planful-vs-workday-adaptive-planning

Planful, formerly Host Analytics, and Workday Adaptive Planning are both Corporate Performance Management software with strong focuses on budgeting and financial management. While the products historically catered to slightly different markets, they have become more directly comparable in recent years. 

Planful serves midsize companies and enterprises, and is designed with scalability across that size range in mind. Historically, Adaptive Planning, formerly Adaptive Insights, catered more to growing midsize companies that had outscaled Excel-based financial processes. However, with Workday’s acquisition of the platform, Adaptive Planning has been expanding into the enterprise market more heavily as well. 

Features

Planful and Workday Adaptive Insights both offer robust CPM features for scaling organizations. 

Planful stands out for its easy deployment and prebuilt capabilities. Reviewers highlight the platform’s out-of-the-box feature set that does not rely on heavy customization. Planful also adjusts well to mid-flight dynamic budgeting. This capability gives large organizations and enterprises more financial maneuverability. 

Workday excels in its relative user-friendliness, especially among professionals that are not used to working in CPM tools. For instance, reviewers frequently highlight Adaptive Planning’s Office Connect capability, which allows users more versed in Excel-based corporate performance management to more easily transition to the Workday platform. The user interface is also more friendly and accessible for users. 

Limitations

There also some limitations or drawbacks to Planful and Workday Adaptive Insights worth evaluating. 

Planful has been criticized for its reporting and data visualizations. While dynamic budgeting is well supported, Planful lacks equivalent dynamic and customizable reporting features. Reviewers frequently describe using 3rd party visualization tools in conjunction with Planful. 

Workday also struggles some with reporting flexibility. Reviewers specifically criticize the web-based reporting functionality, which does not feel on par with the Office Connect-enabled reporting abilities. The processes and functions in Office Connect are also not identical to Excel, which requires some lingering learning curve when transitioning to the platform. 

Pricing

Planful pricing is available by quote from the vendor. 

Workday Adaptive Planning offers two packages, each priced by quote from the vendor. The Standard package includes all the core features and capabilities, while the Enterprise package adds on unlimited storage, additional automation, and sandboxing. Workday also offers 3 license types, a Full Seat, or admins, which cost the most, Contributors, which are standard users, and Viewers, which can access data but not make changes.