06/02/2008 | Press Release
Adaptive Planning Launches New Era of “Connected Intelligence” in Financial Management with Introduction of Adaptive Planning 5.0
Portfolio Company: Adaptive Planning
Integration of Private Collaboration and Public Best Practices Community Improves Alignment,
Accountability and Access to Key Information, Resulting in More Strategic Financial Processes
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—June 2, 2008— Adaptive Planning, the worldwide leader in ondemand
financial planning and reporting solutions, today introduced a major new product
release integrating groundbreaking collaboration and community capabilities that enable finance
teams and business managers to dramatically improve organizational alignment, access and
share best practices financial information, and ultimately drive more agile, intelligent, and
strategic business decisions. Adaptive Planning 5.0 delivers new features that bring additional
power, flexibility, and simplicity to planning and reporting processes, while establishing the first
financial management system to integrate both private team collaboration capabilities and a
public best practices community.
Adaptive Planning 5.0 presents a new opportunity to tap into “connected intelligence” – the
enormous pool of shared knowledge and insight that exists among employees within
organizations and between financial professionals worldwide. A recent study conducted by the
company in conjunction with the BPM Forum revealed that financial decision makers at large
and mid-sized companies believe lack of collaboration among participants is the number one
obstacle to better financial planning and reporting.
Adaptive Planning 5.0 tightly integrates new collaboration capabilities, including discussion
forums, online documents, project management and more, into planning and reporting
processes, facilitating deeper and more transparent communication about key business
decisions. The new offering also enables users to engage with other financial professionals and
access best practices and benchmarking information via a unique public online community.
“I find the collaboration and community elements that Adaptive Planning is delivering to be
extremely powerful,” said Sean Kelly, Director of Finance and Administration, Purolator USA, a
current member of the community and an Adaptive Planning customer. “The ability to more
easily share information throughout my company, and to connect with peers and access best
practices information online, has enormous potential, and I’m encouraged by what I see so far.”
“We hear from many companies that are interested not only in increasing the efficiency of their
financial processes, but also in driving organizational change and adopting best practices that
deliver greater strategic value,” said William A. Soward, President and CEO of Adaptive
Planning. “By continuing to improve the core features of our on-demand planning and reporting
solution, and by adding collaboration and community capabilities, we are addressing the full
range of companies’ needs. What’s more, by better connecting teams and experts across the
globe, we are introducing the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ to the world of finance.”
Private Team Collaboration Spaces
New team collaboration capabilities bring greater alignment, agility, and accountability to financial
processes by facilitating and centralizing communication among participants. Adaptive Planning 5.0
integrates secure discussion groups, online documents, shared attachments, project management and
search capabilities in the context of companies’ planning and reporting processes, resulting in:
• broader, deeper, and more transparent participation throughout the company;
• a searchable and auditable repository of institutional knowledge associated with budgets, forecasts,
and reports;
• greater alignment around companywide plans, goals and objectives; and
• faster, better informed, and more strategic business decisions.
What’s more, Adaptive Planning’s Team Collaboration Spaces can be used to support other financial
processes, such as month-end close and SEC filings.
Public Financial Best Practices Community
The Financial Best Practices Community is an innovative new resource that allows financial
professionals worldwide to connect with each other, access and share best practices materials,
and tap into valuable benchmarking information. With collaborative online articles, discussion
groups, expert perspectives, polls, videos, and more, it’s designed to become the “Wikipedia for
Finance.”
The community also provides access to Adaptive Planning product support and specialized
partner content. It is available for free to Adaptive Planning customers, partners, and all other
financial professionals at community.adaptiveplanning.com.
The Team Collaboration Spaces and Financial Best Practices Community are tightly integrated,
enabling users to search for information or post questions within their own company, in their
extended enterprise, or in the financial community at large. For example, members can poll the
community to learn what their industry peers are planning for corporate salary increases, or get
internal and external perspectives on new accounting rules.
Powerful, Flexible, and Easy-to-Use New Planning & Reporting Capabilities
The new version of Adaptive Planning’s automated, on-demand planning and reporting
application also offers a significant number of powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use features that
support more sophisticated financial modeling and drive more intelligent business decisions.
The new version includes the following capabilities:
• Modeled Sheets make sophisticated multidimensional modeling simple, allowing managers
to answer questions such as: “What’s my profit by product over time?” Unlike traditional
business intelligence “cubes,” Modeled Sheets are fast and easy for business users to set
up, learn, use, and maintain.
• Allocations Modeling provides greater flexibility for allocating personnel and other expenses
across projects, funds, programs, or similar categories, which is essential in project-based
industries such as business services, nonprofits, software, and pharmaceuticals.
• Global Sheets and Report Management capabilities allow departments to work together
more closely by enabling secure access to information outside of organizational hierarchies.
• Updated user interface and support for internationalization make the application even easier
to use and more configurable for end-users.
Adaptive Planning 5.0 is offered via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that delivers unique
value to the financial community by combining greater transparency, lower risk, higher customer
satisfaction, and an unprecedented ability for users to connect and interact with their peers.
The new planning and reporting capabilities and the public Financial Best Practices Community
are available immediately. Private Team Collaboration Spaces will be available in July.
Registration for the community is free at community.adaptiveplanning.com and a test drive of
the new product is available at http://www.adaptiveplanning.com/enterprise_trial. |
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