PlanGuru vs Vena Solutions

Likelihood to Recommend

The ease with which one can design and project promotional incentives to drive sales for new products is impressive. Another useful features of this program is that companies can optimize revenue using predictive analytics.

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Verified User

Professional in Other

Writing & Editing Company, 51-200 employees

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Any organization that has the same P&L for multiple business units would benefit greatly! Franchises, etc are a perfect fit.Any organization that has multiple shadow systems in Excel can all be brought together in Vena.Hotel management would be a great fit!Reits and other infrastructure companies would be a great fit!

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Darrell Rooney

Senior Director, Financial Services

Saint Mary's UniversityHigher Education, 501-1000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Pay calculation

Benefit plan administration

Direct deposit files

Salary revision and increment management

Reimbursement management

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

API for custom integration

Plug-ins

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Single sign-on capability

Role-based user permissions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Accounts payable

Accounts receivable

Cash management

Bank reconciliation

Expense management

Time tracking

Fixed asset management

Multi-division support

Regulations compliance

Electronic tax filing

Self-service portal

Global Financial Support

Primary and Secondary Ledgers

Intercompany Accounting

Localizations

Journals and Reconciliations

Enterprise Accounting

Configurable Accounting

Centralized Rules Framework

Standardized Processes

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Inventory tracking

Automatic reordering

Location management

Manufacturing module

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Pricing

Order entry

Credit card processing

Cost of goods sold

Order Orchestration

End-to-end order visibility

Order exception Resolution

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Pixel Perfect reports

Customizable dashboards

Report Formatting Templates

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Drill-down analysis

Formatting capabilities

Integration with R or other statistical packages

Report sharing and collaboration

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Publish to Web

Publish to PDF

Report Versioning

Report Delivery Scheduling

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)

Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Predictive Analytics

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Multi-User Support (named login)

Role-Based Security Model

Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)

Single Sign-On (SSO)

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Responsive Design for Web Access

Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Long-term financial planning

Financial budgeting

Forecasting

Scenario modeling

Management reporting

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Financial data consolidation

Journal entries and reports

Multi-currency management

Intercompany Eliminations

Minority Ownership

Local and consolidated reporting

Detailed Audit Trails

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Financial Statement Reporting

Management Reporting

Excel-based Reporting

Automated board and financial reporting

XBRL support for regulatory filing

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Personalized dashboards

Color-coded scorecards

KPIs

Cost and profitability analysis

Key Performance Indicator setting

Benchmarking with external data

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

Flat file integration

Excel data integration

Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

Pros

Allows for several different scenarios for the same company
Modification in specifications alterable
Allows for changes at any level with several criteria.

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Verified User

Professional in Finance and Accounting

Accounting Company, 11-50 employees

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Vena provides all the customizable flexibility and advanced calculation that you can squeeze out of Excel because Excel is used as the front-end. You can tailor the reporting and budget templates to your exact needs and leverage your existing Excel skills.
Even though you work in Excel, the data is all controlled by a multi-dimensional cloud database. So your work is safe. Changes are auditable, and nobody has to rely on sharing Excel files between each other and tracking the latest version.
Vena's workflow system can be extremely simple if that's what you need. Or you can build some fairly complex process flows for any task.

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Aaron Andersen

Director of Finance

Museum of Science and Industry, ChicagoMuseums & Institutions, 201-500 employees

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Cons

High cost.
Limited scalability.

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Verified User

Professional in Other

Writing & Editing Company, 51-200 employees

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The tool uses at least four different query and data manipulation languages, once you get your data to the tool. All of which are proprietary, limited flavors of other languages (such as SQL and MDX).
The use of a MongoDB back end has resulted in the ongoing use of floats for numeric data storage. This works fine if you are budgeting at a high level. However, if you are leveraging their transaction-level features, you will see divergence due to the inherent issues of floating point being unable to precisely represent decimal values.
There is very little community documentation around the tool, and the documentation provided by the vendor is sparse, poorly written, and often out of date or just plain wrong. This extends to their sample code as well
There is currently no direct way to feed data from your source system databases. The primary method is dumping data to flat files and either executing the uploads manually through the web UI or wrapping a java-based CLI with Powershell or windows batch for local execution. There is also a preview of a logic app if you have Azure as part of your infrastructure

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Architecture & Planning Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

PlanGuru 7.0

Based on 1 answer

It hasn't really been a viable program for our office.

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Verified User

Professional in Finance and Accounting

Accounting Company, 11-50 employees

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Vena Solutions 8.1

Based on 9 answers

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

PlanGuru 8.0

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

Vena Solutions 7.3

Based on 16 answers

It is extremely easy to use the software right away because:- it is Excel-based, so there is little to no learning curve for creating templates and reports- the admin of the tool itself is very simple and intuitive (processes, workflows, etc)The downside to that flexibility is the increased risk of human error, which can be mitigated by additional control and check files.

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Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting

Non-profit Organization Management Company, 51-200 employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vena Solutions 9.1

Based on 2 answers

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

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Charlotte Byrne Brown

Robotic Process Automation Manager

Mr. CooperFinancial Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vena Solutions 9.1

Based on 2 answers

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

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Jeremiah Adrian Howard Ross

Manager and Analyst of Development of Strategic Alliances and Technological Information

Sopra SteriaInformation Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees

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Support Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vena Solutions 8.7

Based on 90 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Finance and Accounting

Hospital & Health Care Company, 201-500 employees

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In-Person Training

No answers on this topic

The training was all at once. There needed to be more modules that could be broken up over time to allow users to handle their day job and the training

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Verified User

Executive in Finance and Accounting

Restaurants Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Online Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vena Solutions 4.5

Based on 1 answer

I would like to see more modules and case study work through of techniques to master to excel within the software package. The current online information is stale and not representative of current software version. It could be much more interactive and informative. Much of the online help articles are stale.

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Verified User

Executive in Finance and Accounting

Restaurants Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Implementation Rating

PlanGuru 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Great tool for projections and forecasting.

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Verified User

Professional in Finance and Accounting

Accounting Company, 11-50 employees

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Vena Solutions 6.4

Based on 4 answers

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

A must-have for all large corporations with intensive new product development programs to boost sales and revenue. It is better than others in terms of ease of operation and adaptability. The customer support lent to the buyers is excellent. All issues pertaining to the service or product are timely resolved.

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Verified User

Professional in Other

Writing & Editing Company, 51-200 employees

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The only tools that are similar are more in the BI realm and Vena provides a much more robust way of interacting with data that the visualization that a BI solution provides. Again, the self-service model of the tool allows for the tool to grow with the individuals of the company, which is an element other tools struggle with.

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Avo Koulakian

Director of Corporate Development

Active Exhaust Corp.Automotive, 501-1000 employees

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Scalability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Vena Solutions 9.1

Based on 2 answers

Vena solutios is a software that provides robust tools that help different departments in their statistics and we can visualize a lot of promising and visually attractive data. Vena Solutions' level of scalability is high and sustainable over time thanks to the fabulous technical support that is ready to help us at all times

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Charlotte Byrne Brown

Robotic Process Automation Manager

Mr. CooperFinancial Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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Return on Investment

Improves business process agility.
Drives revenue growth.

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Verified User

Professional in Other

Writing & Editing Company, 51-200 employees

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From my observation, we did get a return on investment. We have FP&A tool first and foremost.
We are dealing with 1 financial system to get data as suppose to several sources from before.
For sure, Vena Solutions helped many finance teams domestically within our company with financial reporting.

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jamie Luangaphay

Senior Financial Analyst

FirstService ResidentialReal Estate, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

$0*

* per user

Rating Summary

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions

PlanGuru

Vena Solutions