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It’s time to pit Workday vs. Planful in a financial planning & analysis showdown. Financial planning & analysis (FP&A) software is a dynamic class of business technology that includes advanced budgeting, forecasting, planning, and analytics tools.
These technologies provide business leaders with invaluable insights into the states of their businesses, market conditions, and external factors that can influence profitability. They also provide greater visibility into an organization’s financial health.
While there is no question that investing in such technologies is a wise business decision, it can be incredibly challenging to determine which software solution to implement.
Choosing the wrong platform will lead to the development of major roadblocks, such as a lack of employee buy-in, excessive implementation expenses, and an unclear time to value.
Conversely, implementing an FP&A solution that aligns with your organization’s needs will help you articulate financial plans to executives while simultaneously accounting for “what ifs.” Such technology will also assist with managing expenses against projected revenues.
To help you achieve this aim while avoiding the pitfalls associated with choosing the wrong technology solution, the team at QBIX has created this head-to-head comparison. In this Workday vs. Planful matchup, we dive into two of the top FP&A technologies on the market.
What Is Workday Adaptive Planning?
Before we get into the Workday vs. Planful comparison, let’s explore each of these financial planning & analysis solutions individually.
Workday offers several different products. However, we will focus on the Workday FP&A platform for this comparison. This platform includes a multitude of different tools, features, and capabilities. Cumulatively, these solutions yield deep insights into financial processes and sales campaigns.
Of the various attributes of the Workday FP&A platform, its agility and flexibility are some of the most noteworthy. The technology can seamlessly integrate with your existing software stack to provide a single source of truth for your organization’s financial data.
Additionally, the platform has a customizable user dashboard that you can set up to highlight data points that are most relevant to your goals and objectives.
Workday Adaptive Planning lives up to its name by leveraging machine learning (ML) to adapt to the needs of your business. The ML software embedded in the platform detects anomalies, makes recommendations, and provides timely guidance based on real-world data.
This technology provides a mechanism for interpreting data and actively helps you and your finance department process fiscal information.
Workday Adaptive Planning also streamlines one of finance leaders’ biggest pain points: compliance. The software boasts an “always-on” auditing functionality that creates immutable electronic records of all relevant financial transactions.
These financial records demonstrate compliance and insulate your organization from risk.
On its own, Workday Adaptive Planning is one of the market’s most dynamic and innovative FP&A solutions. However, its capabilities are further enhanced when paired with Workday’s other solutions, such as Workday Human Capital Management and Workday Strategic Sourcing.
Cumulatively, these solutions maximize organizational visibility and guide decision-making.
What Is Planful?
Now let’s shift our attention to the other half of our Workday vs. Planful matchup.
Planful is an agile, user-friendly, and feature-laden planning, budgeting, and forecasting solution. This technology allows users to build financial plans, create and manage budgets, conduct market forecasting, and guide decision-making processes.
The Planful platform is great for mitigating risks through data analysis. Insights gained through Planful can also help organizations capitalize on emerging market opportunities and fuel business growth.
Planful’s key value proposition is that it allows you to generate and run multiple scenarios using current market data. This feature allows you to address executives’ concerns by presenting them with detailed “what if” data. You can run these scenarios in minutes, not hours.
In addition to facilitating forecasting, Planful also features automation tools. By strategically using these tools, you can automate traditionally tedious, labor-intensive processes.
Ultimately, this will save your organization both time and money. As an added benefit, these tools will free your team members to work on more value-oriented tasks.
Workday vs. Planful
Both Workday Adaptive Planning and Planful are financial planning & analysis software. While the general purpose of these software solutions is identical, each offers several unique features and capabilities. They also have different user types, which is important for access control and compliance.
To simplify our Workday vs. Planful matchup, we compared the platforms based on two broad categories. These broad strokes of information can serve as a great jumping-off point as you begin your research into the technology solutions. They can also help you identify which software suite better aligns with the needs and goals of your business.
With that being said, let’s see how Workday vs. Planful stack up:
User Types
Planful has two broad categories of user types: “Business” and “External.”
Business users are members of your organization who use the dynamic planning software. They only have access to your organization’s app and group data. Admin business users, a subset of general business users, can alter or modify employees’ accounts.
Additionally, admin users can restrict access to general business user accounts. Admin users must put these restrictions in place for compliance purposes. External Planful users do not count toward your company’s total license count and are generally members of Planful’s support team.
Like Planful, Workday Adaptive Planning also has external users. As with Planful, these users are members of the software development company and are there to support you.
Regarding internal users, Workday Adaptive Planning has three license types. Administrative users have “Full Seat” accounts. These individuals can set access restrictions, create accounts, edit accounts, and revoke user access.
Most Workday Adaptive Planning users are “Contributors.” These standard users can input or alter data in your FP&A platform. Other users are “Viewers.” As the name implies, Viewers can view information but not edit, delete, or input data.
By offering three distinctive license types, Workday Adaptive Planning provides much-needed structure to the user hierarchy. Full Seat users will not have to manually input access control protocols but can instead assign users licenses that already have the appropriate restrictions.
This setup will drastically streamline the platform’s rollout and reduce the burden on administrative personnel.
Key Features
Both Planful and Workday Adaptive Planning boast machine learning and automation capabilities. Each platform also has robust analytics tools that can be used for market forecasting and analysis. However, each solution has a handful of attributes that differentiate it from the competitor.
Planful has gained a reputation for being extremely easy to deploy. The technology also has several prebuilt capabilities, allowing businesses to shorten the time to value for their new software investment. It has great out-of-the-box capabilities and requires little to no customization.
You can adjust your Planful budgets on the fly. This functionality gives your organization exceptional agility, which is particularly important if you operate in a volatile market.
One of Planful’s greatest strengths — prebuilt capabilities — also serves as a double-edged sword. While it is great to have ready-to-use features, the needs of every business are unique. As such, it can be quite difficult to tailor the Planful experience around your organization’s needs, challenges, and objectives.
On the other hand, this is where Workday Adaptive Planning excels. The platform maintains a high level of user-friendliness while simultaneously providing you with plenty of customization options.
This flexibility allows you to augment the Workday Adaptive Planning user experience based on the needs and objectives of your organization.
Workday Adaptive Planning is also equipped with an “Office Connect” capability. This functionality allows you and your team to transition your excel-based management processes from Microsoft Office to your new cloud-based platform.
In the Workday vs. Planful matchup, the two platforms appear to be in a dead heat in terms of user-friendliness. But Workday Adaptive Planning stands out due to its customizability, Office Connect features, and robust tools.
Workday Adaptive Planning users can incorporate other Workday solutions into their business management model. Conversely, Planful clients would have to leverage other technology solutions to modernize human capital management and sourcing processes.
Two Key Industries Using Workday and Planful
Workday and Planful are trusted financial planning & analysis solutions that are used by multiple industries, including:
Manufacturing, Distribution, and Supply Chain
The manufacturing, distribution, and supply chain sector has faced unprecedented challenges over the last two and a half years. Between never-before-seen supply chain disruptions and staffing shortages, businesses in this industry have endured a lot.
While industry leaders in these organizations are certainly glad to leave these hardships behind them, they are also moving forward with a better understanding of what it takes to thrive in a volatile marketplace.
Specifically, manufacturers and distributors have adopted Workday Adaptive Planning or Planful to modernize their financial planning and forecasting capabilities.
By implementing these technologies, businesses in this industry can better adapt to changing workforce trends. They can predict staffing shortages, engage in accurate long-term enterprise planning, and forecast shifting market conditions.
In addition, solutions like Planful and Workday Adaptive Planning allow these entities to automate typically labor-intensive processes. This setup will allow these organizations to do more with less while maintaining an accurate view of their financial health.
Manufacturers, distributors, and other links in the supply chain are already using financial planning & analysis solutions for several mission-critical purposes.
Primarily, these entities use FP&A technologies to run through multiple “what if” scenarios. Instead of relying on a single, rigid annual plan, these organizations can now develop contingency strategies that they can fall back on in the event of unexpected market shifts.
These plans increase organizational agility and ensure that these businesses are prepared no matter what the market throws their way.
Does your organization operate within this sector? If so, would you like to learn more about use cases for financial planning & analytics solutions like Workday Adaptive Planning?
To start your journey toward improved efficiency and streamlined financial management, contact us and learn more. The QBIX Analytics team will gladly help you identify an FP&A solution that aligns with your organization’s needs.
Healthcare
Like the manufacturing and distribution sector, the healthcare industry has been ravaged by considerable supply chain challenges. These challenges have been exacerbated by workforce trends like mass resignations, staffing shortages, and provider burnout.
Although Planful or Workday Adaptive Planning alone may not be able to remedy all of these endemic issues, these platforms can provide critical insights for organizational leaders. Healthcare decision-makers can then leverage this data to solve attrition and burnout issues, strengthen supply chains, and optimize patient care.
Numerous healthcare organizations are already using FP&A technologies to great success. Some of the challenges that healthcare organizations are addressing with solutions like Planful and Workday Adaptive Planning include:
- Clinician retention
- Staff engagement
- Onboarding and recruiting
- Employee well-being
- Patient outcomes
- Supply chain resilience concerns
While optimizing patient outcomes is and always will be a chief concern among healthcare providers, these entities must also maintain financially viable operations.
In pursuit of this goal, numerous organizations are leveraging financial planning & analysis solutions to drive efficiency in core financial operations. Specifically, healthcare organizations are eliminating costly and labor-intensive manual processes.
They are also reducing back-office headcount by using machine learning and automation tools. Additionally, healthcare organizations are reimagining workflows and teams to further optimize efficiency, improve billing processes, and stabilize revenue streams.
By strategically implementing Planful or Workday Adaptive Planning in their workflows, healthcare organizations are paving the way for value-driven patient care.
As these entities continue to integrate FP&A technologies into their business models, they can optimize care team productivity, engage in accurate demand planning, and enhance staffing practices.
QBIX and Workday Partnership
Both Planful and Workday Adaptive Planning are exceptional FP&A software solutions. However, Workday Adaptive Planning’s FP&A and ERP software edges out Planful’s software in terms of versatility, features, and capabilities.
Additionally, Workday Adaptive Planning’s financial planning & analysis solutions are incredibly easy to implement when you leverage the services of an official financial planning & analytics solution provider like QBIX Analytics.
At QBIX, we have the resources, expertise, and knowledge to facilitate a seamless Workday Adaptive Planning implementation. Additionally, we can provide ongoing support so that you can achieve a strong return on investment from your new financial planning & analysis software.
We provide both financial planning software and sales planning implementation services. Contact us today to learn more about this exciting opportunity to modernize your business planning capabilities.
FAQs
Workday is highly customizable, whereas Planful is not. Additionally, Workday offers a free trial and several auxiliary products that complement Workday Adaptive Planning.
Both companies require you to contact them to obtain a quote. However, Workday offers a free trial, whereas Planful does not.
Due to its versatility and customizability, Workday FP&A software is well suited for a broad array of industries.
A few of Workday Adaptive Planning’s top-rated features include its reporting tools, budgeting software, and forecasting capabilities.
User-reported favorite features of Planful include powerful visual analytics reporting and collaboration tools.
Yes, Adaptive Planning by Workday was formerly known as Adaptive Insights. Adaptive Planning is the name for the current iteration of the tool.