Anaplan vs Vena Solutions

Anaplan

Sales performance management, various finance scenarios - Anaplan is good for automating calculations. It is less appropriate for very complex business cases.

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Szilvia Havasreti

PPS EMEA CEP Sales Coverage Program Manager

HPInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Vena Solutions

Vena has use across several business scenarios. We originally started with some basic planning solution to meet our needs and have significantly expanded the scope of our use of the tool into more sophisticated planning and forecasting and into consolidation based on the experience we've had with the tool. We are considering expanding the use of the tool as we see its ability expand beyond what we are currently using it for.

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Matthew Blickley

VP - Financial Planning and Analysis

Coca-Cola Bottling Co. ConsolidatedFood & Beverages, 10,001+ employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Anaplan

7.5

Vena Solutions

8.6

Long-term financial planning

7.4

8.9

Financial budgeting

8.1

9.5

Forecasting

7.7

8.3

Scenario modeling

6.5

8.7

Management reporting

7.7

7.9

Anaplan

6.5

Vena Solutions

8.8

Financial data consolidation

7.7

9.3

Journal entries and reports

6.5

8.4

Multi-currency management

6.2

9.4

Intercompany Eliminations

5.9

6.9

Minority Ownership

6.0

9.1

Local and consolidated reporting

7.2

9.5

Detailed Audit Trails

6.0

9.3

Anaplan

7.6

Vena Solutions

8.7

Financial Statement Reporting

7.0

9.3

Management Reporting

8.3

8.2

Excel-based Reporting

6.9

9.3

Automated board and financial reporting

8.3

7.9

Anaplan

6.7

Vena Solutions

6.8

Personalized dashboards

5.5

6.3

Color-coded scorecards

6.0

6.3

KPIs

7.0

5.1

Cost and profitability analysis

7.0

9.5

Key Performance Indicator setting

7.5

5.1

Benchmarking with external data

7.1

8.5

Anaplan

8.3

Vena Solutions

9.1

Flat file integration

8.4

8.8

Excel data integration

8.3

9.4

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

8.3

9.3

Pros

Allows non-technical business-oriented individuals create functionality in the system.
Highly customizable.
Excellent business partner from a people perspective. Very focused on customer success, not just the next PO.

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Michael Lauer

Director of Quota and Territory Management

EquifaxFinancial Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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Maintains integrity of front end spreadsheets because inter-linking the various templates is done outside of Excel.
Allows us to import data directly from our accounting and payroll system to populate templates.
Provides flexibility through multiple scenarios ....allowing several versions of a budget to exist concurrently.
Template control allows us to engage multiple managers in the process, each working on their own program template without impacting the work of other managers.

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Jay Scheumack

Chief Financial Officer

LifeWorksIndividual & Family Services, 51-200 employees

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Cons

Larger workspaces.
Ongoing support contracts based on LOE.
Better formula support and explanation within the model.

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Michael Lauer

Director of Quota and Territory Management

EquifaxFinancial Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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As great as the tool is, there is very little "out-of-the-box" functionality - you and your consultant will have to build everything from scratch (We took an assisted implementation approach, so we did much more of the set up than some companies do from my understanding). The process is quick and helps you understand the product, but it takes a some thinking.
The company is relatively small and a relatively new player in the market, so the user community and support forums are not very useful.
The developers are constantly updating the product, but the company doesn't do a great job of communicating new features to the users.
I would really like to see some more built in calculation features (spread methods and such) without having to build long excel formulas.

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Carrie Self, CPA

IT Business Analyst

Tacala, LLCFood & Beverages, 5001-10,000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Anaplan8.2

Based on 3 answers

I don't think we could function without the collaboration capabilities built into Anaplan that replaced disparate Excel files in the workforce planning model

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Vena Solutions9.1

Based on 1 answer

We have been extremely satisfied with the Vena Solutions product and have been able to become more efficient in our budgeting, forecasting and salary planning processes, as well as adding functionality and accuracy that was not possible in the past. Administrators no longer have to keep track manually of each department's budgeted net, but can use a report created in Vena to report this information, as well as see which departments have not yet submitted information. Customer service has always been very responsive as well

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Lori Lambert

Business Systems Manager

Biola UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Usability

Anaplan8.2

Based on 2 answers

There is a dependency in this rating - in that I find Anaplan extremely easy to use, but I've spent the necessary time developing a strong understanding of the platform. Once you understand how to use it, the platform is flexible, easy to use, and fun to use.

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Chris Friederich

Director, Financial Planning & Analysis

Cherwell SoftwareComputer Software, 201-500 employees

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Vena Solutions9.1

Based on 1 answer

One is only limited by their knowledge of Excel functions and basic understanding of database management. One does not need to know VBA, VB, C++ or even SQL.

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Megan Bladen-Blinkoff

Oil & Energy, 1001-5000 employees

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Reliability and Availability

Anaplan10.0

Based on 1 answer

In nearly 3 years, I have only had 1 issue of being unable to access my model for an unplanned maintenance. Even planned maintenance windows are handled during low traffic hours on the weekend.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Performance

Anaplan9.0

Based on 1 answer

Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Support

Anaplan8.1

Based on 2 answers

I feel like the support team is a little lacking in product knowledge. Several times I have contacted them to get help, and ended up finding a solution to my own problem before the team could get back to me with anything useful. I have also submitted a few bugs, and never got updates to when they were fixed in later releases.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Vena Solutions8.2

Based on 1 answer

Customer support has been very prompt for both bug fixes and data loading. Enhancement requests have taken a bit longer to implement, but are within what we would consider a normal time frame compared to other software we use. I rarely have to wait long for an issue to be resolved

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Lori Lambert

Business Systems Manager

Biola UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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In-Person Training

Anaplan3.0

Based on 1 answer

The in-person training is simply not worth the cost. After a few weeks of playing in Anaplan, I went to the basic training and knew more than the person teaching it. a year down the road, I was the first person to complete the advance training, and again could have been teaching the class better than the person running the session. Spend some time on your own trying out different things and you will get all the understanding you need to be successful.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Online Training

Anaplan5.0

Based on 1 answer

I'm giving this a 5 simply for the anapedia outline of calculations. The online videos and trainings leave a lot to be desired, but having anapedia around to help you understand calculations has been helpful. The drawback to anapedia is the depth they go into for calculations, it is lackluster at times. Because of that, I have been working through a much more in-depth look at each calculation on my website for users to reference: http://www.anaplanguru.com/formulas/

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Implementation

Anaplan6.7

Based on 12 answers

Implementation using Anaplan's internal customer success team left much to be desired. We've found much better success with outside consultants

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Christopher Pope

Manager

Seagate TechnologyComputer Hardware, 10,001+ employees

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Vena Solutions9.1

Based on 1 answer

The Vena consultant had great knowledge of both the Vena solution and Excel and Excel functions. He was able to help suggest ways to build our templates that met our requirements using Excel functions we had not previously considered using. And we have been able to use the Excel information he provided in other ways outside of Vena. He was very patient and flexible as we learned the Vena tool and created templates

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Lori Lambert

Business Systems Manager

Biola UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Anaplan has a much more powerful modelling engine compared to Adaptive Insights. Adaptive might have prettier dashboards, but their product is inferior at it's core. We were impressed by everything Anaplan could do and are glad that we chose it over the competition. We also are very impressed by Anaplan's customer success team and their knowledge

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Jake Cosenza

Financial Systems Analyst

San Francisco 49ersSports, 201-500 employees

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We previously used 9Dots and the product completely stopped working for us and the customer service was terrible in trying to resolve the issue. Vena is the complete opposite.

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Verified User

Employee in Finance and Accounting

Architecture & Planning Company, 201-500 employees

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Scalability

Anaplan7.0

Based on 1 answer

It's going to handle most of what you can throw at it. The problem lies in the sparsity of some datasets. When you have over 5ish dimensions of sparse data, the size of the model gets bloated for not much value. In several cases, I have had to adapt my model to account for sparsity in a way that minimized use of space, but also made interacting with the data more cumbersome.

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Return on Investment

Workforce Planning efficiency - so much easier than excel to maintain sensitive information planning
Long range plan lead time - the old excel model took weeks to update. The Anaplan model takes hours

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Joe Bradbury

Manager, Financial Systems

Research NowMarket Research, 1001-5000 employees

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Vena provided a quick and affordable solution to gather inputs and generate the xml required for the FR-14A. Other solutions required much longer lead times to implement, much more IT support, and were much less flexible.

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Verified User

Director in Finance and Accounting

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

Anaplan

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

Additional Pricing Details

Request a personal demo: https://www.anaplan.com/request-demo/ Free trial for existing customers for any app in the App Hub: https://apphub.anaplan.com/

Vena Solutions

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

$0*

1. per user

Additional Pricing Details

—

Anaplan vs Vena Solutions

Add comparison

Likelihood to Recommend

Anaplan

Vena Solutions

Feature Rating Comparison

Long-term financial planning

Financial budgeting

Forecasting

Scenario modeling

Management reporting

Financial data consolidation

Journal entries and reports

Multi-currency management

Intercompany Eliminations

Minority Ownership

Local and consolidated reporting

Detailed Audit Trails

Financial Statement Reporting

Management Reporting

Excel-based Reporting

Automated board and financial reporting

Personalized dashboards

Color-coded scorecards

KPIs

Cost and profitability analysis

Key Performance Indicator setting

Benchmarking with external data

Flat file integration

Excel data integration

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

Pros

Cons

Likelihood to Renew

Usability

Reliability and Availability

Performance

Support

In-Person Training

Online Training

Implementation

Alternatives Considered

Scalability

Return on Investment

Screenshots

Pricing Details

Anaplan

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Additional Pricing Details

Vena Solutions

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Additional Pricing Details

Rating Summary