A guide to the top 4 alternatives to Workday Adaptive Planning in 2024

Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) software is a crucial tool that provides important insights to inform and support a company's financial planning and budgeting process. Business leaders and finance teams can rely on FP&A software to effectively track the financial health of the company, allocate/manage resources better, and also ensure that they stay on top of their strategic plan. 

Before choosing a financial planning software for your business, it is prudent to consider the needs and role of the end user. All users usually expect shorter implementation cycles, quick self-onboarding (and not an army of consultants), native integrations, advanced analytics, and easy scenario planning. 

Workday Adaptive Planning is a well-known FP&A solution that can assist companies in managing their financial planning and analysis tasks. However, for companies looking for an easy-to-use platform that comes with fast implementation, robust integrations, and intuitive scenario planning and analysis, it might not really be the best fit. 

In this article, we’ll cover the features and the pros and cons of the top four alternatives to Workday Adaptive Planning that can seamlessly support your FP&A requirements. Let’s take a look!

Workday Adaptive Planning software review

Workday Adaptive Planning is a second-generation FP&A software provider. Think of it as a cloud-based advanced version of Excel or Google Spreadsheets with enterprise performance management capabilities. Finance teams can create and monitor budgets, perform forecasts, and conduct modeling, among other financial tasks.

While Workday Adaptive Planning might possibly be a good fit for mid-sized firms, it often requires dedicated personnel for implementation, model building, and maintenance, making it not as cost-effective and hindering agility. It may not really be as “self-serve” as some users might prefer, potentially limiting ease of use for non-finance folks.

These factors often push small and medium-sized businesses to explore other FP&A players, such as Drivetrain, that offer a more user-friendly platform, pricing, and a host of features.

Key features 

• Spreadsheets integration: Integrates easily with any type of spreadsheet (Excel or Google sheets).
• Budgeting and forecasting: Enables users to create detailed financial plans and supports rolling forecasts.
• Scenario planning: Facilitates data-driven financial modeling, generating deeper insights and informing strategic planning decisions. 
• Reporting and analytics: Provides tailored dashboards and reports for visualizing financial data.

Pros

• Excel integration: Eases transition for Excel/Google spreadsheet users looking for the familiar spreadsheet-like layout
• Budgeting and forecasting: Allows finance teams to create monthly or quarterly forecasts and budgets based on current and historical data.
• Scenario planning: Enables users to arrive at different financial outcomes through multiple AI-simulated “what-if” scenarios.
• Customization: Allows users to easily create tailored spreadsheets, reports, and dashboards based on their unique needs and preferences. 

Cons

• Pricing: The pricing structure is more suitable for enterprises and larger businesses.
• Implementation: Teams often end up spending significant time and resources to set up and configure the software. 
• Platform interface: Users have highlighted that the interface is not as intuitive or easy to use as compared to other FP&A tools.
• Steep learning curve: Despite its familiar interface, advanced features still require a steep training curve. Also, dedicated personnel are required for maintenance and model updates, thereby impacting agility.
• Inflexible reporting: Some users have highlighted that the reporting capabilities are limited, rigid, and difficult to customize.
• Slow load times: Users have complained that the system slows down with large data sets or complex models.

The 4 best Workday alternatives and competitors to look at

While Workday Adaptive Planning can be a viable option for mid-sized companies and enterprises with more structured financial processes, it may not suit the requirements of rapidly scaling businesses.

If your organization requires more agile modeling, quicker implementation, or more robust self-serve capabilities, you might want to explore alternatives. To help you make a well-informed decision, we've compared and detailed the top four  alternatives to Workday Adaptive Planning, including their features, pros and cons. 

Drivetrain

Drivetrain is a modern, AI-powered FP&A platform, designed specifically for high-growth companies and finance teams users to enhance their financial planning, tracking and forecasting processes, and make data-driven decisions with greater speed and accuracy. 

With 200+ integrations, Drivetrain unifies financial and operational data from various sources and systems to provide a single source of truth for the entire organization. It also centralizes key SaaS metrics and financial KPIs, provides one-click root cause analysis to optimize performance, and generates interactive, board-ready reports and dashboards for strategic planning. 

For SaaS companies, Drivetrain offers a comprehensive solution that connects models to real-time actuals, enables multidimensional analysis across various business aspects (geographies, market segments, pricing tiers, etc.), and generates actionable insights for informed decision-making. 

Key features and capabilities

• Intuitive user interface: Provides a simple and user-friendly interface that makes complex financial modeling accessible to both finance experts and non-finance stakeholders.
• Native integrations: Has 200+ out-of-the-box integrations that connect seamlessly with various ERP, CRM, BI, billing systems, and HRIS, leading to connected plans and shared metrics for in-depth analysis and granular insights. 
• Rolling forecasts: Allows finance teams to develop and utilize rolling forecasts for continuous planning.
• Multidimensional modeling and analysis: Enables users to create and analyze complex financial models across multiple dimensions, including products, customers, and regions.
• Advanced scenario planning: Enables users to run multiple “what-if” analyses and model various business scenarios to understand their potential financial impact.
• Granular access control: Provides role-based access control, ensuring that sensitive financial data is only accessible to authorized personnel.
• Customized reporting and dynamic dashboards: Generates customized reports and interactive dashboards with easily comprehensible visuals (charts and graphs) to facilitate data-driven decision-making among all stakeholders.

What users say about Drivetrain 

"I really appreciate how Drivetrain helps us in simplifying the financial reporting tasks and making it easier to generate accurate customized reports efficiently. It smoothly integrated with our accounting softwares and gives accurate numbers...One downside is that it is time-consuming to clean our internal data to ensure accurate reports. While the software streamlines many tasks, this initial data cleaning step can be time consuming and delay our reporting process. But this is something that cannot be avoided." – G2 review

Anaplan

Anaplan is a cloud-based platform for enterprise-wide performance management and connected business planning. Though not purpose-built for SaaS, this second-generation FP&A tool uses its proprietary Hyperblock™ technology to offer financial, workforce, and operational planning. While Anaplan is a good option, it may require significant implementation time and specialized expertise to fully leverage its features. 

Key features and capabilities:

• Modeling and analysis: Offers granular analysis, including what-if scenario modeling for informed decision-making.
• Collaboration and integration: Supports real-time collaboration across teams and integrates with various systems for data consolidation.
• Multi-device support: Allows user access on desktop or the web, and also on certain iOS and Android devices.
• Data security/audit: Ensures data protection with robust security measures and detailed audit tracking for compliance and transparency.

What users say about Anaplan

“Anaplan is capable of handling various use cases among FP&A, Sales, Workforce Planning, Product Manufacturing, Transportation, and Supply Chain…Anaplan uses a sparse calculation model. As a result, models can become very large. The larger the model, the higher the licensing fees and potential impact to performance.” – G2 Review

Pigment

Pigment is a business planning platform that combines the flexibility of spreadsheets with the power of databases. It is primarily designed for finance and revenue teams, particularly in larger organizations and enterprises. While it offers a modern interface and collaborative tools for scenario modeling, financial forecasting, and generating data-driven insights, it may not have all the necessary features required by SaaS businesses.

Key features and capabilities:

• Flexible calculation engine: Has an intuitive interface for adjusting calculations and formulas, as well as creating and modifying complex financial models without extensive coding.
• Integrated business planning: Allows continuous planning with up-to-date data integration from multiple sources, ensuring quick responses to market changes. 
• Scenario modeling and analysis: Facilitates the creation and comparison of multiple “what-if” scenarios — crucial for developing contingency plans and optimizing resource allocation.
• Customizable dashboards and reporting: Creates customized reports with easy-to-under visuals for different stakeholders, simplifying complex financial information for better decision-making.

What users say about Pigment

“[Pigment] is one module (you don't have separate planning module and reporting modules) so updates are real time, no performance issues that I have seen in other systems, and a very sleek and modern interface…Pigment will require more technical savvy as it isn't as intuitive as say excel functions.” – Gartner Peer Insights review

Mosaic

Mosaic consolidates insights from various systems to provide real-time data analysis and forecasting capabilities. It bridges financial and operational data, enabling finance professionals to create models/reports without extensive technical expertise. 

While Mosaic does streamline financial operations to a large extent, it functions more as a financial-BI tool than a comprehensive FP&A solution, especially for SaaS businesses. 

Key features and capabilities:

• Analytical capabilities: Offers robust functionalities for data analysis, including variance analysis and trend identification, for informed decision-making.
• User interface: Allows users to easily handle complex financial operations on its intuitive platform. 
• Easy integrations: Connects with various financial and operational systems, centralizing data from multiple sources for comprehensive analysis.
• Report creation: Enables users to customize reports and dashboards, translating complex financial data into visually appealing formats.
• Workflows and collaboration: Facilitates cross-functional teamwork with streamlined processes and shared access to financial data and models.

What users say about Mosaic 

“The user interface and topline modeling within the system are fantastic. I really enjoy how similar the topline area specifically resembles the excel sheets we used to maintain…As the team builds out features, the flexibility of the system is limited. Reporting leaves a bit to be desired…” – G2 Review

Choosing the best Workday Adaptive Planning alternative

The right FP&A platform can help companies manage budgets, forecast financial performance, streamline reporting, build future scenarios through “what-if” scenario planning, and also reveal actionable data-driven insights.

As an FP&A solution, Workday Adaptive Planning is best suited for:

• Mid-sized to large enterprises
• Companies with complex, multi-dimensional planning needs
• Organizations that have sizeable budgets for a cloud-based solution
• Companies that can afford implementation assistance

However, fast-growing SaaS businesses prefer Drivetrain because of its AI-powered insights, SaaS-specific metrics, and agile modeling capabilities. This powerful yet intuitive software enables SaaS finance teams to deliver real business impact through data-driven decision-making. Drivetrain also scales seamlessly and quickly adapts to changing business needs.

Learn more about Drivetrain here or request a free demo.