Replaced nearly 200 hotel-level spreadsheets with a centralized planning environment
Saved approximately five days per month across close and forecasting processes
Three-person FP&A team can now support rapidly expanding portfolio with agility
The Challenge: Scaling Finance Operations Without Scaling Complexity
Noble Investment Group is a private real estate investment trust focused on select-service hospitality properties across the United States. As the firm expanded its portfolio and prepared to deploy capital from its latest billion-dollar fund, its finance team faced a critical challenge: existing reporting and planning processes could no longer support the growing scale of the business.
For years, the FP&A team relied on individual Excel files for each hotel, along with additional spreadsheets to consolidate results at the fund level. While the process worked when the organization managed a smaller portfolio, continued growth exposed its limitations.
“As we raised larger funds and expanded the portfolio, I started thinking about how long it took to complete our month-end processes in Excel,” said Jeff. “The process simply was not scalable.”
The challenge went beyond efficiency. With investor reporting, fund performance analysis, and executive decision making all depending on accurate information, confidence in the numbers became increasingly important.
“We had a million different links,” Jeff explained. “The question was always in the back of my mind: Is this number right? The only way to know was to manually tie everything back to the financial system.”
At the same time, Noble’s lean FP&A team was expected to support a growing business while responding quickly to executive and investor requests. The organization needed a solution that would help the team scale without significantly increasing headcount.
That search led Noble Investment Group to Vena.
The Solution: Building a Scalable Foundation for Growth With Trusted Data
Noble Investment Group selected Vena because it combined enterprise-grade planning capabilities with the familiarity of Excel, making adoption easier across the organization. The platform also fit the company’s ambitious timeline and budget requirements while providing a direct connection to Yardi, Noble’s accounting system.
Since implementing Vena, the team has saved approximately four days each month during close activities, and an additional day during forecasting cycles. More importantly, the solution has enabled the finance function to keep pace with the company’s growth.
According to Jeff, the impact was transformational.
“Our previous processes weren't built to support the scale of growth we were experiencing,” Jeff said. “Vena gives us the ability to keep pace with the business while doing even more with the team we have.”
With data flowing directly from source systems into a centralized environment, the team no longer spends precious time validating numbers across hundreds of spreadsheets. Instead, they can focus on delivering insights that help executives, investors, and stakeholders make informed decisions.
The benefits are particularly visible when leadership needs information quickly. Recently, Noble’s executive team requested a summary of first-quarter fund performance ahead of investor meetings. Using Vena, the FP&A team assembled key performance metrics and industry comparisons in minutes, providing leadership with timely, trusted insights.
“We were able to pull together a stack of very positive metrics in minutes,” Jeff said. “We could do that because we knew the numbers were right.”
Today, Vena serves as the foundation for a broader vision of connected planning and reporting across Noble Investment Group. What began as an FP&A initiative is already expanding to support additional teams that rely on financial and operational data.
Jeff sees significant opportunities ahead as the organization continues to extend access to trusted information throughout the business. “I think we’ve just scratched the surface of Vena,” says Jeff. “The value compounds when more people can access the data they need, exactly the way they want to see it, with confidence that it’s accurate.”
One of the biggest benefits of Vena is trust. That trust builds confidence, allowing our team to be very quick and agile.”
Jeff Pennington
Vice President, Financial Planning & Analysis, Noble Investment Group