Vena very helpful for our planning needs
December 14, 2023
Vena very helpful for our planning needs
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Vena
Vena is used across the whole organization for planning the financials for the next year. Contributors develop their own labor, CAPEX, and expense plans for the following year. Contributors also have access to reports to see how their part of the business is comparing against the plan. The accounting departments uses the reporting feature to send reports to end users.
- Updating data/intersections from the cloud.
- Support staff is very helpful including customer success manager and Vena support team.
- Quarterly updates provided and are relevant to our business. There is usually a Zoom meeting to go over them ahead of the launch date.
- The Vena forum and the Vena Academy provide helpful tips and training.
- I like that Vena uses Excel. It's program that most accountants are already familiar with and can manipulate with ease.
- 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.
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
- Vena has made the planning process much smoother. Before we had a giant Excel sheet and every time we added a new account, it was a nightmare to add the account to the plan and the CFO and I were the only ones inputting any data. The fact that we can have contributors input their own data is a life saver.
- It is also important that contributors can see how their areas are stacking up against their plan and the prior year results.
- We are still developing a consolidation model and report books for contributors to see. Hopefully one day we will have both available.
Vena support is very helpful. Our Customer Success Manager, Peter Shalala, is very supportive of anything we wish to do and helpful with all my questions. I have reached out to Vena support many times and they are also quite helpful. Sometimes I can figure out my issue myself, but more often than not, the support team will answer my questions and I'll be on my way.
I'm not sure about this question. Granted we have the data more readily available and can respond more quickly to a situation, but I am not sure that is happening yet with any great success. Once the contributors have more experience with the planning process and the reports, I think we will be able to achieve this goal for improving the decision making time.
It was 5 years ago that we chose Vena, so I don't remember the other products we evaluated. But the Excel Vena combination is what sold us on them.