Accelerated financial close by 2 to 3 days compared to Anaplan
Connected financial and operational planning data to reduce duplicate work
Built new reports faster as business priorities changed
The Challenge: Moving Beyond the Limitations of an Existing Planning Platform
For MY.GAMES, a growing international video game publisher and developer, evolving business requirements were putting new demands on financial planning. The company began looking for an alternative to Anaplan that could provide greater flexibility, faster reporting and more room to adapt as priorities changed.
The evaluation was rigorous. CFO Valeria Chebotareva worked with the company’s head of business processes and other stakeholders to conduct a structured tendering process, using a detailed scorecard to compare FP&A solutions across the capabilities most important to MY.GAMES. After evaluating multiple solutions against those requirements, Vena received the highest overall rating.
With Anaplan, creating and validating reports for new areas of business focus could take longer. Data cube limitations also restricted how many forecast versions the team could practically maintain without affecting performance, an important consideration for a business producing new forecasts every month.
The finance team also wanted stronger connectivity between Vena, its 1C ERP and internal analytical tools such as Ads Advisor, MY.GAMES’ business modeling and forecasting tool. The goal was not only to avoid duplicate data entry, but also to create a consistent flow of actuals into other systems used across the business.
The Solution: Accelerating Planning With Greater Finance Ownership
With Vena, MY.GAMES now completes its financial close 2 to 3 days faster than it did with Anaplan, supported by easier data movement between its ERP and planning environment. The finance team can also build reports for new areas of business focus faster, helping it respond as priorities change.
Vena has expanded the team’s flexibility around forecasting, too. Where previous data cube constraints required MY.GAMES to limit the number of versions it maintained, the company can now preserve a wider range of data and forecast versions without experiencing the same processing limitations.
Vena’s familiar Excel experience and approachable development environment have also helped MY.GAMES take greater ownership of its planning environment. Delbridge Solutions provided technical expertise, education and guidance during implementation, helping the team build the knowledge to become increasingly self-sufficient.
MY.GAMES has since independently developed new reports and deployed Vena Insights for dashboarding, demonstrating how the team can continue extending its Vena environment as requirements evolve.
That self-sufficiency extends to the company’s data ecosystem. MY.GAMES has integrated both data uploads and exports between Vena and its internal analytical tools. Bringing data into Vena reduces duplicate work for business owners, including the need to recreate portions of models already built in Ads Advisor. Exporting Vena data back to internal analytical tools helps maintain consistent actuals across systems and reduces the risk of those results being represented differently elsewhere in the business.
Looking ahead, MY.GAMES sees opportunities to deepen automation and connectivity across its planning ecosystem and expand Vena into additional use cases. With faster close cycles, more adaptable reporting and greater internal ownership already established, the finance team has a foundation it can continue evolving alongside the business.
Vena is really fast and easy for finance specialists because of the feeling of Excel. Our business owners adopted it rather quickly, and the flexibility is a key advantage. We built the integration so our business owners don’t have to do their job twice.”