Catalyst from EBM Software in Minneapolis is a cloud-based business performance application suite, designed to provide an environment and workflow for understanding business profitability.
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Vena
Score 8.5 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Vena Solutions provides a financial process automation solution to automate Corporate Performance Management, accounting and budgeting, Regulatory & Compliance, and other finance-related processes. It is scaled for medium to large-sized organizations.
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Pricing
Catalyst, by EBM Software
Vena
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
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Complete
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Catalyst, by EBM Software
Vena
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
Flexible and tiered pricing structures available - monthly, 1-3-5- contracts, and more
The Professional Plan is the most flexible way to get started quickly and can be added onto as a company grows. The plan includes: Vena Platform, Customer Success Manager, Standard Support and Customer Portal.
Complete Plan includes everything in Professional, plus: Vena Insights, Premium Support, Sandbox Environment, and Expert Managed Services.
*Vena offers special pricing for not for profit organizations. To learn more, speak to an expert.
[Catalyst, by EBM Software] is well suited to track invoices from vendors to get them paid on time to avoid late fees. [Catalyst, by EBM Software] is less appropriate when paying vendor because that is not a function they currently have. If the system was an all in one system that could track and pay your invoices it would be an amazing software.
Using the Vena's with a user-friendly interface has been incredibly easy. Their server comes with a setup that makes it easy for beginners like me to host account data in a hassle-free manner. The platform is reliable, giving me consistently high performance with a 99.99% server uptime and lightning-fast loading speed.
What i like best about Vena is that it is very seamless Excel integration.
Vena fosters collabs across teams, helping multiple members to work together on financial planning in real-time enhancing overall efficiency.
We now also can automate manual processes like budgeting, consolidation of data and reporting saves my valuable time and also reducing the risk of errors.
It could improve the ease of implementation; it could take a long for an inexperienced IT team.
From the ERP system perspective, it can be linked easily, but it has room for improvement when you make core changes and require a Vena specialist again.
Some administrators can get confused while working on Excel implementation; it has complicated technical requirements.
Vena has been a huge win for us as an organization, as it vastly improved our budgeting process by removing manual consolidation that was incredibly time consuming, and it allows us to see a multi-year view of our organizational budget across all of our funding sources. We've seen Vena's platform grow over the years and we've not yet fully adopted some of them so it feels like there's still potential to get even more value out of the platform.
Vena allows any solution to be built the way you need it to work, and there are many different ways of going about what you need it to do. It may require time to build, test, and rebuild and retest, before the best solution to what you are trying to accomplish is reached. It is best for those who are Excel proficient because Vena utilizes and enhances the usage of existing Excel functions. For those who are not Excel proficient, the journey may be more challenging, however, with help of EMS, you can get your planning and reporting to a dynamic state.
Contact with Vena Solutions technical support is quick and experts in the field always respond. It is not necessary to go through a large form to explain the problems and then answer more questions to receive a direct answer, we simply send a message indicating the specific problem and they are immediately there to actively help us
Vena Solutions pages load quickly and only a few times does it get a bit slow, only when there are many integrations and the reports are long. But in general it is always fast and honestly I am very satisfied with the speed in the generation of statistical reports and the pages
The support for Catalyst is great and they are usually within the 48 hour response time. There could be a little quicker upload time for invoices that are submitted. They usually show up until the next day on the system and sometimes gives us a stress on time. Overall, the support is quite good
They are very quick to respond when you submit a ticket and typically fix issues quickly as well. I only didn't give this a 10 because there is still an open issue with our Salesforce connection that we've been waiting on now for a few months.
Our initial in person training was a little rough b/c I felt like our trainer wanted to focus on maximizing Vena rather than understanding what we were needing for our organization. He was very responsive and added insights, but could have worked to understand our needs a little better.
The training was structured as a group training to learn the basics of creating a data model and mapping a template. While we had nearly 10 participants, I was the only actual implementer so we probably didn't actually need the training and could have just learned the initial skills from the implementation consultant. Two years later, when we hired a new team member, they completed several modules in Vena Academy (a self paced learning course) which allowed them to get up to speed on the basics with just a bit of supplemental guidance from me as our existing admin.
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
[Catalyst, by EBM Software] is a very easy system to use and is very user friendly. It gives you different ways of researching an invoice and not just one. Catalyst also helps to allow us to research an invoice within seconds and eliminates a lengthy and confusing process. It is a great software for first time users to learn quickly and efficiently.
Vena Solutions stands out due to its familiar Excel-based interface, making it easy for our team to adopt without extensive training. Compared to alternatives like Anaplan and Oracle Hyperion, Vena's strong customer support and efficient automation have significantly reduced our budgeting cycle time. We chose Vena for its seamless integration with our existing systems and substantial time-saving benefits, ultimately enhancing our decision-making process.
We onboarded the entire company in a very short time frame to complete the full company budget cycle the first year out of the gate. Now we are looking to add more data and the ETL tool makes it easy to backload data into the cube as if was always there. Vena has been very scalable for our needs.
Catalyst is better than pencil and paper data analysis. But the app can be very frustrating when it's not working the way it did last week.
The GUI is very simple. Sometimes too simple, like there is no way to go back in and edit SOAP note options.
New feature roll-outs are mandatory. I understand that no one would opt in to being the guinea pig, but it would be nice if you weren't the first user to try it.
The integration with billing software has streamlined the billing notes and saved us money over having two separate systems.
