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Between year-end reconciliations and solidifying next year’s budget, you’ve probably got a lot on your plate right now. Those tasks can be tedious and time-consuming, especially if you’re relying on offline spreadsheets to get the job done.   Ever wondered how much better life would be if you could update your forecasts faster, tell the story behind your data more easily and better help your organization plan to grow with confidence? That’s why we created the Vena Preview—so you can see for yourself how to free up more time for analysis, improve cross-functional collaboration, unify planning with accurate data and focus on the future of your business. What Is the Vena Preview? The Vena Preview is a free, interactive walkthrough of our Complete Planning solution. We’ll show you how Vena leverages the flexibility of Microsoft Excel—the world’s leading spreadsheet platform—within a powerful, intuitive and easy-to-use business planning ecosystem. We’ll also show you how working with up-to-date numbers can simplify data storytelling and support informed decision making. What Does the Vena Preview Cover? The Vena Preview only takes a few minutes to complete and it walks you through a process that could take hours without our platform. Using fictional data, the Vena Preview puts you in the position of a finance leader looking to reconcile a large variance between your budget and forecasted operating expenses. You get a walkthrough of Vena’s Excel interface, but you also get to see how our automations work as you analyze that spike in expenses. This is exactly what you’ll discover with the Vena Preview: You’ll learn how to generate real-time financial dashboards with your budget, forecasts and actuals all in one location—because it’s easier to identify variances with a holistic view of your business at your fingertips.   You’ll use Vena’s drill-down function to access the transactional details behind your actuals and identify the reason for the variance. This is how Vena makes it easy to uncover the story your data is telling you.   Once the discrepancy is resolved, you’ll update your forecast with the correct actuals and see the business results instantly.   You’ll learn how to foster collaboration with Vena’s advanced workflows and audit trails.  How Can You Access the Vena Preview? The Vena Preview is accessible to anyone on any computer (Windows or Mac.) However, you do need to have an existing Office 365 subscription to try the Vena Preview. Don’t worry if you don’t have one, though, because we can still give you a customized demonstration of our platform at any time. All you have to do is click here and fill out the form to get started. 

Context helps drive change. It also helps make sense of it.   And context was exactly what Vena was looking for when we surveyed 350 business leaders and finance and operations professionals from across industries and around the globe. Reaching out as the first half of 2020 was coming to an end, we wanted to see how organizations were navigating through these changing times—and the people, processes and tools being drawn on to do so. With that in mind, we surveyed C-suite executives, VPs, directors, managers and individual contributors. We asked questions around organizational culture, processes for agile finance-led business planning as well as technology and data to see what role each plays in helping businesses move forward through this rapidly fluctuating landscape. In doing so, we got the context we were looking for—and built a foundation for Vena’s first-ever industry benchmark report. To see how you compare to others working through similar challenges and opportunities, read The Vena Q2-2020 Industry Benchmark Report today. It’s filled with eye-opening findings into agile finance-led business planning and how organizations are navigating change, with surprising key insights—including the three below. 1. Most Organizations Don’t Have an Early Warning System in Place Through weekly and monthly operational and financial reviews, with an eye on trailing and leading indicators across the business, financial professionals can put an early warning system in place and get in front of change. In doing so, business plans can be adjusted early and teams can pivot when necessary, to stay ahead of the curve—evaluating and measuring market and business risks and taking steps preemptively to minimize the effects of change. Yet 56% of the businesses we surveyed don’t have any such system in place. An early warning system allows finance teams to stay on top of changes as they happen rather than forcing them to wait until those changes have already progressed. And it’s beneficial not just in times of crisis. It also helps ensure organizations don’t go too far down the wrong path even when the market itself is stable. 2. More Than Half of Businesses Aren’t Operating Within an Agile Planning Process Processes such as scenario modeling, cash flow management and agile forecasting all play a part in giving finance teams the information and insights needed to navigate change and plan for today and tomorrow. Together they help create an agile planning process that lets finance teams revise financial and operational plans quickly and confidently as well as change paths when those plans turn out to be wrong or no longer suited to the market around them. Still, only 48% of companies surveyed have an agile planning process in place. Scenario modeling itself was more popular, though, with 60% using scenario modeling before making forecasting adjustments. But that means 40% aren’t—perhaps leaving those organizations with no way to see what’s coming up ahead. 3. Disparate and Disconnected Data Sources Are a Key Challenge The right data foundation is integral to modern financial and business planning—whether in normal times or times of change. A combination of financial and non-financial data can build a base for change and drive innovation. Investment in data is also a critical first step to accessing the insights needed for data-driven storytelling and for creating a foundation of technology solutions that will help finance teams lead the way today and into the future. But none of that is possible if data can’t be accessed and aggregated in a way that makes it useful. This was the case for most organizations we surveyed, with 57% naming disparate and disconnected data as a key data challenge. In fact, data posed as a challenge in many different ways. The professionals we surveyed also identified issues with too much data and with wrangling data. Improving data-driven capabilities was a key factor as well, with many respondents naming investments in business intelligence tools and regularly sharing KPIs as important. More Context, More Answers Data isn’t the only challenge organizations are facing today. In the report, discover what was named as the greatest challenge to current integrated planning processes—people and culture, process or technology. Find out where companies stand in adopting artificial intelligence and how remote work is fitting into organizational culture moving forward. Consider, as well, the four key recommendations our team of experts gleaned from the results, to help organizations use agile finance-led business planning to prepare for and navigate through times of change. Get the full context. Read The Vena Q2-2020 Industry Benchmark Report today.

We understand that it’s a little challenging to create business and operational plans right now. To help equip businesses with the knowledge, tools and resources they need to quickly adapt to the change, we have launched two new initiatives—the Vena Agile Planning Quick Start Package and a free 1:1 Power Hour with a Vena FP&A Expert. Our new Agile Planning Quick Start Package is designed to help businesses plan for today and tomorrow with agile integrated planning and budget orchestration. It comes with a four-month free subscription (six months for Microsoft SMB customers) to the Vena FP&A platform and 50% off a quick start implementation solution (valued at over $10K USD). Our team will ensure that your business gets up and running as quickly as possible with all of the critical financial processes it needs for successful business planning, including scenario modeling, cash management, real-time forecasting and budget orchestration, as well as best practices for integrated planning and more. Complete details on our Quick Start Package are available here. Finally, we’re also inviting businesses leaders and finance and operation professionals to connect with a Vena FP&A Expert for a free 1:1 Power Hour. These sessions are a great opportunity to discuss the challenges your business is currently facing and best practices for how to overcome them. There’s no catch—if you’d like to connect with a Vena FP&A Expert for free Power Hour let us know and we’ll be happy to set something up, no obligations. In addition to these two most recent initiatives, last month, we announced Vena Nation week—our free, completely virtual learning and conference experience for finance and operations professionals. And earlier this month, we put together an in-depth article on how to continue business planning with confidence. Stay tuned as Vena continues to roll out more initiatives to support businesses in successfully planning for today and tomorrow.  We’re always here to help. Learn more about how you can quickly get started with agile planning or talk to a Vena FP&A expert 1:1 with no obligation to help you plan for today and tomorrow.

According to survey data from the Association for Financial Professionals, only 57% of FP&A teams use business intelligence tools today. The same survey also revealed that data management and predictive analytics are seen as the two most important skills FP&A professionals need—indicating a gap between how finance teams think they should be doing things versus what they’re actually doing. To fill that gap and serve as strategic partners to the business, finance pros need to be effective storytellers who can quickly communicate important trends and insights to key decision makers. That’s why Vena recently launched its Power BI Connector—a feature finance teams can use to supplement their core FP&A processes with world-class business intelligence and visual data analytics. Vena’s Power BI Connector adds a whole new dimension of flexible, interactive reporting to the Vena platform. Users can bring their key metrics to life with visually-striking graphs, charts and live performance dashboards.  The new feature gives finance leaders fast access to reliable, easy-to-read summaries of their mission-critical numbers. Now, members of your finance team can load up-to-date financial dashboards on any device at any time, giving themselves instant, at-a-glance access to the insights they need to drive more meaningful collaboration and strategic decision-making throughout your organization.   With the Power BI Connector, technical expertise isn’t required—the feature only takes a couple of minutes to set up. It immediately syncs Power BI with the same data sources that users have with Vena, so you can start crafting compelling visual narratives right away with the correct numbers.  Vena’s Power BI Connector represents an opportunity for finance leaders to supercharge their visual analytics strategies. It’s also scalable across other operational groups and can generate diverse reporting mediums for different stakeholders. Use cases for the feature can extend to other departments such as HR, sales, marketing and more—because finance teams aren’t the only ones who rely on data to guide strategic decision-making. Learn More About Vena

Finance teams need to be able to quickly access important insights to help move the business forward. Now, Vena is putting more power in their hands to uncover the information they need to drive strategic decision-making and better planning.  Vena’s latest product release has added key functionality to the platform to < >make it even easier for your finance team to report on and analyze key company data, including  updated mapping automation, template design enhancements  and  custom reporting capabilities. Mapping automation, in particular, is a huge time-saver, especially when you’re building out data transfers from your source systems into Vena. The software’s new Map By Name feature automatically matches source fields to destination fields in seconds, so you don’t have to map those connections manually when integrating with external systems. The release also includes a new Multi-Dynamic Insert Row feature, which makes it easy to add new information to live templates without compromising data integrity. This feature is particularly useful if you’re doing lots of financial modeling with Vena because now you’ll be able to instantly see how new data entries would affect your company’s overall financial outlook. Another key update in this product release is a Reverse Hierarchy feature when viewing and configuring reports, which enables finance pros to automate the process of creating balance sheets. With this feature, instead of being locked into a top-down view of key inputs on a financial statement, you can now configure templates to display your individual line items first while the summated values appear at the bottom.  All of this exciting new functionality ultimately allows finance leaders to deliver actionable insights faster and to better fulfill their roles as forward-thinking business partners. Greater flexibility when building and mapping out templates also presents an opportunity for users to extend their Vena use cases beyond just the office of finance—an important consideration if you’re looking to maximize the platform’s value and incorporate new processes, such as account reconciliations, workforce planning and more. Learn More About Vena

According to Nucleus Research’s 2020 Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Technology Value Matrix, corporate finance professionals are looking for flexibility and ease-of-use from CPM software solutions—and today’s leading vendors are delivering.  The analyst firm’s annual report ranks CPM vendors based on functionality and usability, as well as the value customers realize from each product’s capabilities. Vendors are sorted into one of four quadrants: Core Providers, Facilitators, Experts and Leaders. Vendors included in this year’s CPM Technology Value Matrix Leaders quadrant are investing heavily in functionality innovation while staying laser-focused on increasing usability. Flexibility and ease-of-use lead the way for top CPM software vendors According to Andrew MacMillen, an analyst with Nucleus and author of the report,buyer expectations are driving this trend as more finance teams look to adopt flexible, “full-platform” solutions that operational teams outside the office of finance can easily adopt. “Beyond planning, CPM solutions must now be able to handle a wide array of tasks related to finances ranging from closing the books and consolidation, to analytics and business intelligence,” said MacMillen. “The value proposition of a CPM solution that consolidates multiple lines of work into a single interface has become too attractive to ignore.” This really isn’t surprising considering the challenges finance teams are facing today. According to a survey from the Association for Financial Professionals, 61% of finance leaders consider inadequate software systems to be the biggest roadblock holding back their FP&A efforts. A challenge like that is hard to overcome without flexible, user-friendly CPM software. That’s why functionality and usability rankings are what separate the Experts from the Leaders in the CPM Value Matrix. So, what does this mean for your finance team? If you’re a finance professional who’s exploring the CPM software market, don’t lose sight of the end-user experience when evaluating potential vendors. No matter what solution you choose to level-up your finance processes, product usability and flexible functionality will always be the difference between a rocky software experience and a smooth one.  Vena Solutions earned Leader status in the CPM Value Matrix for the seventh straight year, with our platform claiming top marks for usability. Vena’s ease-of-use is attributed to its front-end integration with Excel, which allows users to keep using a tool that they already know and love.

Vena allows Cumming to produce reports the same day of the financial close, leading to significant time and resource savings, and allowing the organization to implement proactive business strategies. Automating the financial close and reporting process is a priority for virtually every company. But global project-based firms like Cumming face unique challenges, stemming mainly from the need to manage numerous projects at different stages and different locations across the country and around the world. “Saving 4 weeks allows us to get in front of issues and be proactive rather than reactive.“ Challenges: Manually creating, distributing and consolidating spreadsheets Complex and time-consuming financial close process, involving countless emails and phone calls for management oversight Not enough time for analysis and proactive decision-making Results: Reduced reporting cycle from 4 weeks to same business day as the close Annual savings of $55k, or the equivalent to a full-time hire Freed up time for better analysis and decision-making, leading to better organizational strategies. About Cumming Corporation Cumming Corporation is an international project and cost management consultancy that provides effective and cost-efficient solutions to ensure projects in multiple sectors—including hospitality, government, education and healthcare—are executed on time and within budget. The post How Cumming Cut their Reporting Cycle from 4 Weeks to 1 Day appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.

Reading time - 1 min If Bruce Nolop isn’t an expert in corporate finance, it’s hard to say who would be. As if being the former CFO of both eTrade and Pitney Bowes wasn’t enough, Nolop is also the author of The Essential CFO: A Corporate Finance Playbook. No wonder the Wall Street Journal recently asked him to offer his personal picks for the top 10 technologies that have changed our working lives. While some of Nolop’s choices haven’t aged well (fax machines), or are so common we take them for granted (like air conditioning), others are enduring and arguably more important than ever. This includes his No. 3 pick, office software, which he breaks down into spreadsheets (of course), word processing and presentation tools. When you combine what he says about these products with his No. 1 choice, search engines, you get an insightful look at the future of finance. “Software skills are now de rigueur, requiring continuous adaptation to evolving technologies,” he writes, adding that search engines are taking these IT-driven workflows to new heights. “Combining digital technologies with human insights can produce results previously unimaginable. By enabling immediate, targeted access to boundless sources of information, they have indelibly transformed our analytical, marketing, and e-commerce horizons.” Back to the Future Nolop was focusing on technologies from the past 50 years. So what about the next 50? How do finance departments take those “boundless sources of information” and continue the process of business transformation? According to Ajay Kumur, the answer is cloud computing and corporate performance management. Writing in the Economic Times of India, the Oracle executive suggests that the smartest organizations are creating, in effect, their own internal search engines to stay on top of issues around borrowing, debt exposure, revenue and more: “Companies everywhere are taking measures to make themselves as ‘uncertainty-proof’ as possible – a process that begins with the ability to react with agility to rapid change in the market. (The cloud) allows companies to automatically collect information from a number of different silos and consolidates it into a form that enables management not only report accurately, but also to review quickly, and crucially make well-founded predictions to inform future decisions.” If you find it a bit hard to picture the full impact and proven benefits of cloud-based CPM, here’s a creative exercise to help you get started: pretend you’re someone like Nolop, writing in the Wall Street Journal; imagine yourself 10 or even 20 years from now, and cloud-based CPM has become commonplace. How would you crystallize the impact in retrospect? Figure that out, and you’ve already made the business case to take a step toward the future.

Albany, NY (March 29, 2016) – Vena Solutions, the fastest growing provider of cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) software, is proud to announce that Nucleus Research has named it a market leader in its annual CPM Value Matrix report. High marks in usability and functionality established Vena as a CPM leader, alongside other vendors including IBM, Oracle and SAP. The primary driver behind Vena’s leadership – and its main competitive advantage – is its use of native Excel as an interface into companies’ performance management data. The company credits its intuitive application design along with Excel’s familiarity, flexibility and widespread use for the high adoption and rapid implementation of its solutions. “We’re obviously very proud of our leadership and the validation we continue to see for our Excel-based approach,” said Don Mal, CEO of Vena Solutions. “With Nucleus as the latest example, more and more customers, industry analysts and even competitors are taking notice.” As Anne Moxie, research analyst at Nucleus and author of the report put it, “Excel has an undeniable foothold in financial processes and Vena has developed a solution that can use this effectively while enabling enterprise-wide collaboration and efficiency.” Additional drivers behind Vena’s leadership position – a function of usability and functionality – include its: • Broad Functionality and Applications – across finance and accounting, including budgeting, planning, forecasting, financial close management, reporting and regulatory disclosure; • Smart, Rapid Implementation – including a dedicated, expert team of consultants and starter-kits to provide proven best practices alongside the solutions themselves; • Feature-Rich Product Roadmap – with upcoming innovations ranging from new data discovery and analytics to mobile dashboards and web grid integration for cloud applications such as Office 365. Added Moxie, “Nucleus expects that Vena will continue to experience success as customers look for usable and flexible solutions that will allow for easy adoption.” About Vena Solutions – www.venasolutions.com Vena turns Excel into an enterprise-class business solution with a centralized database and features including workflow, version control and a detailed audit trail. With Vena, hundreds of leading global brands now get trusted numbers and insights – fast – without sacrificing the significant investments they’ve already made in Excel templates, models and templates. They use Vena for corporate performance management (CPM) applications including budgeting, forecasting, financial close and reporting, in addition to managing business drivers and KPIs outside of finance. Vena is the fastest growing cloud CPM vendor, and the only one to embrace – not replace – Excel spreadsheets. The post Vena Solutions Named Leader in Corporate Performance Management appeared first on Blog | Vena Voice | Vena Solutions.