Adaptive Planning Introduces New Sales Planning & Analysis and Multi-Entity Management Solutions

Adaptive Planning, a provider of on-demand business performance management (BPM) solutions for companies and nonprofits, has announced two new packages: Sales Planning & Analysis and Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis. Both solutions aim to simplify management tasks for corporate sales teams and complex corporations with multiple entities. Sales Planning & Analysis and Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis will be available in the Adaptive Planning spring release.

The Sales Planning & Analysis Solution lets sales and management teams to forecast revenue and plan sales expenses to improve pipeline and sales analysis and integrate sales and financial plans. The solution is geared toward helping companies of all levels generate more accurate forecasts with more predictable revenue, higher overall revenue, increased sales and marketing productivity, and greater organizational alignment around top-line performance. Adaptive Planning also creates snapshots of data for historical trend analysis and has a Hosted Connector for integration with Salesforce.com or other cloud-based solutions.

“Most companies rely on a top-down forecast and factor in an assumed growth rate,” observes Craig Schiff, president and CEO of BMP Partners. “This system allows for a bottoms-up approach based on the actual sales pipeline. Factoring in historical trends for the product, region, and sales rep, this system can apply the appropriate probabilities to the forecast.”  

The full list of capabilities includes the following:

• Streamline and Enhance Revenue Forecasting.  Companies can import key data, such as leads, opportunities, and customer wins, from their CRM systems, as well as other data, such as revenue and backlog, from their GL and other systems – or can input data directly.  Sales management can then apply historical close rates for each stage of the pipeline to drive more accurate forecasts and leverage prior experience to better anticipate deals. 
• Plan Sales Expenses and Compensation.  All aspects of a sales team’s expenses, including headcount, base salary, commissions, bonuses, and incentives can be managed.
• Analyze Sales Performance.  Analysts can drill down into underlying data to identify root causes of variances and can benchmark reps against each other, analyzing end-to-end conversion rates by stage by rep, percent quota attainment by rep, percent pipeline coverage by rep, and more. Executives can assess the potential impact of hiring decisions, ramp times, and productivity rates.
• Integrate Sales and Financial Plans. Top-line sales information can be automatically linked into an Adaptive Planning financial planning instance so the financial plan always reflects the most up-to-date information from sales.  Because the sales plan and the revenue plan are independent models, they can be managed with different timing cycles. 

“The system allows marketing and sales executives to gain a comprehensive view of the marketing to win cycle—from lead, to contact, to opportunity, to win—together with revenue and sales rep-specific data, such as compensation and quotas, by importing and allowing the detailed analysis of data from both CRM applications and other applications, such as the GL and HR systems,” explains Robert Hull, founder, chief financial officer, and vice president of client services at Adaptive Planning. “Based on this ability to analyze the full cycle over time, and from period to period, marketing executives can make sure that they’re getting the most bang for the buck, investing in the marketing programs that will ensure the success of the sales team, and drive the greatest revenue for the company.”

The Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis Solution is designed to coordinate planning, reporting, and analysis among a complex set of organizational entities. The solution was constructed to cater to companies with scattered geographic divisions, autonomous business units, or divisions with different systems infrastructure, as well as holding companies that manage multiple operating companies.

A centralized headquarters can provide each entity with an individual adaptive planning instance, which allows the entity to set up an independent model complete with separate administration, users, permissions, chart of accounts, organizational hierarchy, dimensions, data entry templates, assumptions, permissions, time periods, and data integration. 

Key benefits include the ability to do the following:

• Decrease planning and reporting cycle times throughout an entire organization;
• Simplify headquarters administration, by eliminating the need to coordinate and consolidate spreadsheets;
• Allow autonomous organizations  determine how much information to share with others;
• Enable different lines of business to re-plan and re-forecast with separate hypothetical scenario timelines; and
  
• Deploy the solution in phases, decreasing risk by rolling out to business units over time.

The Multi-Entity Planning & Analysis solution is available in two bundles. A three-instance bundle, which includes licenses for three instances, three multi-instance administrative user seats, and five multi-instance full use seats, is available for an annual fee of $12,000 through September 30 (and $15,000 per year thereafter). A two-instance bundle, which includes licenses for two instances, two multi-instance administrative user seats, and four multi-instance full use seats, is available for  $10,000 per year.

The Sales Planning & Analysis Solution includes two Adaptive Planning instances, two multi-instance administrator seats, four multi-instance full use seats, 10 single-instance full use seats, one CRM connector (hosted or on-premise), and pre-defined planning templates and reports. It is available for $15,000 through September 30 (and $17,500 thereafter).

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