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Vena

Vena

Overview

What is Vena?

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.

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Recent Reviews

Easy to use....

10 out of 10
March 13, 2024
Incentivized
Vena is currently being used by the Finance department with a potential to extending usage further out to other teams in the organization. …
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Vena Review

9 out of 10
March 09, 2024
Incentivized
We adopted Vena for the preparation of our 2024 budget. Previously we were using Excel spreadsheets, but needed a more streamlined …
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Great FP&A tool

10 out of 10
January 05, 2024
Incentivized
Vena is a fantastic tool for any organization and the Vena implementation team is really helpful. I think its a money well invested for …
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Vena Review

6 out of 10
December 29, 2023
Incentivized
Vena is being used on a day to day business to support any ad-hoc requests from the finance/accounting side and constantly updating …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 48 features
  • Excel-based Reporting (194)
    9.3
    93%
  • Financial budgeting (202)
    9.2
    92%
  • Management reporting (199)
    8.8
    88%
  • Forecasting (193)
    8.6
    86%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons

Video Reviews

1 video

Vena Review: Proves To Be Financial Management Solution For Handling Multiple, Complex Accounts
03:21
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Pricing

View all pricing

Professional

N/A

Cloud

Complete

N/A

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
    Optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.venasolutions.com/resources…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.7
Avg 8.0

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.1
Avg 8.3

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9
Avg 8.2

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.1
Avg 7.6

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.2
Avg 8.7

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

9.1
Avg 8.0

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting

These activities are designed to assist with both data-driven operational, short-term planning and strategic long term planning

8.7
Avg 8.3

Consolidation and Close

Consolidation of data from multiple entities with currency management, reporting and audit trails.

8.4
Avg 8.0

Financial Reporting and Compliance

Financial statements and regulatory filings

8.5
Avg 8.2

Analytics and Reporting

Dashboards and scorecards for KPI monitoring and benchmarking

8.7
Avg 8.0

Integration

Ability to integrate with external applications.

9
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is Vena?

Vena is a Native Excel Complete Planning Platform used for budgeting and forecasting, for business leaders and finance and operations professionals.


Vena boasts users among more than 1,350 companies such as Nike, Coca-Cola Consolidated and the Kansas City Chiefs. In addition, Vena works with over 100 Partners.

Vena Features

Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting Features

  • Supported: Long-term financial planning
  • Supported: Financial budgeting
  • Supported: Forecasting
  • Supported: Scenario modeling
  • Supported: Management reporting

Consolidation and Close Features

  • Supported: Financial data consolidation
  • Supported: Journal entries and reports
  • Supported: Multi-currency management
  • Supported: Intercompany Eliminations
  • Supported: Minority Ownership
  • Supported: Local and consolidated reporting
  • Supported: Detailed Audit Trails

Financial Reporting and Compliance Features

  • Supported: Financial Statement Reporting
  • Supported: Management Reporting
  • Supported: Excel-based Reporting
  • Supported: Automated board and financial reporting
  • Supported: XBRL support for regulatory filing

Analytics and Reporting Features

  • Supported: Personalized dashboards
  • Supported: Color-coded scorecards
  • Supported: KPIs
  • Supported: Cost and profitability analysis
  • Supported: Key Performance Indicator setting
  • Supported: Benchmarking with external data

Integration Features

  • Supported: Flat file integration
  • Supported: Excel data integration
  • Supported: Direct links to 3rd-party data sources

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

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 PlanningScreenshot of Operational Expenses - Drill through analysisScreenshot of Operational Expenses Planning - Input Excel templateScreenshot of Operational Expenses - Drill through analysisScreenshot of Operational Expenses Planning - Input Excel template

Vena Videos

Introduction to Vena Complete Planning
Introduction to Budgeting in Vena Complete Planning
Vena for SaaS - Financial Reporting and Reporting Made Simple
Vena for Banks and Credit Unions - Budget, Forecast and Plan With Confidence

Vena Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationYou don't need to download an app or change a setting to use Vena on your mobile device: just open your browser, go to Vena (vena.io), and log in as you normally do. The Contributor interface is fully responsive, so it can adjust to any size screen, regardless of the type of device you have.
Supported CountriesUnited States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Europe
Supported LanguagesVena supports any localization capabilities already native within Excel. Vena Cloud supports English, Spanish, and French. If a specific language is required please don’t hesitate to ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Workday Adaptive Planning, Prophix, and Planful are common alternatives for Vena.

Reviewers rate Flat file integration highest, with a score of 9.4.

The most common users of Vena are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).

Vena Customer Size Distribution

Consumers0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)19%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)55%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)26%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(307)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Vena for all our reporting and forecasting needs. We replaced our Excel forecasting template with a Vena template. We are very pleased with the consolidation help the software provides and recently decided to have all of our raises and reviews done in Vena, which allowed for significantly more visibility on the data integrity.
  • Consolidation - have saved so many hours by not having to manually consolidate spreadsheets
  • Audit trail history - we were able to find out who made a change that was questionable
  • Drillable feature that allows our users to drill into the details of financials
  • Ease of use
  • Sometimes the templates are a bit complicated to use and could be a little bit more straightforward if all the dimensions are defined in the workbook.
  • I would make the security easier to use.
  • Helpdesk
We were able to build a template for information we wanted to be consolidated on our own because the Vena Solutions system is so user-friendly.
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting (5)
88%
8.8
Long-term financial planning
90%
9.0
Financial budgeting
100%
10.0
Forecasting
80%
8.0
Scenario modeling
80%
8.0
Management reporting
90%
9.0
Consolidation and Close (4)
90%
9.0
Financial data consolidation
80%
8.0
Journal entries and reports
90%
9.0
Local and consolidated reporting
90%
9.0
Detailed Audit Trails
100%
10.0
Financial Reporting and Compliance (4)
92.5%
9.3
Financial Statement Reporting
90%
9.0
Management Reporting
90%
9.0
Excel-based Reporting
100%
10.0
Automated board and financial reporting
90%
9.0
Analytics and Reporting (6)
93.33333333333334%
9.3
Personalized dashboards
90%
9.0
Color-coded scorecards
100%
10.0
KPIs
90%
9.0
Cost and profitability analysis
100%
10.0
Key Performance Indicator setting
90%
9.0
Benchmarking with external data
90%
9.0
Integration (3)
96.66666666666666%
9.7
Flat file integration
100%
10.0
Excel data integration
100%
10.0
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
90%
9.0
BI Standard Reporting
N/A
N/A
Ad-hoc Reporting (4)
100%
10.0
Drill-down analysis
100%
10.0
Formatting capabilities
100%
10.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
100%
10.0
Report sharing and collaboration
100%
10.0
Report Output and Scheduling (1)
90%
9.0
Report Versioning
90%
9.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (4)
65%
6.5
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
90%
9.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
90%
9.0
Predictive Analytics
80%
8.0
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security (4)
67.5%
6.8
Multi-User Support (named login)
90%
9.0
Role-Based Security Model
90%
9.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
90%
9.0
Report-Level Access Control
N/A
N/A
Mobile Capabilities (1)
90%
9.0
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
90%
9.0
  • Saved significant man hours during budgeting
  • Improved Reporting
  • Audit trail history is available
After implementation, Vena has a helpdesk that is very responsive and willing to help for any issues that arise.
Our reports that use to take several days to put together now only take minutes and are so much more versatile than they use to be.
Price, but also felt less limited.
This area has significantly improved in the last few years. The helpdesk is very good about reaching out and getting tickets closed.
Very easy to use. I would like to see Vena templates work if all dimensions are defined on the page.
25
Operations, finance, and analysis.
3
Reporting and Analysis
  • Forecasting
  • Reporting
  • Consolidation
  • Custom Template for Raises
  • Operations Custom Dashboard
  • Capital Budgets
  • Additional Dashboards
Ease of use, consistently accurate, never have issues with the website - just an all around wonderful product.
Yes
Excel - extremely manual
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Scalability
  • Integration with Other Systems
  • Ease of Use
All of the above
I would not change the evaluation/selection process.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
  • timing
We had a very good plan going in and that was very helpful. The Vena team was amazing with their suggestions and helping us stay on track.
  • Online Training
  • In-Person Training
  • No Training
Trainers made sure we were very comfortable with the product.
N/A
Yes, not too difficult to learn.
Very configurable.
Check your templates!
No - we have not done any custom code
None.
No, honestly rarely need support.
No
Vena went above and beyond when we were having syncing issues caused by internal IT when we upgraded our server, but the Vena team went above and beyond to make sure we got set up correctly and accurately.
  • Security
  • Workflow
  • Ongoing support
  • Templates can get complicated if not well designed
Very Scalable.
Never have issues, but in the rare case we do, Vena is there to help.
No lags in refreshing, never have issues with the website.
  • Dynamics GP
Dynamics GP - process was abandoned
  • Operational websites
Not in the plan.
  • File import/export
  • ETL tools
Very easy to integrate.
none.
Very easy to use.
Always available!
payment terms.
Communication.
No
  • n/a
  • I would like to see comments roll up to the summary level
No
No
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Annual budget cycle: across the entire organization.
  • Financial reporting on a period basis: deploying across sections of the organization.
  • Forecasting: across portions of the organization.
  • Consolidation and aggregation
  • Full audit trail: Who changed what number when and what was it before the change?
  • Version control: One master template deployed across numerous users.
  • Faster report creation.
  • Post implementation provides periodic review of templates for performance updates.
  • Monitor template performance for the time of data calls that drastically increase over time. Investigate and assist the customer with issues consuming your server and the customer's time.
  • Internet connectivity backbone can be problematic for users who are used to being on wifi and pick up and move elsewhere in the middle of templates.
Vena is great to deploy one version of data and is customized to individual users using a standard template. Financial results, collecting budget data, forecasts, and notes for variance analysis from operational managers. It has been a great tool for my company. We keep improving our products to the customers of financial reporting. Users love the functionality.
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting (5)
84%
8.4
Long-term financial planning
90%
9.0
Financial budgeting
90%
9.0
Forecasting
90%
9.0
Scenario modeling
70%
7.0
Management reporting
80%
8.0
Consolidation and Close (7)
27.142857142857146%
2.7
Financial data consolidation
90%
9.0
Journal entries and reports
N/A
N/A
Multi-currency management
N/A
N/A
Intercompany Eliminations
N/A
N/A
Minority Ownership
N/A
N/A
Local and consolidated reporting
N/A
N/A
Detailed Audit Trails
100%
10.0
Financial Reporting and Compliance (5)
72%
7.2
Financial Statement Reporting
90%
9.0
Management Reporting
90%
9.0
Excel-based Reporting
100%
10.0
Automated board and financial reporting
80%
8.0
XBRL support for regulatory filing
N/A
N/A
Analytics and Reporting (6)
78.33333333333333%
7.8
Personalized dashboards
80%
8.0
Color-coded scorecards
80%
8.0
KPIs
80%
8.0
Cost and profitability analysis
80%
8.0
Key Performance Indicator setting
80%
8.0
Benchmarking with external data
70%
7.0
Integration (3)
90%
9.0
Flat file integration
90%
9.0
Excel data integration
100%
10.0
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
80%
8.0
BI Standard Reporting (3)
53.33333333333333%
5.3
Pixel Perfect reports
N/A
N/A
Customizable dashboards
80%
8.0
Report Formatting Templates
80%
8.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (3)
86.66666666666666%
8.7
Drill-down analysis
80%
8.0
Formatting capabilities
90%
9.0
Report sharing and collaboration
90%
9.0
Report Output and Scheduling (4)
52.5%
5.3
Publish to Web
N/A
N/A
Publish to PDF
70%
7.0
Report Versioning
70%
7.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
70%
7.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (2)
55%
5.5
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
60%
6.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
50%
5.0
Access Control and Security (4)
80%
8.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
80%
8.0
Role-Based Security Model
80%
8.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
80%
8.0
Single Sign-On (SSO)
80%
8.0
Mobile Capabilities
N/A
N/A
  • Reduced overhead with the entire budget cycle.
  • Reduced effort to publish period financials.
  • Reduced effort needed to collect forecasts from all operating managers.
Yes Vena has been very responsive. After implementation as issues arose or opportunities appeared they were great to work with. Just negotiate your programmer hourly rate upfront in your contracts.
We are able to deploy what appears to be customized reports to all levels of the organization. I can publish faster and more efficiently.
Vena was the best fit for our needs: where we wanted to go, how to best fit our user base, and was the best value proposition for us.
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)
They are quick to respond and allow users to self prioritize to help route questions to appropriate levels. They resolve or get me to the right person very quickly.
My users just see Excel, but as the admin I can do a lot to make my life easier. Templates, permissions, aggregations. If you are good with Excel Vena is awesome.
109
Admins, operations managers, directors and accountants.
2
Strong Excel. Once you get the hang of mapping out blocks and page sections ~ similar to a pivot table - you can setup Vena templates. Then it is just time to setup users, permissions and get used to the flow of uploading new data to Vena and training users.
  • Financial Reporting and forecasting by operational unit
  • Annual Budget
  • Variance Analysis
  • Unique KPIs in our Financials that normally would not flow into our P&L's
  • Financial reporting training
  • internal non-financial reporting HR metrics
It saves me so much time - to go back I would have to hire multiple people to achieve the same results. It is a cost effective tool for our uses and continues to pay for itself in time savings.
No
  • Price
  • Product Usability
We had to cater to a large diverse user base that does not live in Excel every day. We need to be able to give the user everything they needed, have flexibility for power users, lock down templates for safety and permissions issues and then deploy across multiple locations without version controll issues.
We would have been more flexible in modelling templates to be more generic and less specifically the exact look and feel users were used to previously.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
We should have given ourselves more time to fully implement, troubleshoot and test. We converted our Annual budget process for the entire company in 6 weeks.
  • lack of additional internal man hours set aside
set incremental specific goals and outline the entire process. Celebrate milestones and revisit the roadmap to adjust as needed.
  • Online Training
  • 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.
Online modules have been expanded, is searchable and is very helpful. There are numerous videos and modules to further develop user skillsets.
The software seemed very configurable for user permissions, users groups, workflow processes and template designs. There has been a lot of progress to aid in integrations with other third party data holders.
We configured our Vena Templates to mirror much of the form and function of basic excel templates our users were used to pre-vena. This allowed for quick user adoption, once we got the Excel Addin installed on all machines. User Adoption was key to change management.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Some - we have added small pieces of custom code
Pre-vena we had extensive VBA coded spreadsheets to enable user input and view toggles. Additional macros were present to provide drill down to next level data and automatic routing of question to appropriate subject matter experts.
We still utilize our macro drill down to pull data hidden in Staging query tables and then format and present the "Drill Down" information in a more effective manner. The existing Vena Drill down brings back the data in rough database extracted format that can take time to orient to the information.
Not Sure
No
During prime time a template needed an update/redesign due to new needs not previously considered. Support was able to connect to the appropriate level programmer and we hashed out the redesign the same day. It was great.
  • Native Excel
  • aggregation level reporting
  • template design
  • live data connections without additional costs
We onboarded the entire company in a very short time frame to complete the full company budget cycle the first year out of the gate. Now we are looking to add more data and the ETL tool makes it easy to backload data into the cube as if was always there. Vena has been very scalable for our needs.
There have been very few outages, as outages have occurred there has been prompt notification and resolution of the matter. In the past 3 years there has been very minimal if any downtime.
Templates pull down quickly for the amount of data provided. Our templates include 2 to 3 years of back history data and the files populate in under a minute with lots of granular details.
  • Sage
Sage is supported and we will be exploring an integrated dataflow
  • File import/export
  • ETL tools
The integrations and data feeds have been managed with minimal training up front. We have not needed to involve our IT department and that allows Accounting to manage the process on our terms and priority.
Like any other Cloud based client, if you have numerous office sites that will be accessing the cloud, take stock of equipment, software and internet stability. Managing the install the excel addin on all machines was a pain point. Managing different versions of Excel can create gaps in well formed current templates. Plan and prepare for the change management. Establish superusers and create change advocates to help manage the transition. When converting current templates into Vena Templates, leverage Vena advice on best practices on how to layout a template or dimensions.
The were very responsive to our use case and their pricing structure and we came to a happy middle ground for both parties. We were very considerate to be referral or showcase clients. It is a beneficial partnership.
They have been growing rapidly so we have lost our implementation programmer to promotions and changed our customer success manager 3 times over 6 years. But that is the job market today and part of a fast growing company. As a result when we decide to contract out product development to Vena programmers they are unfamiliar with our templates and additional billable time is spent reacclimating programmers to our setups.
a reduced rate per user by class of user over a longer term than usual. We wanted the arrangement to be a long term partnership.
Lori Lambert | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Vena Solutions for budgeting, forecasting and salary increase planning. Vena Solutions allows us manage our spreadsheet distribution and data collection from all departments across our university. We collect department data for each of these processes and save the data into the Vena Solutions database. Data is automatically consolidated and aggregated per our requirements for use in advanced management reports as well as ad hoc reports.
  • Vena's strength is allowing the use of all features and functionality in Excel while also providing workflow and approval processes that can be managed on a department by department basis.
  • Having the database with saved data behind the Excel interface allow for consolidation of data and reporting at multiple organizational levels, along with providing the flexibility needed to build reports exactly as needed for each financial process.
  • Intuitive and powerful workflow functionality allows us to pre-determine our distribution cycle for spreadsheets including managing the review process, which also captures full auditing. As administrators, we can view the status of each department's work and the point at which each is in the workflow using the easily navigated management tools.
  • Version and change control of spreadsheets allows us to track changes made to spreadsheets from one year to the next as new requirements surface.
  • End users who have been accustomed to using Excel for budgeting and other processes required very little training, and we were able to enhance our previous blank Excel templates with pre-filled data for actuals, prior year budgets and personnel budgets. This allows department managers to focus on creating an accurate budget rather than spending time doing data entry and off-system analysis (which they often don't do). Users commented that implementing Vena was the best implementation we've had.
  • Customer support is great and very responsive! The training consultants are also very knowledgeable in Excel functions and provide ways to enhance templates and reporting by providing a combination of Vena and Excel solutions.
  • Vena Solutions provides users with extended Excel functionality and flexibility, especially for spreadsheet-driven processes. Vena can store a wide variety of data, allowing us to use Vena for financial processes, reporting, operations planning and human resource planning.
  • When first learning to use Vena, it may seem that reports can't be created as easily as in other solutions - there's no drag and drop from a selection of fields. However, once the Vena tool is learned, reporting becomes much easier.
  • The flexibility of Vena may also be a downside for some administrators. A vision for what a template or report should look like and do is needed as building a template or report starts with a blank Excel workbook.
  • Vena isn't the flashiest budgeting tool available, but we believe the flexible functionality outweighs the looks of other software.
Vena Solutions is well suited for any business process that can use Excel spreadsheets for data collection and data aggregation and for which approval or process flow workflows are desired. Vena Solutions is also ideal as a CPM product that combines data collection, version controls, reporting capabilities and security controls.
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting (5)
100%
10.0
Long-term financial planning
100%
10.0
Financial budgeting
100%
10.0
Forecasting
100%
10.0
Scenario modeling
100%
10.0
Management reporting
100%
10.0
Consolidation and Close (7)
42.857142857142854%
4.3
Financial data consolidation
100%
10.0
Journal entries and reports
N/A
N/A
Multi-currency management
N/A
N/A
Intercompany Eliminations
N/A
N/A
Minority Ownership
N/A
N/A
Local and consolidated reporting
100%
10.0
Detailed Audit Trails
100%
10.0
Financial Reporting and Compliance (4)
50%
5.0
Financial Statement Reporting
N/A
N/A
Management Reporting
100%
10.0
Excel-based Reporting
100%
10.0
Automated board and financial reporting
N/A
N/A
Analytics and Reporting (6)
N/A
N/A
Personalized dashboards
N/A
N/A
Color-coded scorecards
N/A
N/A
KPIs
N/A
N/A
Cost and profitability analysis
N/A
N/A
Key Performance Indicator setting
N/A
N/A
Benchmarking with external data
N/A
N/A
Integration (3)
66.66666666666667%
6.7
Flat file integration
100%
10.0
Excel data integration
100%
10.0
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting
N/A
N/A
Ad-hoc Reporting
N/A
N/A
Report Output and Scheduling
N/A
N/A
Data Discovery and Visualization
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security
N/A
N/A
Mobile Capabilities
N/A
N/A
  • Vena Solutions has allowed us to automate and consolidate our budgeting and forecasting processes, thereby reducing manual data entry time, spreadsheet consolidation time and human error, resulting in improved turnaround time and more accurate budgets and reporting data. Budget administrators no longer have to check each worksheet for accuracy of accounts used and can easily see where more budget balancing work is required.
  • Providing current financial information to users within the budgeting template has helped users create more accurate budgets.
  • Our previous approval process required passing around of paper Excel documents for signature. This can all be done within Vena now, so paper movement is no longer required. Managers can also request department users to resubmit budgets as necessary through the approval process.
  • We estimate the ROI for Vena became positive between year 2 and 3. The savings is mainly due to lower labor costs as we had not invested in any budgeting solution prior to using Vena.
All of the products we reviewed essentially re-create an Excel template in a browser, but without all the functionality that Excel provides. The solutions we reviewed require formula syntax to be learned as the syntax is different than Excel formulas. Some of the solutions didn't have enough depth to the data model to accommodate our chart of accounts. Vena provides more flexibility in creating data collection templates, and we believe had greater end user acceptance than other solutions would have had. We use IBM Cognos for financial reporting, but the learning curve on creating reports and powerfully using this tool is significantly higher than with Vena.
Customer support has been very prompt for both bug fixes and data loading. Enhancement requests have taken a bit longer to implement, but are within what we would consider a normal time frame compared to other software we use. I rarely have to wait long for an issue to be resolved.
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  • All departments across our university through all reporting levels - department administrators, managers, division directors, vice presidents and president.
  • Academic areas, as well as administrative and fund raising areas.
  • Everyone in the University who is involved in the budgeting, forecasting and/or salary increase planning processes.
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  • Knowledge of Excel and knowledge of how Vena interacts with Excel, along with a good grasp of the data collection and retrieval process used with the Vena data model. The data model is built on our chart of accounts, but we are also using elements to collect and report non-financial data.
  • Understanding of how workflows are built and function.
  • Annual Budgeting - We have a two step process that uses assumptions to create tuition, fees, enrollment and other revenue budgets, as well as apply inflation increases to expense lines. The second phase uses the first phase to allocate portions of the first phase to departments and serves as a target budget for each department.
  • Annual forecasting - We require departments to estimate fiscal year end revenue and expense amounts based on actuals and budgets through a portion of the fiscal year.
  • Salary Increase Planning - Managers allocate salary increases (based on an allocated amount) to personnel within the departments using percentage changes, flat changes or hourly dollar amounts.
  • We did not expect to be able to use data collected from one process for a different process, but with the flexibility of the Excel templates and Vena solution, we have been able to do so. Previously, we had to reconstruct data from one process for use in another. For example, we use the salary increase planning data collected in the Fall in our annual budgeting process for the following year budget.
  • Being able to create very customized reports that don't aggregate data on the same level - we can include data at the revenue or expense account level and also at the department level in the same report to meet our internal reporting requirements.
  • We would like to use Vena for our annual audited financial statements so that we won't have to manually update stand alone spreadsheets, statements and footnotes when our actuals are updated during the financial statement preparation time period.
  • We would like to use Vena to collect interdepartmental billing data on a monthly basis, which would be able to validate data in ways that isn't possible with standalone spreadsheets.
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.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
We started with implementing Vena for our annual budgeting process and later added salary increase planning and finally forecasting. The phases were mainly based on the timing of the data collection deadlines.
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
We did not have many change management issues and what we have encountered were mainly due to our decision to provide end-users with more data and felt it was worth some extra time (did not require a lot) to map in the additional data to our Excel templates. We did start out with a comprehensive plan for what was needed, so that helped reduce the changes. The interaction between the Excel templates and Vena database also make it possible to add some minor changes to templates as necessary after the process is rolled out to the end users.
  • When interviewing users of other solutions during reference calls, we found that none of the users were able to make any updates to their solutions - they all had to go back to the software company for any changes. This also did not allow them to use the solution for other processes without the software company being involved in the solution. Vena was able to train our main Vena administrator during the implementation (administrator built the templates with guidance from the Vena consultant) and has since been able to roll out new templates, reports and new processes with minimal help from Vena.
  • The main Vena administrator was able to train other administrators in template and report building via 1 hour training sessions over about an 8 week time period. Other training has been done on an ad hoc basis as necessary.
  • Sometimes it was hard to communicate over webex what our requirements were so the consultant would know how to guide us in template building, but this was not a significant problem especially considering the very large and complicated standalone workbook we had been using.
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.
Yes
Yes, we have found a few bugs in Vena, but many fewer than we've encountered in other software. Many of them are resolved quickly and for the ones that aren't, the support personnel have spent additional time past normal working hours to provide a solution. We have not encountered any bugs in the more recent versions.
Our data, data model and reports were inadvertently deleted by our IT department. Vena provided excellent support in trying to help us recover the data and were available as needed to help with the restoration. Early in our use of Vena, we encountered a bug that disconnected some of the data details from the main data elements, and the Vena consultant worked over the weekend to restore the links in the data and fixed the bug as well. We were very appreciative and do not receive that kind of service from most software providers. We haven't encountered any major problems with the Vena solution in the last couple of years, but I would expect excellent customer service if we do in the future.
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