Planful vs. Vena

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Planful
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.N/A
Vena
Score 8.6 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.N/A
Pricing
PlanfulVena
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
N/A
Complete
N/A
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PlanfulVena
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsProfessional Plan is the most flexible way to get started quickly and add as you grow. The plan includes: Growth Platform, Customer Success Manager, Standard Support and Customer Portal. Complete Plan includes everything in Professional, plus: Microsoft Power BI Embedded, Premium Support, Sandbox Environment, Expert Managed Services and more. *Vena offers special pricing for not for profit organizations. To learn more, speak to an expert.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PlanfulVena
Considered Both Products
Planful
Chose Planful
Planful seems to have the best price to performance option against the tools listed. Some of the more premium options on the market have outdated UIs and dont get updated as frequently and other in the same price category dont seem to have the same level of options and "ease" …
Chose Planful
Ease of use, integrations, price, and excel compatibility were the driving factors behind getting off of Adaptive and selecting Planful over these other competitors
Chose Planful
Planful is inherently easier (I know Excel and I don't want to have to learn a new coding language) [and] has more capability and power due to the underlying multi-dimensional architecture (i.e. it can scale much better as you grow). The Dynamic Planning piece is very similar …
Chose Planful
Vena was a close second in our selection process. We liked the smaller price tag and faster start up time. It s use of Excel was attractive. However, we did not feel that it would be able to grow with us. It was only good for the short run.
Adaptive had some good features. …
Chose Planful
Being a small company with limited cash flow, my goal was to evaluate what functions that are important and how much that we have to pay for them and last how easy it is to maintain without owning internal IT staff. I have evaluated Hyperion, Adaptive, Vena, and Host. …
Vena
Chose Vena
Prophix is powerful, and structures data on the back-end in a very similar way with multiple data models, and I have used it before. But the learning curve is steep. Building complex rules, e.g. for a union personnel model, was much harder than designing the same logic in …
Chose Vena
The decision to go with Vena was based mostly on flexibility.
Chose Vena
We chose Vena mainly due to how flexible it is for our business, and that we would be able to own the software inhouse (finance team) rather than relying heavily on external consultants, just like the case with other software we looked at.
Chose Vena
We went with Vena Solutions because it was able to meet the needs in every way for what we were looking for in a budgeting solution. From an admin perspective, it was very intuitive, but from an end user (contributor) perspective, it was outstanding that we were able to keep …
Chose Vena
We were using Dynamic Budgets before we moved over to Vena and researched many, many, many other products before settling on Vena in the end. One of the things that quickly knocked out other vendors was our unique fiscal calendar. We have 13 periods (4 weeks each) and that …
Chose Vena
They have superior database capacity due to the power of the cloud. Usability and user adoption is quick and immediate due to the direct integration with Excel and ease of use for end users and Vena administrators.
Chose Vena
We spent about a year and a half in the selection process for our budgeting system. The issue that we kept coming across was speed, flexibility, and a lack of understanding of our process during the sales cycle. Most of these other products wanted us to change our budgeting …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
PlanfulVena
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.8
32 Ratings
3% below category average
Vena
8.7
86 Ratings
7% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.414 Ratings8.648 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.428 Ratings8.875 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.626 Ratings8.782 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.9
59 Ratings
5% below category average
Vena
8.1
174 Ratings
3% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.657 Ratings8.7167 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.258 Ratings8.4166 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration7.854 Ratings8.4144 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings6.848 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.5
47 Ratings
9% below category average
Vena
9.0
132 Ratings
10% above category average
Publish to Web7.112 Ratings9.262 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.843 Ratings9.091 Ratings
Report Versioning6.027 Ratings9.1109 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.230 Ratings8.798 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Planful
6.3
22 Ratings
19% below category average
Vena
8.1
77 Ratings
6% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)6.215 Ratings8.569 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.518 Ratings8.459 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings7.353 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.06 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Planful
9.1
58 Ratings
4% above category average
Vena
9.2
168 Ratings
5% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.652 Ratings9.0157 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.950 Ratings9.2156 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.951 Ratings9.3159 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.09 Ratings9.222 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.943 Ratings9.2116 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.4
25 Ratings
8% below category average
Vena
9.1
80 Ratings
13% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.423 Ratings9.277 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.515 Ratings8.966 Ratings
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
Comparison of Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting features of Product A and Product B
Planful
8.7
106 Ratings
4% above category average
Vena
8.7
210 Ratings
4% above category average
Long-term financial planning8.793 Ratings8.7187 Ratings
Financial budgeting9.0105 Ratings9.2202 Ratings
Forecasting8.798 Ratings8.6193 Ratings
Scenario modeling8.085 Ratings8.2172 Ratings
Management reporting9.1102 Ratings8.8199 Ratings
Consolidation and Close
Comparison of Consolidation and Close features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.6
79 Ratings
6% below category average
Vena
8.4
182 Ratings
4% above category average
Financial data consolidation9.671 Ratings9.2155 Ratings
Journal entries and reports8.454 Ratings8.0110 Ratings
Multi-currency management8.047 Ratings7.2103 Ratings
Intercompany Eliminations7.646 Ratings8.2102 Ratings
Minority Ownership4.523 Ratings8.666 Ratings
Local and consolidated reporting7.557 Ratings8.5134 Ratings
Detailed Audit Trails7.856 Ratings8.8161 Ratings
Financial Reporting and Compliance
Comparison of Financial Reporting and Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Planful
8.1
106 Ratings
2% below category average
Vena
8.5
200 Ratings
3% above category average
Financial Statement Reporting8.589 Ratings9.0180 Ratings
Management Reporting9.199 Ratings8.7185 Ratings
Excel-based Reporting8.398 Ratings9.3194 Ratings
Automated board and financial reporting7.672 Ratings8.8139 Ratings
XBRL support for regulatory filing7.13 Ratings6.445 Ratings
Analytics and Reporting
Comparison of Analytics and Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.2
61 Ratings
11% below category average
Vena
8.7
148 Ratings
8% above category average
Personalized dashboards7.553 Ratings8.4121 Ratings
Color-coded scorecards7.231 Ratings8.990 Ratings
KPIs8.540 Ratings8.9105 Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis9.441 Ratings7.9116 Ratings
Key Performance Indicator setting7.431 Ratings9.1103 Ratings
Benchmarking with external data3.18 Ratings8.877 Ratings
Integration
Comparison of Integration features of Product A and Product B
Planful
7.8
97 Ratings
7% below category average
Vena
9.0
196 Ratings
8% above category average
Flat file integration9.669 Ratings9.4156 Ratings
Excel data integration7.789 Ratings8.8180 Ratings
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources5.964 Ratings8.9143 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PlanfulVena
Small Businesses
IBM Planning Analytics
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Planning Analytics
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Centage
Centage
Score 9.6 out of 10
Centage
Centage
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 8.2 out of 10
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 8.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PlanfulVena
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(115 ratings)
8.8
(214 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(18 ratings)
8.6
(18 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(17 ratings)
8.9
(25 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(4 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Performance
7.7
(2 ratings)
8.4
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(18 ratings)
10.0
(95 ratings)
In-Person Training
6.4
(2 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.8
(3 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.3
(7 ratings)
7.6
(4 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(2 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.5
(1 ratings)
8.8
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(2 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.8
(3 ratings)
8.7
(3 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.8
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
PlanfulVena
Likelihood to Recommend
Planful
Planful makes it very easy to roll forward forecasts and conduct scenario analyses. I'm also a big fan of their reporting and how easy it is to distribute a report burst to satisfy all the needs and questions of our SLT. Lastly, their latest developments in the AI space make it easy to quickly identify outlier projections.
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Vena Solutions
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.
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Pros
Planful
  • Creating forecasts for the month, quarter, and year
  • Creating new variables by using variables pre-defined and that are new in the system
  • Having a very simple setup in the reports section - not straying away from the old Excel model which most people are used to. I can speak for a lot of people when I say that tools that look new can easily be frightening! 😅
Read full review
Vena Solutions
  • 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
Planful
  • Multiple currency calculations/ consolidations support IFRS accounting
  • Ability to inactivate old data dimensions
  • Reporting - Need ability to expand all/collapse all lines easily
  • Reporting - Formula exceptions added to a report do not update when information is revised.
  • Automatic Sandbox refreshes initiated by Planful - When Planful does an automatic refresh of the sandbox environment, it copies any Boomi/integration connections.
  • Limited to 8 data dimensions in core application
  • Add more API connectors to make data integration easier
  • ability to transfer sandbox tests to production environment
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Vena Solutions
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Planful
Our new Comptroller understands the value of Planful, and we plan to utilize it further in the organization to enhance external reporting. Strangely enough, Planful had not previously been embraced by the former CFO, who argued that we were running two sets of books (of course, we were not). Fortunately, the before mentioned reconciliation of EBITDA to Net Income demonstrated that to the banks.
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Vena Solutions
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.
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Usability
Planful
Planful is very easy to use for end users. The budget templates can be customized to meet the business needs. They just released business user experience functionality which you to take a complicated budget template and filter it down to meet departmental needs to avoid sending more lines than needed
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Vena Solutions
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
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Reliability and Availability
Planful
I only give a 9 rating rather than a 10 rating because it seems that every day around 2pm we see a slowdown in the use of Planful. I have requested our internal IT department verify that it is not an internal issue and have been assured it is the tool. We have not yet reached out to Planful to do extensive research to solve this issue.
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Vena Solutions
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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Performance
Planful
Again, the system is very reliable and, for the most part, runs very quick and smooth. When running larger queries, it does take some time, and during budgeting season our users experienced slower loading times, but nothing that raises concerns outside of normal network issues. Occasionally, as with any software we use, it will crash and you have to restart, but that does not happen very often.
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Vena Solutions
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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Support Rating
Planful
Sometimes we get great help when using Planful's support team and other times we don't. In particular, there is one person that often responds to our support tickets who is less than helpful, hence the reason for the 5 out of 10 rating. As a result, most of the time we reach out to our Planful consulting group as they provide faster and better support
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Vena Solutions
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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In-Person Training
Planful
We got little training on the tool after implementation. Did a lot of "trial by fire" learning about Planful. I don't think RSM really provided us all the details we needed to understand the tool and to know what we needed to train on. I don't know we knew enough about the tool to even ask the right questions and then they left and we used Planful support a lot.
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Vena Solutions
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.
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Online Training
Planful
A few years ago I participated in a lot of their online learning. Their references have grown over the years and continue to get better and better. We use it throughout the year to update the information we hold internally for documentation and to educate ourselves on all of the new release notes and features within Planful.
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Vena Solutions
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.
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Implementation Rating
Planful
After going through the initial implementation with Host Analytics and a re-implementation with Cervello (due to an ERP change, not due to a poor initial implementation), I've learned that you really must rely on your internal staff to bear most of the implementation burden. Use the vendor or partners for ideas and best-practice suggestions, and some of the easy-but-time-consuming work. Since you will ultimately be using and maintaining the application, you should be able to do most of it yourself.
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Vena Solutions
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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Alternatives Considered
Planful
Planful seems to do a better job of pulling things in a format that is more understandable to an accounting-minded person, whereas the other platforms seem more focused on operations. From a detail perspective, Planful provides more powerful and complete data, in my experience. When using a platform for financial planning and budgeting, the details are critical and the ability to match the GL structure and pull full P&L data has been a big improvement from Qlik, which we used previously.
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Vena Solutions
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.
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Scalability
Planful
I give this rating simply because I have first-hand knowledge of the scalability of Planful when working across departments in our company that use different financial systems. We have one team on InEight and another using SAP. When we implemented it, we only customized the system to accommodate one of these financial platforms, but when we considered expanding the use of Planful to other departments, we were able to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate our needs.
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Vena Solutions
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.
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Return on Investment
Planful
  • We have saved a large amount of time on reports that we previously manually compiled in Excel via MS Dynamics. Planful was linked to Dynamics through automatically scheduled DLR's, reports were created, and now our manual processes are as simple as accessing and refreshing a report.
  • Dashboards have improved our budgeting process specifically with our production leaders as they can visualize their P&L's, their current actuals, current budget, and see where they are forecasting with their proposed budget for the next year
  • With the use of templates, structured planning, and the Simulation Engine, it has added a lot of value and automation to our annual budget process, allowing for plug-and-play type data loading and viewing various scenarios easily
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Vena Solutions
  • 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
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ScreenShots

Planful Screenshots

Screenshot of Planful Planform DashboardScreenshot of Planful for FinanceScreenshot of Planful for MarketingScreenshot of ReportsScreenshot of Capacity Planning TemplateScreenshot of Integrations

Vena Screenshots

Screenshot of Operation Expenses - Predictive AnalysisScreenshot of Allocations DashboardScreenshot of Vena Add InScreenshot of Power BI DashboardScreenshot of Revenue and Sales PlanningScreenshot of Corporate Dashboard - Workforce Planning