SOURCE: Adaptive Planning

June 02, 2008 08:00 ET

Adaptive Planning Launches New Era of "Connected Intelligence" in Financial Management With Introduction of Adaptive Planning 5.0

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--(Marketwire - June 2, 2008) - Adaptive Planning, the worldwide leader in on-demand 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 http://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 http://community.adaptiveplanning.com and a test drive of the new product is available at http://www.adaptiveplanning.com/enterprise_trial.

About Adaptive Planning

Adaptive Planning is the worldwide leader in on-demand financial planning and reporting solutions that increase efficiencies and drive agile decision-making in dynamic, forward-looking companies. Adaptive Planning makes it easy to move beyond spreadsheets and automate budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, without the cost and complexity associated with traditional business intelligence and BPM software. With free software, free trials, and both on-demand and on-premise deployment options, Adaptive Planning provides the fastest and easiest approach to streamlining and elevating your financial management. Adaptive Planning is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and can be reached at 650-528-7500 or www.adaptiveplanning.com.