Adaptive Planning Adds Collaboration to Financial Planning Software
Cloud analytics provider Adaptive Planning has introduced a new workflow tool called Process Tracker that it promises will bring the power of advanced collaboration to the financial consolidation process. The tool is designed to complement the company's Consolidation software, which is being used by more than 20 customers just four months after its release.
Process Tracker for Adaptive Consolidation is optimized for both desktops and tablets, and provides easy ways to define and monitor one-time and repeating processes. Users can define specific deliverables, assign them to users, monitor their status and track their closure. It features a social media-like visual display, including avatars of the individuals assigned to each process.
“We’re looking forward to Adaptive’s new innovations to further drive collaboration in our consolidation process,” said Paul Crawley, CFO at DayMen, a manufacturer of photographic supplies that uses Adaptive to consolidate across 11 countries, 22 subsidiaries and eight currencies. “Choosing Adaptive has accelerated our financial consolidation close, and eliminated days of work, which has freed up our finance team to focus on more strategic initiatives to further our growth.”
Adaptive has also added new features to its Adaptive Discovery visual analytics and business intelligence software, to facilitate integrating operational insights with financial plan analytics. The new features include the ability for business users to create freeform dashboards and turn them into presentation-quality reports.
Adaptive Discovery enables visualization of customers’ planning and consolidation data straight “out of the box” with no setup required. Now customers can add the visualization of virtually any operational data and metrics from around the organization, including large volumes of data. This offers a holistic view of the overall company performance, finance and operational data together, all of which can be included on the same dashboard.
“NorthStar Financial Services manages over $170 billion in assets, across 9 subsidiaries, so business intelligence is key to driving our business. With Adaptive Discovery we’ve already reduced our time to see key metrics by over 70 percent, and more timely insightful data visualization is enabling us to drive more agile planning,” said Andrew Rosenberg, financial analyst at NorthStar Financial Services, an Adaptive customer.
According to the company, more than 200 customers chose Adaptive Discovery in the year following its release.
“The traction we are seeing for the latest Adaptive Consolidation and Adaptive Discovery is a testament to the tremendous demand for better visibility and transparency with the unparalleled ease of delivery that only the cloud can provide,” said John Herr, CEO of Adaptive Planning.
Adaptive has some 1,700 customers and 50,000 active users in 82 countries. With new software bookings growth of 90 percent in 2012, Adaptive ranked as the fifth-fastest growing software company in Silicon Valley on the Deloitte Fast 500 and appeared on the JMP Hot 100 list.
Both Process Tracker and the updates to Discovery will be available on Sept. 13.
Drew Robb is a writer who has been writing about IT, engineering, and other topics. Originating from Scotland, he currently resides in Florida. Highly skilled in rapid prototyping innovative and reliable systems. He has been an editor and professional writer full-time for more than 20 years. He works as a freelancer at Enterprise Apps Today, CIO Insight and other IT publications. He is also an editor-in chief of an international engineering journal. He enjoys solving data problems and learning abstractions that will allow for better infrastructure.
