Adaptive Insights Reviews

Winning points:

1. Instant consolidation of multiple BUs
2. User access control
3. Changes to corporate structure, account codes are updated in all versions including prior years, hence "one-version of truth" as claimed.
4. Integrated reporting with MS Office

By using Adaptive Planning (AP), we can quickly get the big picture after multiple changes to different departments and account codes.

Still room for improvement:

1. Discovery (the data visualization module): Needs to catch up with BI leaders, such as MS and Tableau. E.g., sorting by amounts in column charts and page slicers to control all visuals.
2. Planning: two areas.

• Need to have the function of importing formulas, which has been encouraged for more than five years by the author, but still lacking.
• Modeled sheet has some limitations. It is not version specific, meaning upgrading formulas for the new year budgeting will leave unintended retroactive impact on prior years' budgets. Same with dimensions. I would love to have them be version specific rather than keeping changing.

Over five years.

Nothing substantial.

It's 99% stable. Occasionally lagging, e.g., during creating a cloned level.

No.

Best customer service seen. Responsive within 24 hours, mostly within two hours. Issues usually fixed within one to two days. Staff very courteous and helpful.

High level. If the issue is outside their domain, it will be escalated to the engineers to fix.

Were using Excel before the switch, as it was nearly impossible to consolidate over 100 Excel files, each for one business unit. It took over two hours to consolidate, versus one minute in Adaptive.

Most module are straightforward. Others are complex due to the nature of our business, such as multi-dimensional cube sheets. Modeled sheets, with their limitations as cited above, needs special treatment.

Both. We have in-house staff implementing AP, with the mentoring from a vendor specialist, who was very knowledgeable and helpful.

Not sure dollar-wise. But Adaptive saves us huge hours in budgeting. e.g., for each roll-up, it saves us two hours at least, and we usually have more than 20 roll-ups.

Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings.

Yes. Among others, we evaluated the planning module of Insight Reporting, but decided to adopt Adaptive.

Seek best advise and plan early rather than later during the initial phase of implementation. It would be costly to make significant changes at a later phase.

• Personnel planning
• Driver-based planning
• Drag and drop reporting

More accurate, reliable, and timely forecasting.

• Automatic sync of new dimensions/levels from accounting software to Adaptive.
• Ability to customize privacy of salary data within a level.

Three years.

No.

No.

No.

A nine out of 10,

A nine out of 10,

Just used Excel/Google sheets. We needed a financial planning software so we could eliminate spreadsheet errors and be more dynamic in our planning.

It's complex; thinking about the business models and capabilities in Adaptive.

We used Adaptive for our implementation.

It is positive.

If you are a nonprofit, you will receive a discount.

Not applicable.

Planning, reporting, and the ability to pull in transactional information for reporting.

There are less errors, due to incorrect formulas and manual data entry between multiple Excel spreadsheets. The system has allowed us to take more than 90 spreadsheets and combine them into one system which automatically calculates based on assumptions, dimensions, etc.

There could be more options for reporting information.

Three years.

None.

None.

None.

We do have issues getting information on our customer success turnover. Along with a very slow start to a services contract to make improvements to our system.

Excellent.

We previously used Excel spreadsheets.

For the most part, it was straightforward. It was complex, in the way of understanding the setup and formulas associated with the assumptions, etc.

The system was implemented by one of Adaptive's implementation partners.

No. Adaptive was the only option given to us during our search.

Learn as much about the programming at the beginning of the implementation.

The reporting tools are what I gain the most benefit from. Reports are allowed to be edited for aesthetic purposes, which is lacking in a lot of other dashboard tools. The "processes" portion of Adaptive is also pretty nifty, allowing for you to set up a task list for others so they can put in their forecasts on-time.

• Standardized monthly reporting
• Quick and easy for ad hoc requests
• Interfaces with other data warehouses

The planning functionalities are the weakest part of Adaptive Insights. Everything that is automatic is done by formulas and there is only so much logic which you can build within these formulas. The upload feature exists, but isn't terribly useful.

Personally, seven months.

I wasn't around for the initial phases.

We had an issue where our reports weren't refreshing because our daily data pull was stuck in limbo. We called customer support and they were able to fix it within a couple hours.

None.

Great, we have our own personal contact that we reach out to if we have questions.

Great, no issues so far.

No.

I wasn't around for the initial deployment.

Not applicable.

Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place. I believe ours is per user, so whenever we add an account for anyone (no matter how often they use it), we incur a cost.

Not sure.

OfficeConnect features greatly help with planning and reporting.

Has customers create dashboards, which leads to improvements on trade analysis.

Needing to focus on upgrades for all industries, including CPG.

For four and a half years.

No, it was seamless.

Never.

No.

Excellent, always available and hardly needed.

Excellent.

I did not previously use a different solution.

It was not my decision, but I am happy with the outcome.

Forecasting changes that instantly flow through all financial statements.

We have had Adaptive for several years, but it is super helpful when we have a short turnaround time to deliver our income statement if we were to make crazy, strategic decisions.

Their customer support team is slow to respond and not extremely confident.

Two and a half years.

Not applicable.

Never.

Nope. The larger/more complex data sets can take longer to load than others, but never longer than approximately 30 seconds on the big ones.

A five out of 10.

A three out of 10.

Not applicable.

In-house.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Adaptive is super user-friendly and helps our changes to the forecast immediately flow through the P&L, so we know exactly where we stand financially at any given moment.

It creates new versions, so we can run different scenarios.

It creates a source of truth.

Excel functionality.

One year.

I wasn't there.

No.

No.

I haven't had to use them.

I haven't had to use them.

Essbase and Smart View.

I wasn't there.

I would imagine really good. It has helped us to automate a lot of our processes.

I wasn't a part of the discussion.

I love this software.

Cloud-based.

Automated reporting.

Better user interface (UI).

Three years.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

An eight out of 10

An eight out of 10

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.