Adaptive Planning 6.0 Redefines Business Performance Management

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwire - June 29, 2009) - Adaptive Planning, the worldwide leader in on-demand financial planning and reporting solutions for companies of all sizes, today announced Adaptive Planning 6.0, a major new product release that delivers powerful multi-dimensional planning features and best-in-class integration with NetSuite. These features, together with an innovative new benchmarking initiative the company is introducing concurrently (see separate announcement), establish a new standard for today's business performance management solutions by delivering comprehensive data and information that allow companies to make better, more agile business decisions and enhance their overall competitiveness.

With version 6.0, Adaptive Planning expands upon the solution's powerful yet easy-to-use feature set through the introduction of new Cube Sheet functionality, providing sophisticated multi-dimensional planning capabilities that were previously only available in expensive enterprise applications requiring significant IT skills. And it also features best-in-class integration with NetSuite, allowing customers of both solutions to quickly connect, share data, and seamlessly navigate between applications, including drilling through from Adaptive Planning into underlying transactions within NetSuite.

In conjunction with the release of version 6.0, Adaptive Planning is also introducing a new benchmarking initiative, consisting of a Client Benchmarking Service and an Industry Trends module, which will enable companies to quickly and easily compare their financial and operational performance metrics against those of their industry peers.

"Adaptive Planning 6.0 represents a major milestone for us, as we continue to incorporate new innovations and high-end features into an easy-to-use and affordable package," said William A. Soward, CEO of Adaptive Planning. "With 6.0, we are making it simple for business users without IT skills to create and use sophisticated multi-dimensional financial planning models and to establish seamless integration with NetSuite. These new capabilities, together with our breakthrough benchmarking offerings, give companies access to comprehensive, customized, real-time information that supports more accurate planning, better management reporting and analysis, and more agile decision making."

Multi-Dimensional Cube Sheet

The new Cube Sheet feature allows business users to easily create and use financial models with up to ten dimensions, simplifying the planning of large volumes of data. For example, sales executives and product managers often need to plan and re-forecast revenues by making volume and price assumptions for multiple geographies, product lines, customers, product SKUs, time periods, and other dimensions -- a planning exercise that requires the input and ongoing review of millions of discrete data elements.

The new capability sets Adaptive Planning apart from both spreadsheets, which are inherently limited in supporting multi-dimensional inputs, and cube-based enterprise software applications, which are extremely complex, requiring personnel with deep IT skills to modify and maintain models over time. Adaptive Planning dramatically simplifies matters with an intuitive "drag and drop" interface and "business language" formula builder that allow business users without IT training to create, maintain, and use sophisticated multi-dimensional models.

The new Cube Sheet feature extends the range of data input features available within Adaptive Planning, adding to the solution's time-based Standard Sheet and list-oriented Modeled Sheet. This integrated approach ensures that companies can customize their models for their specific needs, using the right tool for each organization and element of the model, rather than mandating a particular approach based on software architecture -- as is the case with other software solutions.

"As a telecommunications solutions provider, we plan multiple revenue streams, including product, installation, and maintenance revenues nationwide," said Gwyn Goodrow, Director, FP&A and Payroll, Shared Technologies Inc., an Adaptive Planning customer. "The new Cube Sheet functionality will allow our organization to plan and manage our business in greater detail, resulting in improved profitability analysis which may ultimately result in better overall business performance."

Best-in-Class NetSuite Integration

Adaptive Planning 6.0 also introduces best-in-class integration with NetSuite, the leading provider of integrated on-demand business management suites providing accounting/ERP, CRM, and e-commerce capabilities. Through a development partnership, both Adaptive Planning and NetSuite have extended their application interfaces to set a new standard for SaaS-to-SaaS application integration.

The NetSuite integration in Adaptive Planning 6.0 allows companies to connect the two applications, map dimensions and accounts, import and export actual and plan information, and seamlessly navigate between the solutions -- all in a matter of minutes. Users can identify plan versus actual variances in Adaptive Planning reports, isolate the organization and account responsible for the variance, and drill through into NetSuite to view the actual transactions underlying the variance.

Because this is a vendor-developed product feature, the integration will be updated and maintained across future releases -- unlike the case with some third-party solutions, no additional maintenance work will be required by customers.

As announced on June 10, 2009, NetSuite will utilize the Adaptive Planning solution and new integration capabilities for the NetSuite Financial Planning module it will make available to its current and new customers in Q3 2009.

"Companies have struggled with software and data integration projects for years, so this automated SaaS-based approach has the potential to make life much easier for NetSuite and Adaptive Planning customers," said Robert D. Kugel, SVP & Research Director, Ventana Research. "Having this information all together is also important because it helps executives manage their business with greater agility. Our independent benchmark research has shown that companies that can incorporate actual results into their forecasts and drill down into underlying transactions in real-time have much more accurate plans and are able to respond faster and more effectively to changing business conditions."

Breakthrough Benchmarking Initiative

Together with the release of version 6.0, Adaptive Planning is also introducing a groundbreaking new initiative that gives companies access to previously unavailable benchmarking information, which helps them to improve their financial and operational management, create more informed plans and forecasts, and ultimately enhance their overall competitiveness. See separate press release for more details.

Availability and Pricing

The core features of Version 6.0 are available immediately, with additional updates to occur throughout Q3 and Q4 of 2009.

Cube Sheet is available to customers of Adaptive Planning's Corporate and Enterprise Editions for no additional charge, as part of their existing subscription agreements.

About Adaptive Planning

Adaptive Planning is the worldwide leader in on-demand financial planning and reporting solutions that improve operational efficiency, strengthen companywide collaboration, and drive better business decisions in companies of all sizes. Adaptive Planning makes it easy to move beyond spreadsheets and automate budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and "what-if" analysis, without the cost and complexity associated with traditional business intelligence and BPM software. With free software, free trials, and both on-demand and on-premise deployment options, Adaptive Planning is the fastest and easiest way for finance organizations to enhance their agility and strategic value. Adaptive Planning is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. and can be reached at 650-528-7500 or www.adaptiveplanning.com.

Contact Information: Media Contacts: Derek Kober GlobalFluency 650.433.4233 Greg Schneider Adaptive Planning 650.810.0525