Adaptive Planning Helping Firms Track Every Penny

Company:

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Adaptive Planning (Express, Corporate and Enterprise Editions)

Year Founded: 2003

Number of Channel Partners: 225 worldwide, 160 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Midmarket-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: Companies are watching every penny in today's economy, and that's fueling adoption of business performance management software. Adaptive Planning is riding this wave to business success, and it's also moving slowly away from its direct sales roots.

The Lowdown: The economy continues to batter the software industry like an overused pinata. But business performance management software, which helps companies deal with budgeting, planning and financial reporting tasks, is one area that's thriving.

Adaptive Planning has pitched its tent in the business performance management space and has seen its customer base double in the past year. Greg Schneider, vice president of marketing for Adaptive Planning, chalks up this success to the company's focus on midmarket customers and the efficiencies that come with delivering products through the Software-as-a-Service model.

"Many smaller companies today use Excel for performance management, but at some point their business becomes too complex, and that's when they come to us," Schneider said in a recent interview.

Adaptive Planning's customers span a broad range of industries, including manufacturing, nonprofit, retail and finance. The ongoing macroeconomic uncertainly is actually feeding growth of the company's business, according to Schneider.

"Financial organizations have to re-forecast multiple times within a quarter, and customers in general are much more concerned about cash," he said. "This is helping to further the business case for performance management."

The company's roots are in direct sales, but it has been steadily building a VAR channel and now has more than 220 partners worldwide. These partners function as a source of referrals for Adaptive Planning, and in return, the company gives VARs opportunities to provide implementation services. VARs also get a portion of the first year's subscription revenue, Schneider said.

In June, Adaptive Planning partnered with NetSuite, and Schneider says the deal is a good example of the synergies that two SaaS-oriented vendors can bring to bear. NetSuite bundles Adaptive Planning's eponymous flagship product in its NetSuite Financial Planning Module, and also handles first line support. Schneider says Adaptive Planning is already benefiting from the reach of NetSuite's larger sales force.

"We think it's a great opportunity to sell our solution into their install base," Schneider said.