This year’s Excelerate Summit was jam-packed with announcements about what’s next for the Vena FP&A platform, including the general availability of Vena Copilot for Microsoft Teams. This all-new integration is designed to bring dedicated FP&A expertise and insights into your business’s real-time flow of work and usher in a new era for the Strategic Office of Finance. You can get more details from our announcement here.
Our Chief Technology Officer and Head of Product and Technology, Hugh Cumming, sat down with us to share some insights into the planning and launch of Vena Copilot for Teams as well as what’s next for our Copilot suite.
Why now for the Teams integration?
Hugh Cumming: Our Teams integration is the next phase of our market-leading integration with the Microsoft Office 365 Productivity suite. This will give our customers and their business partners more ways to interact with planning data managed within the Vena platform and leverage our best-in-class AI copilots and agents within a familiar interface.
What are the features you’re most proud of with Vena Copilot for Teams?
HC: One of the questions we always ask ourselves with a new solution is: “How easy is it to use?” Vena Copilot for Teams is so easy to integrate that users can ask our agents questions or assign them tasks and receive responses and outputs without ever leaving Teams. On top of that, users can collaborate on a Vena template during a live Teams meeting without leaving the platform, thanks to our Excel-native interface and the Excel Live tool.
Where did the idea to build Vena Copilot for Teams next come from?
HC: We’ve heard from our customers that they’re looking for more ways to engage budget owners and seamlessly integrate Vena into their flow of work. We are also seeing that Teams is becoming a primary interface for collaboration among budget owners and contributors. We anticipate that trend is going to continue, so we thought it was a perfect time to introduce this integration with our agentic AI solutions to streamline budget owners’ flow of work.
What is Vena’s approach to developing new solutions like Vena Copilot for Teams?
HC: We take a two-pronged approach. First, we work with customers directly to understand how they are using Vena and where we can improve their experience. Second, we consistently invest heavily into our technology and instrumentation to help accelerate the development of new solutions that can act as an extra pair of hands where our customers’ FP&A teams need them most.
What’s next for Vena’s agentic AI?
HC: We see our agents (the Reporting Agent, the Analytics Agent, and the upcoming Planning Agent) being available across every part of the Vena platform, significantly reducing the knowledge required to do advanced configurations while directly handling much of the day-to-day analytical and reporting work at the same time.
What are AI agents and how are they transforming FP&A? Find out here.
How does Vena’s AI strategy coincide with the Microsoft technology ecosystem and its roadmap?
HC: Microsoft Copilot is becoming the front door for the Microsoft Office 365 Productivity Suite, and we are fully aligned with enabling our customers to move more seamlessly between Vena and other Microsoft applications. Our AI strategy leverages the most up-to-date and latest tools from Microsoft and Azure OpenAI to deliver the best AI experience and productivity gains for our customers.
The Future of FP&A is here, and already in the meeting.
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