Very happy with Vena and have not looked back
Updated May 12, 2022
Very happy with Vena and have not looked back
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Vena
- 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.
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
- 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.
Vena Feature Ratings
Vena Solutions Attributes
Using Vena
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
Evaluating Vena and Competitors
- 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.
Vena Implementation
- Implemented in-house
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
Vena Training
Configuring Vena
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.
Vena Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Not Sure
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.
Using Vena
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Native Excel
- aggregation level reporting
- template design
- live data connections without additional costs
Vena Reliability
Integrating Vena
- Sage
Sage is supported and we will be exploring an integrated dataflow
- File import/export
- ETL tools
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.
Relationship with Vena Solutions
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.