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Adaptive Planning
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Concept: Adaptive Planning

Concept: Adaptive Planning

Adaptive Planning is a cloud-based planning and analysis solution that you can use for:
  • Financial planning.
  • Sales planning.
  • Workforce planning.
  • Additional capabilities.

Financial Planning

Use the financial planning capabilities to plan for revenue, cost, sales, and expenses by:
  • Modeling your general ledger accounts.
  • Creating budgets and forecast versions.
  • Importing actuals data from ERP and CRM systems.
Also, integrate with Workday Financials to publish financial plans based on:
  • The data and metadata of an Adaptive Planning plan version.
  • A predefined Financials plan structure and plan template.

Sales Planning

Use the sales planning capabilities to help you reach your sales goals with:
  • Territory Planning that enables you to assign sales representatives to enough territories for adequate coverage.
  • Capacity and Quota Planning that lets you plan for staffing issues based on factors such as seasons.

Workforce Planning

Use the workforce planning capabilities to get an accurate picture of your workforce and adapt to changing requirements by:
  • Creating effective hiring plans.
  • Identifying gaps.
  • Aligning with business goals.
  • Driving what-if scenarios.
Workforce Planning comes with a foundational model specifically set up to integrate with Workday HCM using:
  • Preset data loaders.
  • Modeled sheets.
  • Dimensions.
  • Formulas.

Additional Capabilities

Adaptive Planning has these additional capabilities. Use these capabilities to plan intelligently, maintain the planning data, and generate reports for stakeholders.
Capability
Description
Intelligent Planning
Use machine learning to:
  • Identify patterns, predict data, and detect anomalies.
  • Build more precise models.
  • Better identify profitable opportunities and avoid unknown risks up to 24 time periods into the future.
Integrations
Design integrations to import data from other systems using data sources, data loaders, and data agents.
Use Adaptive Planning APIs to import and update the planning data and metadata in your online instance.
Microsoft Plugins
Install the OfficeConnect add-in to create board reports in MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint using latest data from your Adaptive Planning online instance.
Install the Excel Interface for Planning add-in to view, enter, and update data in Adaptive Planning using Excel.
Consolidations
Support financial activities and financial records required by GAAP for businesses that include multiple organizations.

Modeling Components

You build plans with modeling components to reflect your business. Every data point in your model is at an intersection of the dimensions of your model: time, version, level, accounts, and any custom dimension you add to the model. You can use attributes to tag dimensions.
Your modeling components include:
Modeling Component
Description
Levels
Levels can mimic the organizational hierarchy structure of your business.
Versions
Plan versions and actuals versions represent the business scenarios you need to plan for. Your model already comes with 1 plan version and 1 actuals version. You can create as many plan versions as you want and create actuals sub-versions. Example: A plan version might be a budget for next year.
Accounts
Your model already comes with standard general ledger accounts and account codes, but you can create additional general ledger accounts and configure the account codes. You can create additional accounts using these different account types to group planning information in different ways:
  • General ledger
  • Custom
  • Metric
  • Assumptions
  • Modeled
  • Cube
Formulas
Formulas automatically calculate data across accounts and sheets. As an end user, you enter formulas directly on your sheet cells.
Shared formulas are the only system formulas that display in editable cells on the sheet. You can edit or override them when you're entering data. They calculate general ledger and custom account values at specific levels and versions. Shared formulas are ideal for accounts that vary, like travel expenses, which use different formulas for different levels.
Calculated accounts enable you to create formulas for general ledger, custom, cubed, and modeled accounts. Unlike shared formulas, calculated accounts calculate the value across all levels and all versions. Calculated accounts are ideal for consistent calculations, like net income.
Formulas in metric accounts calculate financial ratios and nonfinancial metrics. This scenario is ideal for accounts like Gross Margin %.
Custom Dimensions
You can create additional dimensions. Example: You might create custom dimensions for products, customers, or regions.
Attributes
Attributes group dimensions outside the confines of your standard hierarchies. You use attributes and attribute values to tag metadata from other parts of your model. You can tag attributes to:
  • Levels
  • Accounts
  • Custom dimensions