Jet Reports vs. Vena

Jet Reports is better suited if you have a specific population set you are looking at and less suited when querying or summing large pools or data, records, etc. I use a combination of Jet & SQL syntax when performing the latter because it allows me to harness the speed of our SQL server. Jet allows more for more customization when bodes better for users.

Incentivized

Large organizations with complex financial planning and analysis needs, also Vena can be a good fit for industries with heavy financial regulations, such as healthcare, banking, and insurance. Vena's cloud-based platform allows teams to work collaboratively and remotely, which is particularly useful for organizations with distributed teams or those with remote workers. Vena can integrate with various data sources, including ERP and CRM systems, which can help finance teams access and analyze data from multiple sources in one centralized platform.

Incentivized

• Integrated reporting
• Customizable reports
• Easy to use

Incentivized

• Flows changes and updates to our forecasts seamlessly where we know the numbers are reflected in all of our reports.
• Ability to create ad hoc custom reports.
• Having the ability to pull different scenarios, periods, and years easily to have comparatives for better analysis.
• Integrated well into excel where you don't feel like you're using a completely different tool.

Incentivized

• Tips and tricks
• Sharing best practices from other companies
• Online user forum

Incentivized

• Reports can be difficult to create without extensive training
• Protecting a sheet to eliminate end user errors is important, but it would be nice to still be able to make cosmetic changes easily
• There is sometimes a delay in opening reports and loading new reports

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Because it is not the costliest tool in this category but it serves the purpose. It is easy to use, cost effective, and works really well with the data stored on cloud. It has wide range of dashboard templates which go really well with different types of data sets. I would love to use it agains and again

Incentivized

This is split between usability from an end-user perspective and administrative. Administrative - The tool is lacking in a cohesive way to administer the tool, both from more of a back-end perspective (ETL/Integrations, scripting, etc.) as well as from a business administrative (Processes, Models, etc.). On the more back-end IT related aspects, the tool is a mishmash of modules that were clearly developed in stovepipe fashion. Basic feature/functionality aspects such as version control, auto vs manual save, etc. differ between the code preparation components. It is also lacking in any sort of coherent version control. Not all pages display the context information, so extreme caution must be used. There is also no coherent migration strategy. The process and model navigation has been somewhat challenging for our business administrators, often requiring assistance from Vena when creating or altering templates. 2 of 10 End User - This is better. The Excel add-in generally functions well. Creating basic templates is straightforward, and there is a large degree of flexibility when creating reporting templates. Being part of Excel puts many users into a comfort zone. The toggle switch between template and data mode is not well conceived, and the add-in pop-ups occasionally have issues on multi-monitor displays. 6 of 10

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I hinestly have not used the support a lot but i have always had to way for longer durations to get a response on my emails. I have tried calling them a few times and the wait time was a little more than what i expected. They were able to answer my queries nonetheless

Incentivized

From initiate setup to going live, Vena's customer representatives and technicians have proven to be responsive and enthusiastic in getting our company up and running. They have been patient with our questions and frustrations and worked to troubleshoot issues that have come up.

Incentivized

The original training was onsite and over two weeks. Since our original onboarding the company has come out with a training website to aid in user self directed needs.

Incentivized

The online training was effective, it would be nice to see a more personalized solution. I understand the training is tailored for all industries, but it would be nice to see industry-specific use cases.

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

Jet Reports is light weight and has a minimal barrier to entry for new users. Tableau has a higher learning curve and is more cost prohibitive

Incentivized

The experience between Vena and Microsoft Power BI is quite different. Vena masters in operating through designed templates that need to be downloaded and viewed. As far as Microsoft Power BI is more dashboard oriented in its presentation. Both have their advantages in their designs, but Vena stands out in its ability to have user contributions to the data.

Incentivized

We use Vena across 10 countries and 200 users who are located in a wide range of settings and internet reliability. Even with that wide implementation, the most common issue we run into is a new hire not installing the Vena add-in, which is a super quick fix. Depending on our user's location, the internet can sometimes be spotty, but that is outside of Vena's control and even in those settings, Vena might take a little longer to open a template, but it still does open and the user can complete their work. Over 5 years of using Vena, we've collectively only had 3 issues where we needed Vena support to help look at a specific issue a user was having.

Incentivized

• Prediction analysis has helped the business to make future plans
• Report scheduling has eliminated a lot of manual work

Incentivized

• Saved time on the FP&A team in terms of reporting improvement.
• FP&A was able to focus more of their time analyzing and less time consolidating.
• The additional analysis provided by VENA allows the company to tackle cost issues and improve profitability.

Incentivized