Vena

Vena is basically a supercharged Microsoft Excel add-on that ties to your database. This allows for infinite possibilities with your model building since most finance people are already proficient with Excel. It also allows you to build reports and lockdown every cell except for the ones that you want contributors (other non-admin users) to adjust. It helps you manage your workbooks in a way that is virtually foolproof so that people that use your sheet don't have to worry about breaking anything.

Vena is great for larger companies especially those that have multiple departments. For example, if numerous teams have to submit their budget numbers to the central finance team Vena would be very useful as it would help prevent human error and would help automate the submission process. Vena would probably be less suitable for smaller companies for this application but would still be useful for the purpose of financial process automation.

Our forecasting used to be a manual process just using excel templates. We implemented Vena and were able to keep the same templates but add the specific Vena tools to get the template to pull the data. This made it possible to basically have no training for the users. We have been able to create reports that save us numerous hours.

It is very well suited in management of finance and budgetary plans that run across our company. It enables our planning teams to compile effective reports--on time--that we use to make decisions. The interface is able to create flow charts that show our performance and the plans we can have in place to make improvements on resource management.

I've never looked back from leaving the budgeting system we had before Vena. It's been easy to "sell" Vena within my organization because it is Excel-based so most people, even with just basic Excel skills, can use the system with little training. I started with just 12 licenses and now I'm up to nearly 30. As NAMI has grown so too has our use of Vena; it's easy to scale Vena, i.e. adding programs or accounts or staff into the database is an easy process. I recommend Vena on a regular basis to other companies.

I think it's great for organizations that need particular detailed models that only fit them. It's good for trying to build what you need. But I think you need someone to help you build the model and keep it updated. Vena just has the tools you need to create what you need, but it doesn't do it for you from my understanding. We have a staff member dedicated to updating Vena.

Vena is quite well suited for financial planning on a project. The feature of forecasting works really well. On the other hand it's also quite handy to manage [your] workforce and be able to see particular individuals growth and contribution towards the company. Cash flow on the ongoing project can also be managed very well with Vena.

Vena is well suited for medium [sized] businesses that [have] outgrown excel but are not yet ready for large scale costly enterprise-level systems.

Vena is certainly very well suited for financial purposes. It is good for creating financial reports, financial budgets and modelling. It reads transactions deeply which helps reduce time overall and reduces the burden greatly for the finance department. It is comparably easy to use which makes it a better choice over others.

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!

Vena is well suited for companies of all sizes as the tool is very scalable to your business size. It performs exceptionally well in an environment that is currently using an excel based solution, as the users will be familiar with the tool and can use existing knowledge to develop robust reporting.

Overall, Vena has many great features and functions, and the Vena team is constantly improving the solution. The only scenarios where Vena is lacking is spreading data from a parent member to children. This can be accomplished with Vena, but it's a little more involved compared to other technologies.

Based on customer feedback, Vena Solutions is supported across their organizations.

Vena is perfect for anyone who wants to retain the flexibility and user adaptability of Excel, yet improve data integrity and utilize a database platform.

I can recommend it because it can connect very well with our ERP system and this is a great advantage. In addition, Vena Solutions allows us to optimize our entire financial and budget system, which generates a positive ROI after the first few months using it. It is true that it is complex for many users, but this problem is solved simply with training, so I do not consider that the difficulty of using it is a serious problem.

It is a product that is well integrated and very easy to use for my entire team. Vena Solutions is really easy to use and no help from technical support is necessary because the functions are very simple. Vena Solutions does not require technical experience to be able to use it fluently.

Vena Solutions can be implemented in all the departments that we need, we would honestly carry out the implementation with immediate help from technical support because they give us confidence and know what is the best strategy to implement it and we know that with the technical support team we would save more than Half of the time. Vena Solutions can only be scalable if we are experts or requesting help, I think it is better with technical help.

I recommend it without thinking twice because Vena is one of the best to keep a good budget control. It is predictive, maintains control of accounts and creates the best solutions for financial data recording problems. Vena Solutions is the most reliable budgeting software on the market today and that is why I feel very confident recommending it to all businesses.

When we need to contact technical support, the response is always quick. We like it very much because we know that we are important as customers. They recognize our need and try to resolve it positively.

Vena Solutions has very easy-to-use tools for all users, it only has a complex configuration, but after solving this problem with Vena Solutions' technical support team, we can use all the functions without problems.

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.

This is a great solution for a smaller to mid-sized company that does not have a large number of data points (tens of millions). Using Excel as the primary user interface helps with change management because users are already comfortable with that tool. It is less appropriate for very large companies, as there can be performance issues. And if you have a large number of users (100+) it becomes cumbersome to audit the security and manage the processes with that many tasks.

The help desk has been very responsive when we have reached out. But the implementation team brought the score down. We are now having to re-work some of the templates because they were not initially created with the most efficient methods. We are frustrated that time is being spent to make these updates when Vena's team created them.

We have many tasks and each has to be manually updated. This allows for nice customization but makes the administration of these tasks cumbersome as there are so many for us to manage and update. There is not great audit tools for us to review that everything was set up correctly. It has a great visual workflow so that you can see the structure of tasks leading to review but you must double click on each one to review the details. It does provide a table view of this visualization but that becomes cumbersome to try to audit. It is hard to restart tasks as the processes have to be paused (preventing the users from saving/updating data) before we can restart a particular task. The end user is not able to see the workflow and does not know who submitted the task. However, if the individual templates are set up well, it makes it easy for the users to update/view the data.

All financial analysts will find Vena useful to be able to customize accounting data to any data model.

Instant support and around the clock feedback.

Very easy to use however no safeguards incorporated incase of errors.

Vena Solutions is well suited for companies that are looking for a dynamic ERP solution. The interface is well designed and relatively easy to use. Developing templates requires proficiency in Excel as well as a good understanding of how the database works. Vena works very well for the budgeting process; we have found it less useful in the month-end cycle.

Vena has a knowledge center with plenty of useful information (description of functionalities, case studies, FAQs) as well as a customer service ticket-based system. Customer Service is always responding promptly.

Vena Solutions was highly efficient when we wanted to search data for finer details such as the business statistics for a specific day or so, but while searching for a similar statistics report ranging across multiple dates it became a bit tiring as we needed to download and work on multiple files.

Although the initial setup for Vena Solutions was pretty difficult, they helped our team throughout the whole setup process and answered all our queries as soon as they could. Every time we raise a request or an issue with the support team, they respond back instantly and follow up periodically till our issue gets solved.

Their tool automatically recognises the crucial facts for the business such as budgeting, planning, resource and presents it in a dynamic presentable format in the dashboard which also gets updated in real time. It has filters which can be used to dial down to the required facts and focus on the data for the necessary section.

Vena Solutions is well suited for companies that rely heavily on Excel. By creating standardized input forms and reports the user can feel confident that the Excel connections are correct and can be trusted.

Furthermore, with different users, access data can be well protected or shared as needed.

Always prompt and available at all hours of the day.

Very user friendly and easily customized by users within the organization with help form Vena support

The workflow feature in Vena Solutions that will remind the appropriate team member for the due date is amazing. It works so well and is so easy to use and powerful. However, mapping data points can be time-consuming.

Vena Solutions support is always helpful and provides extra resources. There is a lot of self-learning though.

It is great when the reports are all set up during the implantations, but after reports updates involve a little bit more technical side.

This is a good third party software that works to integrate data from an ERP to a manageable and easily modifiable excel format to generate budgets and financials.

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.

The software has been very well designed to easily leverage off user's preexisting excel skills. This greatly lessens the learning curve making it easy to navigate and use.

Vena may be fine for a department or very small organizations. However, it is not an enterprise class tool. There is a reason they tend not to sell through IT or provide open access to their documentation and knowledge base (always a red flag in my opinion). A non-production tenant is not provided as part of the package. There is also only limited functionality for migrations between tenants. Migrating within a tenant is also challenging. There is no version control capability across the tool, and its own versioning is scattershot within it. Integrations have no version control at all, and some of the components code cannot even be copy-pasted to roll your own. I have resorted to copy-paste for scripts and accessible code, along with screenshots (yes, seriously) for other components with inaccessible code.

Additionally, integrations largely rely on the naming conventions of the objects. So even though there are folder structures, two objects in different folders cannot have the same names. This results in manual code changes when migrating from a non-production to a production model.

That said, the web interface isn't bad, and neither is the Excel add-in. The pieces your business users will see during the sales cycle. Excel-based reporting is robust. Web-based and ad-hoc reporting relies on Microsoft Power BI, licensed separately.

I will give Vena credit for at least trying and being initially responsive. However, it is clear that their attitude toward development is cavalier. We have engaged them both via helpdesk and on consulting engagements. The solutions provided are often given without proper testing, resulting in significant time spent on back-and-forth to get issues resolved, or fixing the code yourself. There does not seem to be much in the way of process or project management on their side for customer engagements.

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

Vena Solutions suits our needs as a hotel. There are thousands of financial transactions day in and day out, and managing them becomes crucial. The best part about Vena is that it can be used even by interns with minimal training. The Excel-like workspace is great and provides a familiar interface for carrying out basic financial record keeping.

Specific scenarios where Vena is well suited would be for financial reporting. Any financial reporting including forecasting/budgeting can be done quickly and accurately using Vena and templates you build. Scenarios where it's less appropriate would be aggregating loads of data to present in concise, user friendly format (Power BI more appreciate).