Adaptive Insights vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Workday and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Workday is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9. Workday holds a 0.4% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 27.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Workday users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Adaptive Insights

Read 18 Adaptive Insights reviews

345 Views
232 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

14,384 Views
11,351 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Adaptive Insights

Microsoft Power BI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Adaptive Insights and Microsoft Power BI are key competitors in the financial planning and analytics category. Microsoft Power BI holds a competitive advantage due to its extensive data analytics features and integration capabilities within the Microsoft ecosystem, notwithstanding pricing differences.

Features: Adaptive Insights integrates seamlessly with multiple financial systems, focusing on budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting. It supports instant consolidation, corporate structure updates, and integrates with MS Office for seamless reporting. Microsoft Power BI excels in data visualization and analytics, adeptly integrates with various data sources, and is user-friendly with features like Power Query and interactive dashboards.

Room for Improvement: Adaptive Insights could enhance its user interface for better navigation and expand its analytical functions beyond financial scenarios. It may also improve its integration with non-financial systems. Microsoft Power BI can further refine its user training resources, increase data handling efficiency especially with larger datasets, and enhance mobile capabilities for on-the-go reporting.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Power BI is easy to deploy, especially for organizations already utilizing Microsoft products, complemented by robust online support resources. Adaptive Insights, while offering a more bespoke deployment for financial advisory purposes, provides accessible support but lacks the quick integration benefits seen with Microsoft solutions.

Pricing and ROI: Adaptive Insights generally requires a higher initial investment but offers a notable ROI thanks to its advanced financial management features. Microsoft Power BI, with its flexible pricing models starting as low as free for basic use and scaling to $20 per user for premium services, is an economical choice for businesses prioritizing dynamic data visualization without high upfront costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Adaptive Insights

Ranking in Reporting

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (8th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (3rd), Data Visualization (11th), ESG Reporting Software (4th)

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 0.4%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 27.2%, up from 25.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg

Adaptive Planning Manager at Alight

Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models

For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.

Read full review

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday."

"Reports are allowed to be edited for aesthetic purposes, which is lacking in a lot of other dashboard tools."

"The important feature is integration with source data. It connects to various ERP systems, including Workday, Intact, and others. It can also import actuals and compare them to PlanPoint quite easily."

"It helps develop a more unified work format throughout the company."

"Forecasting changes that instantly flow through all financial statements."

"Automated reporting."

"Changes to corporate structure, account codes are updated in all versions including prior years, hence "one-version of truth" as claimed."

"It's very stable."

More Adaptive Insights pros

"Its visualizations and dashboards are most valuable. Power BI is great in terms of visualizations and dashboards. The reports that we previously had were not very nice in terms of visualization. It also provides the ability to play with the data."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"Good CS and administration."

"It is very good, and it supports the Microsoft ecosystem, including Excel, etc."

"There are some great automation elements in the product."

"It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation. Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution. Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on."

"The solution makes it easy for me to develop reports and publish them."

"It is a pretty straightforward and flexible solution for data integration and modeling. It is a low-code solution. When you are doing data integration, you can use the GUI, which is very simple and straightforward. You can also do very intricate custom queries and model it at different levels. It is very easy to use and scalable."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Adaptive Insights could improve the data designer interface to make integrations easier to set up."

"The product's configuration process could be faster."

"Adaptive Insights has a limit of 1,00,000 rows for HTML reports. It should be improved because we will have multiple dimensions that need to be populated to enhance the image."

"Users continue to become more advanced and are looking for more advanced solutions."

"We tried Discovery and OfficeConnect at one point and found them too cumbersome, at the time."

"Discovery (the data visualization module): Needs to catch up with BI leaders, such as MS and Tableau. E.g., sorting by amounts in column charts and page slicers to control all visuals."

"Their customer support team is slow to respond and not extremely confident."

"Better user interface (UI)."

More Adaptive Insights cons

"We would like to have better SQL support for queries."

"Microsoft BI comes under pressure when there is a lot of data to be crunched. It gets slower and slower, and the functionality becomes a bit of a problem. The performance goes down with data being fed into the system. The infrastructure requirement also increases if you have to increase the performance. This is the area that can be improved in my opinion. Initially, the product is good, but over the years, when data gets accumulated, it becomes a problem unless the old data is kind of archived and is no longer shown on the visualization. It has a feature by using which a user can query for a report through simple questions to a bot. So, if I want to look for the customer share of revenue by geography, I just simply state that in the chatbot. If I wanted it in a pie chart, then you say, "Please show it to me in a pie chart." It comes out well for basic charts. This feature should be improvised more so that people can very quickly get customized reports on the go."

"Adding paginated reports to this tool could be of great help for users who want to move away from SSRS."

"If I have to update data automatically, where I have to pin the gateway, it doesn't update. There is a scheduled refresh functionality so that it refreshes automatically, but I find it very hard to make it work."

"A few features available in Tableau are not available in Power BI. For example. Tableau has the ability to make up the physical layer and all other stuff at runtime. In Power BI, we have to develop a proper physical layer to connect it. The limitation that we normally face is related to the direct query mode. When it comes to the direct query mode, most of the functionality is not working, which is an issue for us. We have to use the direct query mode frequently because the client needs real-time data. They should work on this limitation. There are a lot of other technical things that need to be improved. I am also following the Power BI platform and Microsoft Support Center platform on the web where users have put their requirements. Microsoft is also working on improving this solution. In every update, they add new features to this solution."

"I am a SAP user and I would like this tool to have more connectors - and to more easily connect to - the ERP or SAP environment."

"Whenever you work on the same dashboard or on the same code, Microsoft Power BI doesn't have a good architecture that allows multiple people to work on the same project."

"The reporting needs to be improved."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's affordable."

"Everything is negotiable, but this solution is low cost compared to others."

"Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings."

"Prior to purchasing licenses, make sure you understand which users will only need planning and which users will need both planning and OfficeConnect."

"Pricing is in line with other cloud-based EPM tools. It is a subscription-based model based upon the number of users and site type if it's an admin or end-user type thing."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is relative to its peer competitors. It's certainly competitive compared to a spreadsheet template that you build in Excel. It can be expensive if you need to have 100-500 budget holders giving input and building financial plans. However, in that case, it becomes an extremely good bargain. Compared to its competitors, it offers an excellent value."

"Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place."

"From a cost point of view, it's competitive in the enterprise space, although it's not as competitive when you add up all of the additional costs. Things like integrations cost extra and it's probably where Microsoft makes more of the money."

"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."

"I believe that the price is reasonable, at least for an enterprise solution."

"All of the licenses are on an annual basis, but Microsoft will amortize it to an extent. If it's five years, they'll include the possible interest they might have the following year. Ideally, their licensing scheme is an annual license, but they make it easier for some of our clients to take a five-year license but package everything inside for them to buy the license for five years."

"It would be better if the price was cheaper."

"The only other cost, besides the licensing fee, would be to cover support."

"We have a premium Power BI license in-house that's quite an expensive license. It's $10 a month for four users and then I think 35,000 at the premium rate."

"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

43%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adaptive Insights?

It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Adaptive Insights?

12 years ago, it was very affordable. Workday has definitely increased its price since it acquired Adaptive a few years ago. So, it's affordable. But there are other more affordable solutions that ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Adaptive Insights?

The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up. So, there could be room for just improving the integrations, making it easier to integrate outside sys...

See all answers

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

See all answers

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Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

Adaptive Insights is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis software that helps businesses streamline their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes.

With its intuitive interface and powerful analytics, it enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and drive business performance.

Workday

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Free Report: Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

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