Likelihood to Recommend If you find yourself in the ocean of traditional spreadsheets, overwhelmed by broken links, errors, model audit problems, hardwiring, etc. here is a lifebuoy for you. If you want to have full flexibility in your budgeting and forecasting in contrast to ERPs with rigid structures and one-size-fits-all concept. If you are small or medium size company and do not want to invest in costly enterprise solutions. If you need a fast implementation
https://youtu.be/5W_q5Xhw5fg Read full review Vena is very well suited to handle budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. The platform is very flexible, and I have been able to create some great reports that has allowed our team to deepen our analysis of our organization's performance. I also use Vena for other data storage and reporting, such as creating a site code directory for our field staff, developing an invoicing schedule for our AR department, and creating a workbook to facilitate calculating and reporting on our site staff mileage stipends.
Read full review Pros Building complex financial planning model availing of a multidimensional data structure coupled with a powerful formula language, with the immediacy and intuitiveness typical of spreadsheets Implement quickly model modifications (new products, new scenarios, new time periods) simply adding new "items" to "categories" (corresponding to dimensions in a multidimensional data model) Scale up models to very large datasets with very fast computation times Easily import data from text files, other Quantrix models and external databases via DataLink and DataNAV Save snapshots of tables computed in Quantrix to external databases via DataPush Read full review Easy to manage and maintain Provides a better end user experience Workflows and automatic emails make the budgeting process much easier to manage/complete API integrations with important tools such as Power BI, Sage Intacct, and Salesforce Easier for Finance to "own" the tool and troubleshoot data issues without having to rely heavily on internal/external Data teams Read full review Cons Hard to be critical of the Quantrix team as I know they strive to produce the best product possible. I suppose the next thing on my wish list would be the application of the new Solver functionality to be available in the Qloud. A big help for new users would be a good book on transitioning from Excel or other environment into Quantrix. I know first hand it can be difficult to transition when having to learn the program through a help guide, forums and tech support. I had a lot of trial and error in my journey to producing the desired models. On one hand it was a valuable method as it taught me a lot of what not to do, but I will admit it was not the most efficient way to do things. Would also love to see local user groups being formed at some point in the future. Quantrix puts on a fantastic conference once a year in beautiful Maine, but it is a big journey for someone in Southern California (and limited to one or two days a year). I would like to see some local chapters formed in different areas of the country so local Quantrix users can get together more often and collaborate (maybe a quarterly or semi-annual meetup?). Our Quantrix community is still relatively small and may be a difficult task for some areas, but is also the very reason why this would be great idea. Read full review I have trouble logging into the Zoom meetings and have missed several meetings because of not being able to log in. That is likely due to limits from our IT department and probably not a Vena issue. Sometimes I need more of an explanation or can't find the article I need in the Vena knowledge base. Also, some of the explanations leave me more confused about what I need to do to achieve my objective. When we implemented Vena, the implementation team created a template for our unallocated lab expenses, but I wasn't able to effectively use it. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability For a newbie it can be difficult until you get the hang of the system. Quantrix is a very logical system, once you understand its underlying ideas.
Read full review 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
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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
Read full review Performance 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
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review In-Person Training 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.
Read full review Online Training 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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
Read full review Alternatives Considered Overall, I was not part of the ultimate decision to purchase Quantrix. I terms of user-friendliess and robust reporting capabilities I do think
Tableau has Quantrix outclassed. That being said, Quantrix does provide more in-depth analyses for our relevant data and provides better modeling for our forecasts out of the box. The accuracy of the tools output is also much better
Read full review Vena has better reporting and budgeting functions than NetSuite Budgeting & Reporting when we compared the two. The Kansas City Chiefs currently use Vena and they had nothing but good things to say about it so that gave us confidence to go with Vena.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Return on Investment Capacity forecasting used to take hours to calculate with a ton of manual modifications. Quantrix has automated that so a model can be updated at any time with a click of a button The accuracy of the models is incredible. It took some tweaking to add in data scubbers, but now it runs almost flawlessly The confidence the management teams have in the output of the model is amazing. Before, people would question the output, have you rebuild it, and then compare. Now the report comes out and the output has high confidence. Read full review Saved considerable time for monthly close by streamlining reporting and entries Saved considerable time and effort for reconciliations by standardizing input and output and ability to send reviews to different users and track completion Saved a lot of headache when tracking down variances Read full review ScreenShots