Cut month-end reporting prep by 16–30 business hours per month
Scaled financial planning and reporting as assets grew from ~$9 billion to $15 billion following an acquisition
Reduced forecast updates from 2+ days to under 1 hour
The Challenge: Scaling Finance Through Rapid Growth and Increasing Complexity
Before Vena, Nicolet Bank relied on linked Excel spreadsheets stored across shared drives to manage budgeting, forecasting and management reporting.
Forecasting depended on a homegrown Excel model understood by only a few people, creating risk and limiting transparency. Updating assumptions was difficult, reporting lacked consistency and scenario planning was time-consuming.
“We had a black-box model, good in theory, but not scalable,” says Ben Braun, Director of Financial Planning and Analysis at Nicolet National Bank. “You couldn’t modify it unless you helped build it.”
As the bank grew from $2 billion to $9 billion in assets, those limitations became more urgent. Nicolet needed greater efficiency, insight and speed to support its continued growth.
That’s when the team found Vena, which allowed them to replace their legacy Excel models with a centralized platform that retains Excel’s familiar interface while adding structure, automation, and governance.
The Solution: Accelerating Insight While Scaling Through M&A
Vena gave Nicolet a centralized platform that retained Excel’s familiar interface while adding the structure, automation and governance the finance team needed to scale. That foundation is now supporting the bank through its next stage of growth. Following the acquisition of a business nearly half its previous size, Nicolet grew from approximately $9 billion to $15 billion in assets in roughly two months.
As the business has grown, Vena has helped the finance team keep pace without adding more manual work. Forecast updates that once took multiple days can now be completed in under an hour, while month-end reporting preparation has been reduced by 16-30 business hours per month. The impact is especially clear at financial close. Ben estimates that producing Nicolet’s current management packet manually would take at least eight hours to validate and organize. With Vena’s structured hierarchy and validated templates, the team can now put that same packet in front of senior leaders within five minutes of close.
That speed gives the team more time to focus on what comes next: understanding the numbers and helping the business make informed decisions. Instead of repeatedly checking linked spreadsheets, data dumps and individual general ledger accounts, finance can spend more time analyzing performance and exploring how changing conditions could affect the bank.
For example, Nicolet can easily run multiple interest rate scenarios, using Fed rate changes as triggers to simulate potential impacts on net interest income. “We can instantly model rate cuts or increases and understand their financial impact,” Ben says. “What used to be manual duplication and assumptions is now a structured, repeatable process.”
That ability to look ahead has become even more valuable following the acquisition. Before Vena, producing a reliable nine- to 12-month outlook using a large linked spreadsheet could take two to three days. Today, the team can get close to that forward-looking view within approximately two hours of financial close. Nicolet also continually back-tests its forecasts to understand variances and improve accuracy, giving finance greater confidence in the projections it shares with leadership.
Now, as Nicolet works to integrate the two franchises, that combination of speed, consistency and confidence is helping the finance team look beyond short-term merger impacts and provide leadership, investors and analysts with a clearer view of where the combined business is heading.
Looking ahead, Nicolet will continue using Vena to strengthen its forecasting, provide clearer insight into the bank’s performance and support its evolving business needs. With a scalable financial planning and reporting foundation in place, the finance team is positioned to keep pace with continued growth while delivering the insights leadership needs to make confident decisions.
“We’ve gone from about $9 billion in assets to about $15 billion in assets within the last two months. Vena has been able to provide us with a forecasting solution to understand where we think the business is going.”