Adaptive Insights to Release Financial Impact and Trends Survey

Adaptive Insights issued financial impact and trends research on corporate performance, spotlighting trends and new findings from a survey of finance professionals.

In a release, the Company noted that the report found that healthcare has dominated worries in the past year, followed closely by the U.S. government budget crisis. While healthcare is predicted to remain a top concern for 2014, spikes in gas prices rank even higher this year. The report includes findings from a survey of more than 300 finance professionals to better understand key concerns, technology trends and adoption, and future directions within financial planning.

Less than one-third say they could replan in a matter of days in response to business disruptors such as stock market volatility or severe weather events. The majority, 73 percent, wouldn't be able to adjust and adapt their financial plan for weeks (47 percent) or even months (26 percent).

Today's financial professionals are beginning to believe bigger risks come into play if cloud-based financial planning solutions aren't in place. Seventy-one percent of recent post-IPO companies would prefer to use cloud-based solutions for financial planning, followed by the majority of the Fortune 500 companies surveyed. Ease of use was reported as the biggest advantage of cloud-based solutions by Fortune 1000 companies, while Fortune 500 companies saw less reliance on IT to be the biggest benefit of the cloud. Emerging companies and those with recent IPOs looked to the cloud's cost savings as a key factor.

When it comes to financial planning and forecasting, 86 percent would prefer not to use legacy on-premises solutions. And of those companies currently using legacy solutions, three times more would prefer a cloud solution to their current system. Similarly, 82 percent feel that legacy systems are inefficient for financial planning.

The majority (65 percent) of financial professionals have strong feelings about what they would rather be doing than refreshing and reformatting Excel reports. Unpleasant alternatives such as reporting to jury duty, sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, waiting in line at the DMV and getting a cavity filled were all cited as preferable to dealing with Excel.

The survey's findings around the current and future adoption of cloud-based financial planning services are consistent with the rapid market adoption and growth of Adaptive Insights' solutions. With more than 2,200 customers, Adaptive experienced more than 100 percent year over year growth in new software bookings in the second quarter of 2014.

Report information:

blog.adaptiveinsights.com

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