SaaS Week

Most companies need a number of spreadsheets for a variety of reasons, and they can then end up with something of a sprawl problem, says Adaptive Planning. Adaptive Planning is a company that offers on-demand budgeting, forecasting and reporting solutions -- and they claim they can eliminate the problem of Excel spreadsheet sprawl.

William A. Soward, CEO, Adaptive Planning recently answered some questions about this claim.

How exactly does Adaptive Planning eliminate the problem of spreadsheet sprawl?

Soward: Adaptive Planning presents an on-demand, web-based alternative to budgeting, forecasting, and reporting in Excel. Traditional spreadsheet-based financial processes are slow, error-prone, inherently non-collaborative, and inflexible. As a result, budgets are out of date by the time they are completed, re-forecasts cannot be performed quickly with any degree of thoroughness, strategic what-if analyses are done "back of the envelope," and reports on actual financial performance are not distributed outside of finance and the executive team. Managers do not have the information they need to make well-informed decisions, and therefore operate at a significant competitive disadvantage.

While these problems have been obvious for decades, companies have not had a practical alternative to spreadsheets.mAdaptive Planning bridges this solution gap with an on-demand, web-based budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solution that is optimized for midsize companies and corporate divisions. Companies create their financial models using Adaptive Planning?s familiar, Excel-like user interface, and then provide access to all users via a web browser. Consolidation headaches are eliminated, and cycle time are dramatically improved, since accounts and sub-plans automatically roll up to the corporate plan. Customers often see 70% or more reductions in planning times -- from months to weeks. Errors are eliminated, since cell references and macros can not be broken. High-quality, thorough, and collaborative re-forecasts and what-if analyses can be handled with ease. And self-service reporting, analysis, and dashboards can be automatically delivered throughout an organization.

Where does the data reside with this tool? Is it possible to use Adaptive Planning when accessing data that is also stored locally? (would the two databases need to be synchronized or does it work from a local database)?

Soward: The data resides in the Adaptive Planning database. Yes, Adaptive Planning typically includes, via integration, data that is stored locally, such as actuals data from companies' GL systems, or headcount data from their HR or payroll systems. For on-demand customers, the Adaptive Planning database is located in a secure, third-party data center. For on-premise customers, the Adaptive Planning database is local. In both cases, integration capabilities synchronize source systems (GL, HR, etc.) with the Adaptive Planning database.