Choosing your business’s planning solution is a difficult and integral decision with many considerations to keep in mind. There are more choices on the market today than ever before, and many organizations struggle to find the right solution for their specific needs.
In this blog post, we’ll consider and compare Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud and the Oracle EPM Cloud — two major contenders in the cloud planning space.
So, what sets the two apart? Read on to find out.
What is Adaptive Insights?
Adaptive Insights is a Workday company offering a cloud-based planning solution for businesses. It serves over 3,700 companies across the globe. Adaptive Insights was formerly known as Adaptive Planning, Inc. until its acquisition by Workday in August of 2018.
What is the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud?
The Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud provides its users with insights into finance, workforce, sales, and operational planning. The Business Planning Cloud allows for end-to-end business planning analysis, reporting, monitoring, and modeling. It’s built on Elastic Hypercube Technology, which lets customers build and maintain large and complex multidimensional models without any coding or scripting.
According to Adaptive Insights, their Business Planning Cloud eliminates the need to manually consolidate data and facilitates the organization-wide management, reporting, and analysis of business performance.
What is Oracle?
Oracle is a multinational company headquartered in California that sells database management software and technology. It went public in 1986 and has since established itself as an international software provider.
What is the Oracle EPM Cloud?
The Oracle EPM Cloud is an agile software-as-a-service Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software solution. It’s the world’s first complete EPM solution, and its business processes include…
- Planning
- Financial Consolidation and Close
- Enterprise Data Management
- Account Reconciliation
- Narrative Reporting
- Profitability and Cost Management
- Tax Reporting
The Oracle EPM Cloud Planning business process was formerly known as Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) or Enterprise Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service EPBCS. PBCS and EPBCS, under Oracle’s new licensing, are now simply Planning. You can read more about the changes under the new licensing structure here. The Planning business process is Oracle’s equivalent to Adaptive’s Business Planning Cloud.
According to Oracle, their EPM Cloud solution is more advantageous than a single-point software application because a complete solution integrates management processes across an entire organization. This might also limit integration issues that can lead to a slowdown in processes and data inconsistency.
Business Planning Cloud vs. EPM Cloud
At first glance, it might seem as though the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud and the Oracle EPM Cloud offer the same planning solutions. But upon closer examination, it’s clear that the two solutions differ in key ways—ways that may make all the difference to the prospective customer.
Commonalities
Aside from both being industry leaders when it comes to business planning, the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud and the Oracle EPM Cloud share some similarities in the capabilities they offer. Both are fully integrated with Microsoft Office, providing real-time data integration between their platforms and Microsoft’s. Both provide users with a developer “sandbox” environment. And both provide their users with native financial intelligence and offer the ability to fully customize reporting dashboards.
Differences
The Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud and the Oracle EPM Cloud have a lot in common, but the differences that exist between the two make it clear that they’re not identical. We’ve dissected their differences and analyzed them for you below.
Complete EPM solution vs. holistic planning solution
The most glaringly obvious difference is that the Oracle EPM Cloud is a complete EPM solution, and the Adaptive Insights Cloud is not. For prospects searching for a complete database management solution, including tax reporting, narrative reporting, and other capabilities, the Oracle EPM Cloud is the more relevant choice. However, for users looking for planning solutions and planning solutions only, the Business Planning Cloud may prove less cumbersome.
Standard Cloud vs. Enterprise Cloud
There’s another layer to this that adds some complication, however, and it comes in the format of Oracle’s Standard Cloud and Oracle’s Enterprise Cloud. The Standard Cloud allows users to select Planning as a business process, but it’s limited to Module-Based Planning, including capital, financials, projects, and workforce planning. It excludes Custom Planning and Free Form Planning.
On the other hand, users who purchase the Enterprise Cloud receive access to all of the business processes offered by Oracle, as well as Custom, Module-Based, and Freeform Planning. Therefore, it’s important to note that the version of Oracle’s EPM Cloud you purchase will impact the capabilities available to you, including the planning functions.
Users looking to test out the functionality of the Oracle EPM Cloud solution for their organization the EPM solution won’t find a free trial online, however, you can request a demo of the Oracle EPM Cloud if you’re interested in previewing the software and ask our experts to walk you through the robust solution.
Additional differences
There are several other robust features that you’ll get from the Oracle EPM Cloud that you won’t get from Adaptive Planning, those include…
- Predictive Planning
- Strategic Modeling and Long-range Planning
- Purpose-built, business user-owned Allocation Management
- Ad hoc Analysis
- Pixel-perfect reporting
- Business user-defined data maaping
- Native Oracle ERP integration
- Native Hyperion EPM integration
Conclusion
The differences between the Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud and the Oracle EPM Cloud may seem subtle at first, but they’re there and they’re striking. Oracle’s solution is a complete EPM solution and Adaptive Insights’ is a planning solution only. Additionally, the many features included in the Oracle EPM Cloud allow you to readily adapt your processes as your business grows.
For more information about the Oracle EPM Cloud, its applications, and its new licensing, check out the webinar replay...
