Adaptive Insights is already No. 1 in user experience, but somehow it’s become even better. The system releases in 2015 add value and efficiency to user experience.
1. Seamless Integration of Excel Shortcuts and Searches
Are you a “control F” freak? Adaptive Insights uses the same keystrokes as Microsoft Excel to maximize productivity and efficiency. Shortcuts bring added value to the robust search capacity, enabling users to find a needle in a haystack regardless of the amount of data. I am so enthusiastic about this feature that I can’t wait to test it out and search for the word “depreciation” instead of reading through the entirety of expense lists to find it manually.
2. Multi-Dimensional Cube Sheets
Model designers will be thrilled with the behind-the-scenes improvements made to Adaptive Insights cube sheets. In the 2015.1 release earlier this year, the product team implemented the option of using GL and custom accounts within cube sheets. Revenue planning often requires multiple dimensions, such as products, locations, and sales channels. Now that we can pull GL accounts directly in the multi-dimensional cube sheet, results no longer need to be linked up to the duplicative, correlating GL accounts using formulas that end up having to be written and maintained. The whole process is simplified with the new update. The new drop-in method is more secure in terms of maintenance and data integrity.
3. Model Design and Reporting Scalability
The most recent 2015.2 updates functionality for dimensional attributes benefiting flexibility and scalability of model design. Planning a product is made easier when multiple attributes can be added to a product listing, allowing users to slice and dice on size or product year or product type. Before, it would have been necessary to choose one of these labels to group the products together and the others would have been left out of the model altogether. With the new dimensional attributes, planning at the product level of a cube sheet allows for attributes like a page filter placed at the top of an Excel pivot table. The result is a faster, more efficient, and intuitive experience for the end user.
Reporting also comes with dimensional attributes, and reports can be made simply by product type or year instead of having to manually combine reports.
If you happen to be designing a new Adaptive Planning model, I would highly recommend incorporating these new capabilities into your business. If you are already running Adaptive, I also strongly suggest updating to the new innovations.
While these changes are all in the Adaptive Planning product, additional improvements have been made and there are now updates available for these products, too: Adaptive Consolidation, Adaptive Discovery, and Adaptive Integration. I love that the folks at Adaptive Insights work hard to take care of all of their constituencies and are innovating all of the products in their suite. When developers implement product improvements in such a way that demonstrates a real understanding of the end user’s experience, it is apparent as in the case of these updates.
The folks at Adaptive Insights are constantly working to ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction, which is evident from the excellence this product strives to deliver.
Discover the DSG Difference—let the Adaptive Insights practice at DSG help you make the most of these innovations for your current and future Adaptive Insights needs.
Original version of this blog was posted on August 4, 2015 at http://www.demandsolutionsgroup.com/the-best-gets-even-better-key-updates-from-adaptive-insights-2015-releases/
Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles and freedigitalphotos.net