Industry Overview

Over 1,000 organizations worldwide, in multiple industries, have transformed their planning and reporting processes with the Adaptive Planning solution, including AAA, Access Community Health Network, American Red Cross, CORT, Hawaii Pacific University, International Power, Konica Minolta, NetSuite, Northwestern Mutual, Pep Boys, Vail Resorts, Zipcar, and many more.

Banks & Credit Unions

Banks and credit unions are especially sensitive to economic cycles, because a downturn in the economy depresses consumer spending and borrowing, and drives down the demand for financial service firms’ services. As a result, the demand for innovative products and services is increasing, and banks and credit unions are challenged to hone their responsiveness to customers’ needs with higher quality services, and adapt to today’s market challenges.

Adaptive Planning enables banks and credit unions to implement a web-based core business application that provides immediate access to data and information from multiple systems. They can plan headcount in detail, and perform what-if analyses to compare various hiring scenarios and their impact on the bottom line. They can plan, report on, and analyze revenues in driver-based models and by various products. They can quickly respond to shifting markets with real-time visibility into KPIs and metrics. And Adaptive Planning is low-cost, requiring no IT involvement, and is low-risk.

Business Services

The business service industry faces challenges in the current economy, because during downturns, companies often eliminate outside services. In this environment, it’s more important than ever for service companies to be able to analyze key metrics, such as employee billability and service line profitability, and to use this information to carefully plan headcount utilization.

Adaptive Planning enables service companies to plan headcount in detail; allocate personnel across multiple project, departments, or service offerings; and tie headcount to both costs and revenue. They can perform what-if analyses to compare various hiring scenarios and their impact on the bottom line, and re-forecast frequently, making adjustments based on different revenue assumptions. And Adaptive Planning is low-cost, requiring no IT involvement, and has an easy-to-use web interface that can be rolled out to even users with no financial expertise.

Energy & Utilities

The energy and utilities industry faces a myriad of issues, including governmental policy shifts and new environmental regulation, fluctuating consumer demand, price volatility, emerging competitive forces, and cash flow problems. Energy and utility planning challenges include planning for corporate growth as customer demand changes, and matching demand with supply.

Adaptive Planning enables energy and utility companies to use driver-based planning for sales and costs, and to plan personnel in detail across multiple dimensions. Our energy customers can model integrated P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statements, with effects of demand, supply, and capital spending on available cash. They can streamline complex consolidation of data from multiple business units. And they can report on and analyze cost variances and other key metrics, such as rates, usage, price, and energy charges. Our low-cost SaaS model is has an easy to use, web-based interface, so that even people without strong finance skills can participate in financial planning processes.

Healthcare

Companies in today’s healthcare environment face serious financial challenges, stemming from uncertain patient volumes, declining reimbursement in a complex multi-payer system, and increasing government regulation and costs. Planning in these companies typically involves a volume-driven revenue budget, which must be integrated and balanced with the cost side of the plan, in order to forecast realistic contribution margins and profitability. And revenue and headcount detail needs to be planned across multiple categories, such as patient type, type of service offered, length of patient stay, patient insurance type, and physician type.

Adaptive Planning provides healthcare organizations with a planning system that uses driver-based, integrated planning for revenue, expenses, and cash flow. Our healthcare customers plan across multiple dimensions (e.g., patient type, procedure type, clinic type, location, hospital department, etc.) They use driver-based modeling to capture interdependencies between revenues and headcount and other costs, and between accounts receivable and sales. Adaptive Planning delivers accuracy, data integrity, and the ability to frequently reforecast and perform what-if analyses.

Insurance

In the United States, insurance companies are regulated primarily at the state level. This means that insurance firms must deal with up to 50 different state regulatory agencies and 50 different sets of state regulations. In addition to complex statutory reporting, GAAP reporting is often also required. In addition to planning and reporting by state, insurance companies typically need to plan by other dimensions, such as business line, product family, and premium type. Detailed allocation schemes are often necessary to plan company revenue and profit by state and by product lines.

Adaptive Planning enables insurance companies to accurately plan revenues and expenses across a complex organization with a large number of dimensions, such as state and product line, and to produce both statutory and GAAP reporting. Our insurance customers can perform frequent re-forecasts and what-if analyses for varying levels of growth, and have ready access to timely and accurate analysis of key performance indicators necessary to reduce risk and manage costs effectively. And Adaptive Planning is low-risk, because it’s low-cost, it requires no IT involvement, and implementations are short and affordable.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing companies are often organized by function, with a production group responsible for the output and inventory levels of the company, and a sales group responsible for selling the goods produced. Their profitability depends on efficient production and distribution, tied to fluctuating demand for the end product. The manufacturing planning process depends upon an accurate sales forecast, which in turn drives the forecast of required labor and materials to meet the demand.

Adaptive Planning enables manufacturing companies to coordinate planning for production and sales unit volumes, matching supply and demand, automatically driving integrated costs and revenues. Our manufacturing customers can streamline complex consolidation of data from multiple plants, divisions, and functions, including international operations. And they can report on and analyze cost variances and other key metrics, such as inventory turns, COGS, and average prices. Our easy to use, web-based interface means that even people without strong finance skills — for example, production staff — can participate in financial planning processes. This increases adoption and collaboration across the company.

Nonprofit & Education

Nonprofit organizations and educational institutions require strict fiscal management. Accurate, reliable, and flexible projections of cash flow are critical to ensure that they have the cash they need, when they need it. They also require budgets for resource approval by their boards, and for third-party stakeholders considering grant applications, making pledges or donations, or extending credit.

Adaptive Planning enables nonprofits to plan for and consolidate complex organizations, including multiple funds and programs. They can plan and report on fully-loaded employee costs, and can allocate headcount and overhead costs across the organization. Fully integrated P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statements enable detailed and careful cash management. And Adaptive Planning is low-cost, requiring no IT involvement, and has an easy-to-use web interface that can be rolled out to even volunteers or users with no financial expertise.

Retail

The retail industry is dynamic — constantly responding to changes in the economy — and often includes low-margin, high volume businesses. Large retail organizations can have thousands of employees in multiple countries, with hundreds of store locations, each having dozens of departments. Planning and reporting in this environment can involve a considerable number of people, spread across multiple geographic locations, and a large quantity of data, e.g., detailed sales history by SKU.

Adaptive Planning enables retail companies to set top-down merchandise and financial objectives, and provide lower-level stores and departments the ability to meet them. Our retail customers can plan, report, and analyze at a variety of levels and dimensions — for example, in aggregate, or by new stores and same stores, large format and small format stores, etc. And they can perform complex what-if analysis based on seasonality, economic conditions, promotion cycles, ramp-up of new stores, etc. This can be done at a low cost, while reducing time spent forecasting by as much as 80%, and increasing the accuracy and integrity of the company’s financial model.

Software

The software industry is fast growing and dynamic, with trends such as Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud computing, and open source software driving change. Furthermore, many software companies undergo significant – and rapid – changes as they grow. Given these changes in the industry, and within a company itself, it’s critical for software companies to have a strong, flexible business plan.

Additionally, companies in the software industry have unique budgeting needs that stem from the fact that they typically recognize revenue over the life of a contract, rather than when business is booked. Planning complex revenue recognition, with its P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow impacts, requires a robust planning system.

Adaptive Planning enables software companies to plan in a flexible modeling environment that only supports company evolution, but also allows finance and executive teams to analyze the impact of new changes before key decisions are made. They can model complex revenue recognition scenarios, and plan using a complete set of integrated financial statements (P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow).