Adaptive from Workday Reviews & Product Details

Being able to trust the data. Having a web-based solution for all of our budgeting/forecasting needs that eliminates the multiple versions of Excel documents being sent around. Allows for immediate update of data that executives can review and react to. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Formulas and calculations can be tricky to manage. You need one or two administrators that have a strong knowledge of these as well as triggers. Finding a clear learning path of the product, that does not result in additional charges. Taking an accelerated class on formulas and having to pay for it or pay a consultant is not a solution when we already pay for the product. Dashboards are not user friendly, each tile needs to be manually updated with dates. There are no features to select dates for an entire dashboard tab. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Workday Adaptive Planning stands out for its powerful Elastic Hypercube engine, which instantly processes complex "what-if" scenarios. The platform eliminates manual data entry by automatically connecting to your existing ERP and CRM systems. It bridges the gap between finance and operation teams through shared, real-time dashboards. Finally, its Office Connect feature lets you refresh live data inside familiar Excel models with a single click. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Workday Adaptive Planning is kinda hard because it takes super long to load big charts and things. Sometimes the screens look really old like a computer from a long time ago. If you want to change stuff you have to learn hard rules and codes that are confusing. Also, it costs a whole lot of money so small companies can not buy it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Workday Adaptive Planning's ability to bring budgeting, forecasting, resource planning, and reporting into a single platform instead of relying on multiple spreadsheets. I also appreciate how we can collaborate using the real-time data, as it provides us a single and centralized planning platform with real-time dashboards, reports, and analytics to manage performance. This unification helps to automate and streamline processes, which was a significant improvement from our previous methods. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Overall, I have a positive experience with Workday Adaptive Planning. If I need to identify an area of improvement, it would be the learning style or curve for new users. While the platform is powerful and flexible, some of the advanced modeling, reporting, and admin features take time for users to fully understand. New users need to learn several core concepts like sheets, accounts and dimensions, versions across budget, forecasting, and actuals, and levels hierarchies. Apart from these, basic reports are straightforward, but creating executive dashboards, complex variable analysis, and cross-functional reports often requires a deeper understanding of the data model and dimensions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I enjoy Adaptive from Workday as a planning application. I like that the reports are very easy to configure and edit, much easier than Workday score itself. I also value the integrations because they bring data in from Workday and send it back to the Workday core. I appreciate the unified, well-governed security and being able to use Workday actuals, publish budgets and forecasts back to Workday, and report on forecast trends, variances between years, and different versions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the integration setup confusing because the data sources and loaders are hidden and not very intuitive. When there’s an integration error, it’s hard to understand what it relates to. I’d like clearer, more readable error codes and descriptions. The initial setup was also very cumbersome to understand, so we had a Workday implementer and implementation partner configure it for us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like how easy Adaptive from Workday is to use and how it keeps improving, with key features released twice a year. The custom cloud connector lets me connect to any cloud environment. I use it to retrieve requisitions live from Greenhouse and send finance-approved requisitions from Adaptive from Workday directly to Greenhouse. I also like that it helps me avoid spreadsheets and repeated reports, add alternate hierarchies to reports, and automate workflows between systems. The initial setup was very simple and quick. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I find the admin side, like building accounts and things like that, very clunky, though the new features they're releasing look like they may make it much easier. I’d also like better UX features on sheets, such as filtering data by attributes and having better sorting and filtering. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

At the core of Adaptive is its in-memory calculation engine. Traditional multidimensional databases often slow down or even crash under the weight of complex hierarchies, large datasets, or deeply nested logic. By contrast, the Elastic Hypercube engine scales dynamically, allowing teams to recalculate dynamic budgets and forecasts in real time across thousands of dimensions. It also makes it possible to run complex, high-volume models without performance degradation or the need for manual data consolidation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While Adaptive integrates cleanly with Workday HCM and Workday Financials, integration with non-Workday systems (such as legacy ERPs, custom data lakes, or non-standard CRMs) can feel clunky and less straightforward.

Adaptive Data Integration (ADI) also has constraints: setting up automated, multi-dimensional data pipelines often requires intermediate staging tables or flat-file extracts (CSVs), which adds extra steps and maintenance.

In addition, Adaptive has limited zero-ETL/direct streaming capabilities. Unlike more modern data stack architectures, it doesn’t natively support real-time, zero-copy streaming without additional middleware, so you typically end up relying on scheduled batch loads for actuals. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Workday Adaptive Planning's very simple interface, making it easy to use. I find it easy to integrate with our ERP, which helps streamline our processes. The Excel add-in is particularly valuable as it allows us to build reports quickly into existing spreadsheets and share them across the business. I appreciate how the system pulls all GL transactions from our ERP finance module to build a hierarchy structure, which we can then use in Excel to generate detailed reports with just a few clicks. The ability to refresh and filter information in Excel and then share it using general Excel capabilities is great. It simplifies full month-end reporting as some can just click refresh to get the month-end data. Plus, the files can be stored in SharePoint and easily accessed by business decision-makers. It has good performance and returns results quickly. IT's a bit pricey but it does save a lot of end of month reporting time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I found the initial setup not easy and it required going back and forth with the vendor. There is also an upfront implementation cost. Additionally, adding new companies or making changes to the hierarchy requires vendor assistance, which is not ideal. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Adaptive allows for the centralization of workforce planning and resolves many of the issues associated with utilizing disparate systems for forecasting. Integration with Workday ensures that current workforce data can be leveraged for comparisons and analyses in Adaptive's fairly robust reporting module. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Adaptive is a module separate from Workday. Data integrations between the two platforms can be challenging to manage if not directly associated with existing Workday reports. From security to forecasted position data, Adaptive is still treated as a separate entity and the lack of integration can create significant process bottlenecks. Workday has certainly started to reconcile the relationship between the two modules by introducing tools such as Unified Access Manager for security, but further integration is needed to make the relationship seamless. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is very customizable and can adapt (pun intended) to the growing needs of our users and leadership. The integrations between Workday and Adaptive are great and ensure we are aligned. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There isn't much that I dislike. I think there are some features that could be improved such as the HUBs performance graphs on the overview page. I think there could be some improvements on being able to report on cell notes within the planning sheets. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I really like the elastic hypercube technology and the in-memory engine that allows for rapid, complex data modeling and real-time calculations. The ability to run unlimited "what-if" scenarios instantly to evaluate market shifts or financial changes is fantastic. I also appreciate how Adaptive from Workday connects easily with external ERP, CRM, and HCM systems, which does not require heavy IT support. The self-service ownership is a big plus, allowing financial and business teams to manage, build models, and edit rules themselves. Using the adaptive OfficeConnect integration with Microsoft Excel lets me build and format reports inside familiar tools like Excel and PowerPoint while securely pulling data from the real-time cloud base. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nothing much as it is very helpful Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.