Adaptive Planning Introduces Cloud-Based Visual Discovery
Cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) provider Adaptive Planning is taking its technology to the next level with a data visualization offering that it believes will replace the cumbersome financial spreadsheets many SMBs are using to track financial planning and analysis (FP&A). It’s also meant as a middle-of-the-road solution that can replace enterprise applications from the likes of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and BusinessObjects.
Greg Schneider, Adaptive Planning’s vice president of marketing, said the company is breaking new ground in FP&A management with its Adaptive Discovery cloud-based offering, fitting somewhere between spreadsheets and pricey enterprise software solutions. With the proliferation of data at all levels of an organization, Schneider noted the number of systems and amount of data financial departments have to track can make it difficult to get a clear picture of what is truly happening in a business. Adaptive Discovery’s value is in a drill-down visualization of everything a business has, which will make it easier to get a good picture of what’s going on, he said.
The channel opportunity for this is potentially huge, but the 6-year-old company does only a portion of its business through the channel right now — a third of its revenue, in fact, and Schneider said he hopes that number will increase to at least 50 percent. However, as the company is building out its channel, it’s also continuing to invest in its direct sales force.
“We see the channel as being a big upside for the future. It’s a very important influencer and driver for business today,” Schneider said. He clearly recognizes at least some of the value the channel has to offer, but as the company grows, it’s not ready to put all of its sales in the hands of resellers.
Adaptive Planning just secured $22 million of capital, and part of that will go to investing in its channel, as well as investing more heavily in products and marketing.
The cloud-based CPM solution was designed to be highly visual and interactive with a hierarchical drill-drown tree that makes it easier for CFOs to get some business intelligence around their companies’ operations. Annual subscriptions are based on the number of instances, seats licensed, duration of the contract and what optional modules are needed. According to Adaptive Planning, annual subscriptions begin at less than $5,000 per year.
