Workday Adaptive Planning

Customisation of revenue accounts could be stronger.

Cross-tenant performance issues that don't match the vendor's view.

Reporting and dashboard functions — very clunky. Ability to run standard system reports (e.g. security).

Flexibility of some aspects of the tool.

Occasionally users forget to save; an auto-save feature would be a nice option.

It might be the way we configured the system, but it can sometimes feel a little inflexible (ability to move down the levels to allow for drill-through functionality, etc.).

Les workflows de validation qui mériteraient d'être améliorés.

Occasional performance drops and high load times.

Performance of sheets could be vastly improved — speed and functionality. Simple features like auto collapse/expand for rolled-up accounts/levels. Adding other dimensions to the sheet (i.e., currency selector, level attributes, etc.). Pricing was great for the first 3–5 years; after that it becomes expensive.

What if functionality could be improved?

The drill-down functionality can be improved by using cube sheets to reach the lowest level.

The limitations around formatting in Office Connect are frustrating. The controls are not very intuitive and take a while to figure out. Can you add an option to round to the nearest whole number? Why is that not an option? Also, it would be helpful to have an editable list of values for a given element that can be embedded in an Office Connect report, similar to the Parameters within the HTML report builder. Repeating reports are not working at all for me. Additionally, some built-in reports, such as a trial balance that lists all the account-level data, would be useful so it doesn’t need to be built by hand.

Expected more standard features and alignment with Workday Financials.

Due to its flexibility, it's important to work with a consultant who understands your team size and builds a model that your team can support in the long run. There are also limitations on how you can structure your model, which could impact the software's performance.

Workday sometimes focuses more on the "next big thing" rather than addressing some of the core functionality issues, such as cross-level journal entries for consolidation.

Rigid reports when you have multiple dimensions and complex coding structure.

Security settings are difficult to establish, fine-tune, and maintain, and they do not provide the granular level of control that Workday promises. Audit trails are useful when they work, but they are not available in all planning areas, making them another feature that is overpromised but underdelivers. The biggest disappointment is the inability to format planning inputs or implement checks to flag input errors. Columns become unreasonably wide because titles don’t wrap, and blank or nonsensical cells cannot be color-coded or easily identified. This forces users to build Excel reports for reviewing and validating plans, which ultimately defeats the purpose of implementing a cloud-based planning solution.

No financial consolidation by dimensionality. Not enough root accounts to meet our business needs.

It is Excel like without being quite like Excel. It is not so good at handling lots of transactions - it is not obviously designed as a data and rules model.

Reporting and FX conversion flexibility.

There are some limitations with scenarios and functionality.

Reports are problematic. We use Office Connect reports, but ensuring that everyone is using the same version is difficult. The system reports in Adaptive do not meet our needs visually. Despite a health check from our AMS partner, there are still significant speed issues. FX in consolidation does not work as we need it to—for example, converting YTD results at the YTD rate. Writing formulas is very challenging for a planner, and the data layout in the planning screens is cumbersome.

Integration part to be easier to maintain/build for non-IT people so anyone could do it.

Some quirkiness in the syntax which is specific to Adaptive Planner.

Sometimes a bit slow load times (complex model).

Since we implemented, Workday pushed all reporting to be out of Workday, not Adaptive. We've not yet caught up.

Visuals could be enhanced to reduce reliance on Office Connect. Additionally, feedback time and support from the vendor should improve when unexpected performance issues arise.

Sometimes technical support queries take a while to be resolved.

User interface complexity.

Lots of features mean there is a lot to learn. If you don’t know what’s available, you won’t be using the tool to its full potential.

The scalability and performance of the software can be improved upon. Users may experience performance issues if there are too many processes running simultaneously.

The speed of the application is not as quick as I'd hoped, although that could be due to us creating sheets in a non-optimised way.

The current setup does not lend itself to scenario/ what-if analysis easily.

Since Adaptive was acquired by Workday, the customer service is not as good. Also, the cost has increased substantially.

Make more use of Machine Learning/ AI to assist with budget preparation/ variance analysis.

Far too expensive.

The performance on working sheets with a high amount of logics in place can take a hit. Reporting is limited in some aspects.

It needs better integration back into Workday itself - also, more clarity around its use with office connect.