance systems, accounting and finance knowledge base are all valuable skill sets to keep in mind when supporting Adaptive.
  • Using the tool to be able to generate ad-hoc forecasts and plans
  • Using Adaptive for monthly reporting and budget deck preparation
  • Ability to generate flexible plans and change assumptions on the fly if needed
  • We've started to use it to generate a statement of cash flow
  • We use it to store a lot of our debt information to feed reporting and our plan
  • We've utilized dimensionality in unique ways to assist in easy planning/maintenance
  • Forecasted Cash Flow
  • Improved Tracking of CapEx
  • More in depth modeling of Personnel
For one we're in way too deep to not move forward with Adaptive. We're integrated with Workday, we do a ton of reporting with Adaptive, and it's working very well for planning and forecasting. No reason to look back or change course.

Workday Adaptive Planning Implementation

Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - We learned that extra communication about the changes that were taking place was necessary. With all of our department keeping very busy, it was essential to take extra steps to make sure the changes taking place were understood by all.
  • Integrating the data with Workday was time-consuming simply based on how different the two systems were at the time of our implementation.
  • Recognizing that some of our Workday data was messy made it difficult to complete work timely.
  • Integrating with large databases ended up failing because it was slowing down Adaptive. Adaptive planners will tell you that Adaptive is a planning tool, not a database.

Workday Adaptive Planning Support

The online support for Workday Adaptive Planning is very helpful. I go there at least once a week to find answers to questions and they’re usually very easy to find. If i’m unsuccessful in finding the answer, I email Workday Adaptive Planning support and they’re quick to answer, willing to help, and provide great clarity on the answer if you need it.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
We did not purchase premium support. The support we receive from the Adaptive support team has been solid!
I won't list any specific examples, but generally when I reach out to support they do a great job of doing research if they don't know the answer off-hand. I always feel valued when reaching out to support and the service has been fantastic.

Integrating Workday Adaptive Planning

  • Workday
  • RAMCO
  • Sabre
  • Adaptive
  • Spreadsheets
The integration of Workday to Adaptive and vice versa was straight-forward to set up through Adaptive's user-friendly interface. It took careful following of documentation produced by Workday. The Workday integration was setup and owned by finance which allows us to easily make changes as needed. RAMCO and Sabre required the help of our IT integration group, but from an Adaptive set up perspective it was still owned by finance. We also user boomerang logic to have the Adaptive integration bring in data from Adaptive and then send it back in. Lastly we use spreadsheets to upload data to the integration. Both Adaptive and spreadsheet data sources were easy to achieve.
  • PowerBI
To my knowledge, PowerBI is not supported.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
  • ETL tools
To my knowledge, the list is complete.
From the perspective of a person with finance and accounting background, my advice would be to not get freaked out when hearing the word integration if you're going to be someone who helps manage this product (assuming you purchase it). The integration framework is logical and makes sense. Building out tables and loaders actually become an enjoyable task after you have the data connection working as it should. Have fun with it!