Adaptive Planning Announces Version 4.0 of Budgeting, Forecasting and Reporting Solution

New Version Puts Powerful Yet Easy-to-Use Web-Based Reporting and Analysis in the Hands of Business Users Throughout a Company
 

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – August 8, 2007 — Adaptive Planning, the leading provider of collaborative business performance management (BPM) solutions, today announced Adaptive Planning 4.0, the latest release of its award-winning software solution. Featuring a revolutionary Report Builder module and new Cell Explorer functionality, Adaptive Planning 4.0 introduces new leading-edge capabilities that put powerful yet intuitive web-based reporting and analysis in the hands of business users throughout a company. With this new release, Adaptive Planning continues to deliver unprecedented value through affordable, easy-to-use, and quick-to-deploy budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions.

Traditionally, business users have had two options for reporting and analysis—personal spreadsheets or enterprise business intelligence (BI) or BPM software. While spreadsheets provide flexible modeling and formatting capabilities, they do not easily support comparisons across versions—for example, actual vs. plan vs. forecast—or enable users to drill down through the data to understand how underlying details contribute to top-level results. Enterprise BI and BPM solutions address those challenges, but are often so complex that they require specially-trained “super users” to design reports for the company’s business users, hampering widespread adoption. Additionally, BI and BPM tools are frequently too expensive for many companies, particularly small and midsized businesses, to afford.

Now, Adaptive Planning 4.0 provides a breakthrough alternative that combines the ease-of-use of spreadsheet-based reporting with the power of enterprise BI and BPM solutions. The cornerstone of the release is a new Report Builder module, which is fully integrated into Adaptive Planning’s unified budgeting, forecasting and reporting solution. With Adaptive Planning 4.0, business users throughout an organization can create new reports and analyses with ease—they simply select relevant items from a menu and drag them onto a graphical workspace. The solution provides complete control over report layout, formatting, and viewing. Adaptive Planning 4.0 enables business users to easily:

• Create new ad hoc reports by dragging and dropping key report elements, including accounts, time periods, plans, and versions

• View pre-defined reports, including P&L and balance sheet statements
 
• Develop multi-dimensional cross-tab reports, such as revenue by product by region

• Drill down to explore trends within the data, subject to security and permission levels

• Perform in-report calculations, including subtotals and differences

• View results in tables or graphical charts

Best of all, because Adaptive Planning is an on-demand software as a service solution, these capabilities can be utilized without involving IT resources—Finance organizations and business users can quickly set up the solution and manage reporting completely independently.

Together, the capabilities provided by Report Builder enable business users to gain a deeper understanding of their business, with greater ease, than was previously possible. For example, in addition to supporting the Finance organization, multi-dimensional cross-tab reports allow general managers to explore trends in historical profitability by product or by project, or sales executives to examine their forecast by product and region. By providing an easy way to analyze complex data, and making reports easy to share, Adaptive Planning allows users throughout a company to collaborate and make better business decisions.

Adaptive Planning 4.0 also features a powerful new Cell Explorer capability. Cell Explorer allows users to thoroughly analyze any cell within their financial model by drilling down into the sequence of values and formulas that are used to calculate the final result. For example, with Cell Explorer, financial analysts can examine how each element of a formula affects the overall calculation by reviewing the evaluated results of the formula. Similarly, business managers can drill through higher-level salary or benefits accounts in the plan to understand the amounts associated with every employee in their organizations.

“With products that simplify report creation and plan analysis, Finance teams can spend less time on low-value activities and more time performing value-added strategic analysis,” said Craig Schiff, Chief Executive Officer of BPM Partners. “Additionally, systems that improve access to information throughout a company will foster increased business unit ownership of financial and operational results, and support better, more timely decision making. Ultimately, companies that adopt performance management solutions such as Adaptive Planning will be rewarded with improved results and increased competitiveness.”

“Adaptive Planning 4.0 represents an important milestone in our product evolution,” said William A. Soward, Chief Executive Officer of Adaptive Planning. “Based on customer feedback, we have developed a solution that sets a new standard in easy-to-use, on-demand business reporting. Best of all, current Adaptive Planning clients automatically get access to the new capabilities as part of their subscriptions. This new release demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering additional product features and overall value to our clients.”

Availability and Pricing.
Adaptive Planning 4.0 is available immediately. The Cell Explorer capabilities are available in all product editions: Adaptive Planning Express, Corporate, and Enterprise. The Report Builder module is available in the two commercial editions, Adaptive Planning Corporate and Enterprise. Current Adaptive Planning clients receive the new version for no additional fee as part of their subscriptions.

Additional Information.
For more information about Adaptive Planning, including the opportunity to test drive the company’s budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solutions for free, visit www.adaptiveplanning.com.

About Adaptive Planning:
Adaptive Planning is the leading provider of collaborative business performance management (BPM) solutions. Adaptive Planning makes it easy for midsize companies and departments of larger corporations to move beyond spreadsheets and improve decisions by automating their budgeting, forecasting, reporting and analysis. Adaptive Planning provides extraordinary flexibility and value, with on-demand and on-site solutions, open source and commercial licensing terms, and pricing—including a free version of the product—that delivers a total cost of ownership that is a fraction of the cost of traditional BPM and business intelligence software. Adaptive Planning is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and can be reached at 650-528-7500 or www.adaptiveplanning.com.