Item: Vena
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Vena

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Vena Solutions is used in our company to create detailed annual budgets, multi-year future plans, and end of accounting period financial reports. We are able to utilize the workflow system to connect our users to our processes from start to finish of a process. Our users feel engaged in each process. We also experience significant time savings in the creation of Vena models and end result reporting.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Vena files and templates are simple to create and adjust.
Vena constantly is evolving to enhance its features.
The user experience is very simple in Vena.

Cons

It would be great if Vena could configure their central templates to allow users to save formulas in their budget inputs. Currently formulas can be used, but once the file is saved it only keeps the end result number.
I would like for Vena to advise admin users of what is changing in a Vena update.

Return on Investment

Our budgeting cycle is much more streamlined from an accounting perspective. We are able to focus more on analysis of the budget rather than spending so much time on building a budget that may have many flaws.
The fact that we can keep our operational managers engaged in their financial results is terrific. We are making information available to them faster than ever before. This allows them to make decisions and push initiatives that are important to them.
We continue to have support from our CFO working to better utilize Vena to improve our company.

Full-Cycle Support

Vena has been an active partner any time we run into issues or when we find ways we want to expand our usage of their tool. They are always responsive and have supported our growth well.

Finance-Informed Decisions

We have not changed when financial information is available to our managers yet. We are considering making changes like this in the next 1-2 years.

Alternatives Considered

Planful (formerly Host Analytics), Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management and IBM Cognos Analytics on Cloud

We went with Vena Solutions because it was able to meet the needs in every way for what we were looking for in a budgeting solution. From an admin perspective, it was very intuitive, but from an end user (contributor) perspective, it was outstanding that we were able to keep our users in Excel! SIMPLE...EFFECTIVE...DYNAMIC...POWERFUL!

Key Insights

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

Other Software Used

Oracle PeopleSoft ERP, InVision

Likelihood to Recommend

Reporting and budgeting are where we have been successfully using Vena Solutions in our business. We are excited to keep incorporating it into our business for account reconciliations and dashboards.

Vena Feature Ratings

Vena Solutions Attributes

Support Rating

Our Vena experience has been very positive, and we continue to find ways that we can utilize its offerings.

Usability

It is an intuitive product that is easy to manage and agile to change. For end users it is a very straightforward interface that results in the users working in excel which is great!

Using Vena

Users and Roles

390 - Most of these users participate in our annual budgeting for operating expenses, payroll budget, and capital budget. These same users also participate in end of period reporting self service.

Support Headcount Required

We have one current power user and 2-4 people that are participate in supporting our reporting initiatives and internal finance initiatives.

Business Processes Supported

Budgeting - Opex, Payroll, and Capital
End of Period financial and expense reporting
Workpaper workflow

Innovative Uses

Enhanced capital budgeting
Internal workpaper/account reconciliations and workflow
Starting to uncover opportunities for dashboards

Future Planned Uses

Dashboards
Better workpaper/account reconciliation
Self service reporting for managers

Likelihood to Renew

We have renewed twice since beginning our relationship with Vena.

Evaluating Vena and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - We replaced our former reporting software that came with our ERP and a home grown payroll and benefits budgeting process.

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Ease of Use
Other

Vena was able to be simple for our users/managers to use and it was the most affordable. It wasn't until later that we understood the value of scalability.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

No change. We evaluated 5-7 vendors and even though Vena was not a large company at the time we committed their product and service has proven valuable.

Vena Implementation

Implementation Rating

Good to have business partners as part of the implementation to ensure understanding and when adjustments to the plan are needed before go-live.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Yes - We began with Operating Expense budget and Capital Budget.
Next was end of period reporting
Next was payroll budgeting
Next was end of period workpaper workflow
Next was mapping workpaper information
Upcoming is dashboards and forecasting.

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled - We kept things relatively similar for our end users which was helpful when moving to a new technology solution. We are partnering with our end users to move slightly towards more self service.

Implementation Issues

Making sure to have buy-in from end users from the beginning of the process.
Good communication was essential

Vena Training

Training Types Used

In-Person Training

In-Person Training

Our initial in person training was a little rough b/c I felt like our trainer wanted to focus on maximizing Vena rather than understanding what we were needing for our organization. He was very responsive and added insights, but could have worked to understand our needs a little better.

Online Training

Configuring Vena

Product Configurability

Vena can be set up to manage anything that we have wanted from it. We have not ran into an issue that we haven't been able to resolve or implement.

Configuration Lessons

Be sure to think thru to your desired outcome. Understanding the end in mind is helpful to avoid re-work b/c Vena can do whatever you would like for it to do.

UI Customization

Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - I have not done it personally, but our subject matter expert have made adjustments to interfaces in Vena without needing to involve our technology team.

Additional Customization Considerations

Vena was able to combine two of our chartfields so we had a little less to manage in our modeler. The modeler is very important to set up correctly in order to make mapping of all reports as efficient as possible.

Vena Support

Vena Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	Need to explain problems multiple times

Premium Support

We didn't initially but we have upgraded support. The multiple use cases that we have with Vena are important to have good support for. We like having a more dedicated resource and enhanced priority and turnaround time.

Exceptional Examples of Vena Support

We had been searching for a quicker upload time from our ERP system to Vena. Vena support was able to finally make a discovery and recommendation to our upload. We went from approx 20 minutes to under 5 minutes. This is extremely helpful especially for our period close deadlines.

Using Vena

Usability Pros and Cons

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

Easy Tasks

Easy to transfer previous reporting to Vena to be mapped
Simple setup of users and security
Workflows are straightforward to set up and adjust

Difficult Tasks

The mappings can be as diverse as you would like for them to be, but that is up to each company to manage.
Nothing else to note.

Vena Reliability

Scalability

Vena has been able to support all initiatives that we have wanted to implement. We are now at the point where we have more ideas for Vena than we have time for. The best part is that we functional team members doing the work in Vena rather than needing to coordinate thru our IT team.

Reliability and Availability

Vena has been available when we need them. There were a few occasions where we had tickets with Vena that were started with a night shift that didn't always transfer to the day shift support. But in all reality they are very responsive and help with issues or questions we run into.

Performance

Reports loading time is reasonable. When we have had files take a long time to load we have worked with Vena to brainstorm ways to make the files more efficient to open quicker.