Saint Mary's loves Vena Solutions!
Updated August 30, 2022
Saint Mary's loves Vena Solutions!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Vena
We use Vena for all budgeting, forecasting and 95% of Financial Reporting with the remaining 5% to be introduced in Q3 of 2021. Prior to Vena, our budget process was very manual and financial reporting cumbersome and and in some instances, non-existent. Vena has been transformational for Saint Mary's. We have reduced our budget cycle from Months to Weeks and our Executive review time from weeks to days. In addition, we use Vena to improve financial processes for month end close, reducing cumbersome activities from days to hours or minutes, and perform deep analysis. We have dramatically reduced or eliminated time to compile information and have instead repurposed that time to perform more value-added analysis. Vena has been used to identify ineffective pockets of budget allocation and allowed us to reallocate those pockets to more strategic needs. We are currently expanding the use case beyond the FInance office to include Enrolment Projection and Faculty accreditation. Since first becoming a Vena customer in 2014, the software has received continuous enhancements and it continues to get better each quarter. In short, we love it!
- They are continually investing in the software.
- They listen to their customers and incorporate their feedback.
- They are fully engaged in their customers obtaining the maximum benefit from the software.
- Their customer support team is very responsive and technically sound.
- The introduction of Vena365Connect will solve a major weakness in the software as it will create a platform-agnostic environment allowing Mac users to finally use Vena to its full potential.
- I would like to see more integration and more support with BI tools. They currently integrate with Power BI but beyond the bridge to link it, its really up to the customer after that. Easy linking to Tableau would be phenomenal.
- More partner arrangements with clients to develop APIs for larger ERP systems to allow for the real time transfer for data into Vena.
- Improved mobile experience for tablets.
Do you think Vena delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Vena's feature set?
Yes
Did Vena live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Vena go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Vena again?
Yes
- Through the roof! Time savings were never quantified but when you save weeks of time, not much more needs to be said.
- We are way more efficient in our budgeting and forecasting processes as a result of utilizing the Vena workflow processes.
- Just having information at our fingertips to perform our duties is priceless!
Customer support is phenomenal, responsive, technically competent and professional. Customer Success Manager is engaged in ensuring Saint Mary's achieves the full potential of Vena. By providing access to expert services for those clients who can benefit from that value-added service to maximize their investment. By continually listening to their customers and implementing recommendations where warranted.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not have a process to perform enrolment forecasting. Using Vena to build this process, we were able to respond to the pandemic and provide Executive leadership with real time information for decision making. That ability to be agile and base decisions on real data provided a sense of calm and clarity with respect to decision making. This agility ensured we made the right decisions based on data. It also let us respond very quickly in altering the budgets of over 250 departments to ensure we understood the cash flow needs of the organization.
Vena blew away Crystal because it was Excel based and had such a flatter learning curve. As a client who has used Vena for 6 years now, I can tell a prospective client that your adoption period should be half if not great than half of what Saint Mary's was, which was less than 6 mos. The ease of report building will ensure that you are able to get information faster.
Vena Feature Ratings
Vena Solutions Attributes
Using Vena
250 - Finance and Operations
4 - Knowledge of databases
Knowledge of Excel
Knowledge of SQL
Knowledge of Integration processes
Knowledge of Excel
Knowledge of SQL
Knowledge of Integration processes
- budgeting and forecasting
- financial reporting
- data and analytics
- enrolment forecasting
- data warehousing
- ad hoc reporting
- faculty accreditation
- eliminate shadow systems
Evaluating Vena and Competitors
- Product Features
- Product Usability
would change nothing
Vena Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
we purchased Expert Managed Services to unlock the complicated value added pieces of Vena
Yes - has not been resolved
when i had to restore an entire forecast that I accidentally deleted
Using Vena
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using | None |
- repot writing
- modeler
- data permissions
- scripts
- integration channels
Yes - its ok...some forms do not display well