AFP Boosts Budgeting & Reporting Capabilities With Adaptive Planning

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 2, 2013) - Adaptive Planning, the worldwide leader in cloud-based business analytics solutions for companies and nonprofits of all sizes, today announced that the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP), the professional society that represents more than 16,000 treasury and finance executives, has implemented Adaptive Planning to better manage the budgeting and forecasting process through automated workflow and improve collaboration and reporting capabilities.

AFP serves a network of more than 16,000 members with articles, economic research and data, treasury certification programs, networking events, financial analytical tools, training, and public policy representation to legislators and regulators. Prior to selecting Adaptive Planning, AFP was reliant on 127 linked spreadsheets with 176,000 linked cells to create an annual, static budget that had to be re-established each year. In addition, the association had no real-time financial forecasting tool.

"We knew we could eliminate a lot of manual effort on the part of the finance team by automating our budgeting, forecasting and reporting processes," explains Joe DeSalvio, CFO at AFP. "This represented the next critical frontier of automation for our finance organization, and we wanted to take advantage of the great technology solutions available to solve our key challenges."

"Adaptive Planning was a great solution for us because it enabled us to better manage the budget and forecast process through automated workflow, which eliminated the complexities of version control and made the budget contribution process much easier across a distributed group of participants," said DeSalvio. With the adoption of Adaptive, AFP has achieved significant workflow improvements and saved more than 5 man-months of work throughout the year:

• Eliminated version control errors and related fixes, saving 2.5 weeks per year
• Eliminated the budget spreadsheet setup process, saving 2 weeks per year
• Eliminated quality control checks & fixes on the spreadsheet models, saving 2.5 weeks per year
• Reduced monthly close process by 1 full day per month, saving 2 weeks per year
• Automated the executive and Board level reporting, saving 2 weeks per year
• Accelerated full financial statement forecasting, saving 4 weeks per year
• Eliminated extending forecast model horizon calculations, saving 4 weeks per year 
• Automated trend analysis over several fiscal years or across entities, saving 1 week per year
• Automated preparation of management financial reporting, saving 3 weeks per year

"Adaptive Planning was designed by a CFO for financial modeling, so its structure makes sense and it is very affordable," confirms Joe DeSalvio, CFO. "After one year of using Adaptive Planning, I can't imagine ever going back to modeling and reporting with linked spreadsheets. We have saved over twenty weeks of time spent by the finance team on the budgeting, forecasting and reporting process by moving to Adaptive Planning."

After selecting Adaptive Planning, AFP implemented the solution within 12 weeks and rolled it out to users across the entire organization. The increased collaboration between the finance team, budget owners, and program managers was immediately helpful to reinforce strategy, financial concepts, and consistency.

"We've enjoyed working with AFP and are pleased that the organization has seen such great ROI in such a short time," said Greg Schneider, Vice President of Marketing at Adaptive Planning. "The success of Adaptive in an association serving finance leaders is a great testament to the power of the Adaptive suite to automate performance management and deliver rapid value via the Cloud."

Click to Tweet: @AFPonline saves time and strengthens budgeting and reporting process with @AdaptivePlans #CFO #Budgeting http://bit.ly/19iIIz2

ABOUT AFP®
Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP) is the professional society that represents finance executives globally. AFP established and administers the Certified Treasury Professional and Certified Corporate FP&A Professional credentials, which set standards of excellence in finance. The quarterly AFP Corporate Cash Indicators serve as a bellwether of economic growth. The AFP Annual Conference is the largest networking event for corporate finance professionals in the world.

AFP, Association for Financial Professionals, Certified Treasury Professional, and Certified Corporate Financial Planning & Analysis Professional are registered trademarks of the Association for Financial Professionals. © 2013 Association for Financial Professionals, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About Adaptive Planning
Adaptive Planning is the worldwide leader in cloud-based business analytics solutions for companies and nonprofits of all sizes. The company's software as a service (SaaS) platform allows finance and management teams to work together to plan, monitor, report on, and analyze financial and operational performance. With capabilities for budgeting, forecasting, reporting, consolidation, dashboards, and business intelligence, Adaptive Planning enables finance, sales, and other business leaders to make better, faster, more collaborative decisions that drive a true competitive advantage.

Adaptive Planning is used by over 1,700 organizations worldwide, from midsized companies and nonprofits to large corporations, including AAA, Boston Scientific, CORT, Konica Minolta, NetSuite, Philips, and Vail Resorts. The company is the 5th fastest growing software company in Silicon Valley on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ list; has the #1 brand in midmarket CPM; and ranks #1 in customer satisfaction and usability in independent industry surveys. With customers and partners in 82 countries worldwide, the company has the strongest channel ecosystem in the cloud CPM space, with worldwide partners including Armanino, Intacct, IntuitiveTek, Plex Systems, SAP, and NetSuite, which offers a specialized version of Adaptive Planning as the NetSuite Financial Planning module. Adaptive Planning is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif. and is funded by Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), ONSET Ventures, Monitor Ventures, and Cardinal Venture Capital.