Adaptive Insights vs Budgeting System Competitors

Craig,
I've been using Budget Maestro for about 4 years. We currently have around 3,000 students with total revenues of around $40MM. Even though there may be a size difference in revenues, I'd be glad to discuss our implementation of BM. I've been extremely pleased with this product.

Prior to our implementation, we were like a lot of schools using multiple spreadsheets and information stored in different files. I inherited a system that worked (because we had always done it this way) but was often prone to errors either in formulas or broken links. I can't imagine trying to revert to that system now.

Jim Donahue

Hi Craig,

Given the vertical you operate in, what may be very relevant for you in terms of experiences with the various packages you list above is the following:

1. What are your key requirements and how well does each solution fit? e.g. can you build education-specific models that represent your operations? If you plan to compare solutions, it is key that (a) you know what your true requirements are and (b) you have a decent evaluation process to drive through to a selection decision

2. quality of the implementation team's knowledge of the tool AND level of experience to model in the higher ed space

3. Level of expertise you can provide from your side: e.g. who will be your chief modeler, how tech savvy are your budget managers, etc.

Hope that helps
Len

We have been using Budget Maestro for the last 5 years. We are very pleased with it and find that the program is flexible. We do our budgeting very different from many places and have to find unique budgeting.

The implentation team worked very well with us to get the program to work our way. The support team is always responsive.

If you have specific questions please contact me and I gladly give you additional information.

Deneice

I have extensive experience with Budget Maestro and I agree with what has already been said here about not having to deal with formulas, functions and broken links, plus many other tools such as use of drivers and allowing multiple business entities to be managed separately and then consolidated via the software to arrive at a corporate budget.

But what makes this software truly unique compared with all the other solutions I have worked with or seen is the fact that it was designed to be an extension of the actual accounting software. By that I mean able to use the beginning fiscal year balance sheet accounts balances and in conjunction with the proposed budget automatically provide, in addition to a forecasted Income Statement, also an accurate and complete Balance Sheet and a Statement of Cash Flows, for the duration of your budget. This software application actually allows you to forecast the entire chart of accounts with using only forecasted revenues, costs and operating expenses, while building the forecasted financial statements and other reports with no user programming or even a single formula.

I also like the various functional modules that Budget Maestro comes with, such as a very comprehensive personnel module, a fixed assets module, and also liability and equity and many useful tools to allow allocations and use of drivers. Overall, it is a practical solution which I am able to manage myself without any IT help or consulting, while giving me the insight into the future financial health of the company.

Hi Craig,
I've had some experience implementing Adaptive Insights (previously known as Adaptive Planning) in industry and Host Analytics. I would be more than happy to speak with you about my experience with AI. We were an up and coming green battery mfg company with about 30 users and revenue of apprx $120M at the time. By the same token, you may want to look at Host Analytics as they've been implemented by a number of educational institutions such as Johnson & Wales University, Univ of MD, and the Univ of Notre Dame to name a few. Let me know if you'd like to discuss more and check out their website in the meantime. www.hostanalytics.com.

Hope this helps.

Hello Craig,

I have been implementing Adaptive Insights since 2008, and have also implemented a number of competing products. My consulting firm and I have completed over 100 (probably over 150) Adaptive implementation projects.

You might be aware that Adaptive is used by a number of Higher Ed customers including Stanford, Duke, UC Davis, UC San Diego, Vassar, Babon, UCF, and University of Washington just to name a few. In fact, I'm about to kick-off a new Higher Ed implementation of Adaptive right after the holidays.

I believe there are a number of reasons why Higher Ed tends to chose Adaptive, but here are just a few reasons. The Adaptive Insights Suite:

1) Manages Revenue and Cost Complexity: Planning and analysis across dimensions that matter, including grants, funds, employees, programs, projects, and more

2) Supports Reporting and Compliance: Maintain compliance with external reporting requirements through easy drag and drop reporting across financial and operational detail

3) Integrates with Current and Future Systems: Proven to integrate with common Higher Education systems like Banner, PeopleSoft, Jenzabar, and Workday

4) Drives Efficiency and Costs: 100% cloud delivery proven to be 75%+ more cost effective than traditional on-premise CPM systems

I'm happy to provide more detail as warranted.

Thanks,

Bill

I've worked with Host Analytics and Adaptive Insights and both are great choices, and more scalable than the last version of Budget Maestro (which admittedly was several years ago). I'd encourage you to include Host Analytics in your selection process, but don't have a view of how any of the systems work for the education vertical to suggest one specifically.