We use Workday Adaptive Planning for all of our forecasting and budgeting needs. We no longer have multiple spreadsheets going to FP&A to analyze. We do all of our analysis in the system. In addition, the flexibility of being able to use OfficeConnect for report and financial statements allows us to customize the look and feel for our needs without being restricted by the systems' templates..

Pros

Integration with our existing ERP system.
Trusting the data. When there is an error, it is almost always human error. When using the system's processes exclusively, there are no errors.
Continuously providing updates from the community.

Cons

Dashboards are not the best for graphs/charts. However, I have heard of companies using the dashboards for forecasting/budgeting. I would like to see Workday Adaptive Planning demonstrate this part of the feature.
Better security or locks to prevent deleting Actuals data - you are literally one click away from doing this.
On the web-based reports, better functionality when needing to reverse the sign in calculations - right now it is only available for revenue vs. expenses.

Likelihood to Recommend

In a previous company, I was hired based on my experience with Workday Adaptive Planning. After being hired and reviewing the company, I quickly determined they were not large of enough of a company to need the program. Instead, we made better Excel budget templates, utilized OneDrive and created a better experience without the cost. Left the job after 9 months because I worked my way out of the position. My next role I looked for bigger companies and had better success with implementation.

Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting (Mining & Metals company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Adaptive Insights is a timesaver

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 21, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Adaptive Insights in the finance department, utilizing its capabilities for financial forecasting. We use it for a full P&L, balance sheet and cash flow solution, and use it for all financial reporting when it comes to forecasted numbers. It makes our department much more malleable and quicker, able to turn data around in hours as opposed to the days it might have taken in the past.

Pros

Full solution to replace Excel in your planning instance.
Very versatile, you can suit it to your business needs very well. The sky is the limit.

Cons

Because it is so open and versatile, sometimes you can get lost on what you are trying to accomplish. There are not as many templates as some might want.
It can be difficult to model solutions that aren't necessarily calendar based, but might be time based. Month1, Month2, etc. as opposed to Jan 2020, Feb 2020, etc.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adaptive Insights revolutionized our financial reporting and board meeting preparation. Whereas before it might take us 7-10 days to prepare for a board meeting, now it takes less than a day. Now we spend more time analyzing and preparing data for decision makers as opposed to logistical time spent loading data into spreadsheets.

The only difficulty we have had with Adaptive is when we wanted to model something with cohorts as opposed to a monthly calendar. That is, Month 1, Month 2, Month 3 as opposed to Jan 2020, Feb 2020, etc. We were able to come up with a solution that has worked for quite a while now, but it took a lot of trial and error.

Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting (Oil & Energy company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Adaptive Admin Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 30, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Titan International, Inc. primarily uses the Adaptive Planning module to consolidate Actuals and Planning versions into a single source environment. Titan also gathers metric data, detailed sales information, and capital spending projects through various inputs and data loads. With the data housed in Adaptive, Titan has the ability to populate various monthly/quarterly reports, packs, and presentations using a single tool. Titan has 50+ locations around the world and every location uses Adaptive Planning.

One of Titan's weakest areas is technology (multiple outdated ERP systems). As Titan is currently implementing a worldwide Cloud ERP system, Adaptive has functioned as the "glue" for data gathering and collaboration (instead of Microsoft Excel).

Pros

Very reliable cloud solution as there is hardly any down time. Less stress knowing that colleagues around the world have the ability perform their duties without the hassle of errors, waiting times, etc.
Certain areas look and feel like Microsoft Excel. Seamlessly copy from Excel and paste into Adaptive. This helps people adopt Adaptive quicker.
Adaptive's administration, customization and formula writing can be very powerful even without the need of an IT professional. This greatly reduces setup time of building models, input sheets, etc.
Adaptive's support team is very efficient and resourceful. It's nice not having to wait for an answer.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adaptive is well suited for a business that uses Microsoft Excel (like my company did) for its consolidation, planning, reporting, and analysis. Adaptive almost entirely eliminates IT's involvement in those processes so it's beneficial to any business with limited IT resources.

Adaptive is also well suited for businesses looking to adopt rolling forecasts with multiple scenario views of the future.

Cons

If a company is involved with multiple currencies in Adaptive, expect to use workarounds for weighted average exchange rates. Ex. YTD Income on the balance sheet.
The workaround was not difficult but this seems to be a missing functionality.
Adaptive's Excel add-in called OfficeConnect should function more like Oracle Essbase with drill downs and expansion.
Some limitations on Adaptive's dashboarding tool called Discovery. Ex. Viewing Year over Year without the need of a workaround.

Zach Miles

Financial Analyst in Corporate at Titan International, Inc. (Mining & Metals, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Adaptive - Taking The Pain Out of Forecasting And Budgeting

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

May 5, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using it across the organization. We use to facilitate our forecasting and tracking our sales opportunities

Pros

Adaptive allows you to quickly modify information in your model and see the results immediately. You can actually see up to two versions of you forecast against a current version on screen at the same time.
The OfficeConnect tool for reporting is an add-in in Excel that is very intuitive to make adhoc reports or reports to be used in board packages. The tool also works with PowerPoint and Word.
The implementation of Adaptive is quick. At my prior and initial exposure with Adaptive we implemented in one month. At Circor, I implemented the tool my self in about the same time.
Another great selling point for me is that I did not need IT resources to help with the implementation or current use of the system. We load our trial balances and transaction detail each month using Excel.

Cons

There is not much that I don't like about Adaptive. They usually do a couple of major updates each year that put out new functionality based on what the user community is requesting.
One item that I did think needed some work was the Adaptive Discovery module that basically creates a dashboard for your data. It was a little difficult to keep updated and was not easy to build. I have not had the module for the last year or so and I do know they did some updates to enhance the tool.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are doing your forecasting in Excel then you can do it in Adaptive. Adaptive will give you more time to analyze the data instead of trying make sure your formulas in Excel are correct. We do percentage of completion accounting and I have built a model that impacts the balance sheet, cash flow, and income statement related to this accounting method.

Michael Spain

Manager Financial Analysis and Cost Accounting in Finance and Accounting at CIRCOR International, Inc. (Oil & Energy, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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Adaptive Admin Review

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 30, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Very reliable cloud solution as there is hardly any down time. Less stress knowing that colleagues around the world have the ability perform their duties without the hassle of errors, waiting times, etc.
Certain areas look and feel like Microsoft Excel. Seamlessly copy from Excel and paste into Adaptive. This helps people adopt Adaptive quicker.
Adaptive's administration, customization and formula writing can be very powerful even without the need of an IT professional. This greatly reduces setup time of building models, input sheets, etc.
Adaptive's support team is very efficient and resourceful. It's nice not having to wait for an answer.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adaptive is also well suited for businesses looking to adopt rolling forecasts with multiple scenario views of the future.

Cons

If a company is involved with multiple currencies in Adaptive, expect to use workarounds for weighted average exchange rates. Ex. YTD Income on the balance sheet.
The workaround was not difficult but this seems to be a missing functionality.
Adaptive's Excel add-in called OfficeConnect should function more like Oracle Essbase with drill downs and expansion.
Some limitations on Adaptive's dashboarding tool called Discovery. Ex. Viewing Year over Year without the need of a workaround.

Zach Miles

Financial Analyst in Corporate at Titan International, Inc. (Mining & Metals, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile