Must have system for FP&A professionals
Updated September 23, 2024

Must have system for FP&A professionals

Mohamed Salem, CFA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Vena

We use Vena across the organization in different capacities: Budgeting and forecasting by department for OPEX, CAPEX, and Workforce. For variance reporting and analysis by department, entity, and consolidated. For Executive and Board reporting, standalone and consolidated. We implemented Vena 3 years ago, which completely automated our budgeting process and financial reporting. It also enhanced our security and how financial and HR data are transmitted across the organization. We have two entities with two different currencies and almost 20 departments in each country. Vena helped us in breaking the budget to smaller pieces and enabled us to handle the increasing numbers of departments and users who manage budget. If I would to replace Vena and go back to manual budgeting and reporting, I would need at least 4 more people on my team.

Pros

  • Budgeting and forecasting
  • Financial reporting
  • security and privacy
  • Flexibility

Cons

  • Can't think of anything
  • 4 FTE savings in FP&A
  • Enhancing security and privacy
Implementation happened by the Vena team.
Yes

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

If you are running budgeting, planning and financial reporting, especially in a large organization with a large number of departments. We are a service company and 2/3 of our budget is people and Vena enabled us to budget smoothly with the complex nature of compensation planning.
It might not be very cost-efficient to implement Vena if you're a very small company. But you should think of an FP&A system once your business can afford it.

Vena Feature Ratings

10.0
Long-term financial planning
10
Financial budgeting
10
Forecasting
10
Scenario modeling
10
Management reporting
10
10.0
Financial data consolidation
10
Journal entries and reports
10
Multi-currency management
10
Intercompany Eliminations
Not Rated
Minority Ownership
Not Rated
Local and consolidated reporting
10
Detailed Audit Trails
10
10.0
Financial Statement Reporting
10
Management Reporting
10
Excel-based Reporting
10
Automated board and financial reporting
10
XBRL support for regulatory filing
Not Rated
10.0
Personalized dashboards
10
Color-coded scorecards
10
KPIs
10
Cost and profitability analysis
10
Key Performance Indicator setting
10
Benchmarking with external data
10
10.0
Flat file integration
10
Excel data integration
10
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
10
Not Rated
Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
Not Rated
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
10.0
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
10
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Not Rated
Publish to Web
Not Rated
Publish to PDF
Not Rated
Report Versioning
Not Rated
Report Delivery Scheduling
Not Rated
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
Not Rated
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Not Rated
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
10.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
10
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
10
Single Sign-On (SSO)
10
10.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
10
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
10

Vena Solutions Attributes

Vena support is always responsive and escalate if needed to solve the problem. I have been in contact with Vena Support many times and positive experience overall. My account manager is also in contact with me regularly to plan any upcoming projects and I can escalate to her if needed.
In my organization, we use Vena for budgeting, financial reporting for budget holders and board. We are planning to expand the usage of Vena beyond just financials to include operating data and utilize Vena Insights (Microsoft Power BI). We also started with 15 users 3 years ago and today we have over 35 users.

Using Vena

35 - Over 35 users in my organization use Vena. Majority are department heads and in many instances more than one user for one department. We have two superusers in Finance and we plan to expand the usage to include operating (non-financial) data and utilize Vena insight and Vena Copilot. We started with only 15 users 3 years ago.
2 - One of my team members is fully dedicated to Vena and I do support sometimes.
  • Budgeting
  • Budget variance reporting
  • Workforce reporting
  • Financial Statements
  • Automate budget process
  • Connect different cubes
  • Automate financial reporting
  • Utilize Vena for more insights from non-financial data
Just renewed my 3 years contract for another 3 years and added Vena Insights and more users.

Evaluating Vena and Competitors

  • Cloud Solutions
  • Scalability
  • Ease of Use
  • Other
Ease of use and utilizing excel was the most important factor as it was very hard to get rid of excel and to give power to budget holders. Vena enabled my organization to provide more power and control to budget holders with very easy to use budget tool while being able to consolidate and have centralized one source of the truth.
I think I would do the same evaluation I went through. I went through extensive evaluation.

Vena Support

ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
Need to explain problems multiple times
I did not. I didn't think my organization needs it at this point. Maybe in the future.
The structure of my organization changed and another layer was created between departments and CEO, called division. I reached out to Vena support in an attempt to find ways to tweak the structure on Vena to match that change. I was helped by two different support members and they were very patient with me to find a solution that would work for my situation, even though it wasn't an issue. Finally, one of them came up with a brilliant solution that was very easy to implement and all reports and views and security changed automatically based on that tweak in the modeler.

Using Vena

ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
Difficult to use
  • Running reports on Excel
  • Budgeting on Excel that's connected to the database
  • Non

Comments

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