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Great software that needs to be carefully implemented
May 13, 2020

Great software that needs to be carefully implemented

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Vena Solutions

Right now, we're using Vena across our entire organizations. Our previous issue was that budgets were done very manually and stakeholders weren't involved at every step of the process, which led to occasional disconnects that prolonged the budgeting process into the budget year. With Vena, we're involving operations in the creation of the bottom-up budgets they're being held to and reviewing more frequently with stakeholders to shorten the amount of time it takes to create and finalize our financial budgets.
  • It allows for collaborative work. Everything is hosted in the cloud so anyone can access data they're supposed to from anywhere.
  • Simple to explain: It's an Excel add-in so most people have some level of familiarity with it.
  • Very flexible: You can decide how much or how little data you want your model to contain.
  • Template design can be complex: There are a lot of small nuances that take time to fully grasp.
  • Data is occasionally lost and it's difficult to troubleshoot why.
  • Certain data upload methods are difficult to trace.
  • Our budgets were turned around faster than they ever have been.
  • Some frustration from operations staff when their budgets came out in a way they weren't expecting.
  • Some aspects of budgets weren't being scrutinized as much as they should have been. Vena highlighted some of those areas and they were discussed as they should have been in prior years.
It's good when you have full buy-in from all stakeholders using it. If timelines are adhered to and questions/concerns are raised promptly, the budgeting process becomes much smoother. It's much easier to have the person responsible for a functional area input their budget data, raise concerns where they feel it's necessary, and the budget is reviewed a few times before it's finalized. It becomes less useful as there are more people responsible for a functional area. There is less consensus on the final numbers which is where Vena thrives.

Vena Feature Ratings

8.0
Long-term financial planning
Not Rated
Financial budgeting
8
Forecasting
8
Scenario modeling
Not Rated
Management reporting
Not Rated
Not Rated
Financial data consolidation
Not Rated
Journal entries and reports
Not Rated
Multi-currency management
Not Rated
Intercompany Eliminations
Not Rated
Minority Ownership
Not Rated
Local and consolidated reporting
Not Rated
Detailed Audit Trails
Not Rated
Not Rated
Financial Statement Reporting
Not Rated
Management Reporting
Not Rated
Excel-based Reporting
Not Rated
Automated board and financial reporting
Not Rated
XBRL support for regulatory filing
Not Rated
Not Rated
Personalized dashboards
Not Rated
Color-coded scorecards
Not Rated
KPIs
Not Rated
Cost and profitability analysis
Not Rated
Key Performance Indicator setting
Not Rated
Benchmarking with external data
Not Rated
Not Rated
Flat file integration
Not Rated
Excel data integration
Not Rated
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources
Not Rated
Not Rated
Pixel Perfect reports
Not Rated
Customizable dashboards
Not Rated
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
6.5
Drill-down analysis
7
Formatting capabilities
6
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
Not Rated
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
7.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
7
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
7
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated

Vena Solutions Attributes

Do you think Vena delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Vena's feature set?

Yes

Did Vena live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Vena go as expected?

No

Would you buy Vena again?

No

Vena support will initially respond to queries quickly. Depending on the complexity of an issue it may end up requiring some higher-level support staff, which means it could take days or weeks to fully resolve your query if you're not paying for time from a Vena consultant which can get quite pricey if you're not careful.

Using Vena Solutions