In the business world, all data typically stored in a spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) is sensitive data. And for that reason, you should do whatever it takes to keep it secure at all times. There’s never a good time to take a risk and that includes internal personnel who are working with and sharing spreadsheets consistently. A quick online search will help you better understand why Excel security is so important. For example, this article outlines how hackers turn Excel’s features against it. The possibility that someone can hack your Excel files isn’t meant to scare you, but rather it’s a reminder of how important it is to secure your data. There are three available options for securing Excel data: File level protection   Workbook level protection Worksheet level protection These sound similar—and in some ways they are—but there are many differences that will help you decide which one is best. Let’s look at your options within each category. 1. File Level Protection This is the most common form of protection as it allows you to lock down your Excel file with the use of a password. Without a password, a user can’t open or modify the spreadsheet.  You have two options if you’re interested in using an Excel file security password: Creating a password to open or modify a file: This option allows you to create a password that’s used to open or modify a file. It’s best for when you need to give others, such as co-workers or suppliers, edit or read-only access.  File encryption: This allows you to set a password and lock the file. This keeps others from opening it. You can also do the following at the file level: Mark as final: You can use this to mark your file as the final version, which prohibits other users from altering it.  Digital signature: Microsoft states that a “signature confirms that the information originated from the signer and has not been altered.”  Restrict access: This option works if your company uses Information Rights Management (IRM) to manage permissions.  Vena offers a series of file level protection that goes beyond the basic Excel file security. Our EPM software uses best-of-breed technologies and stringent operational processes to ensure that customer data is safe at all times. Vena’s security highlights include: A strong Secure Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) AES 256-bit encryption of customer data keys are managed using Amazon’s Key Management System (KMS) Extensive internal vulnerability scanning and management, with annual independent penetration testing reports available to customers on demand SAML 2.0 Single Sign-On and IP whitelisting Customer data isolation Multi-factor authentication Secure data transfers—all data is transmitted over HTTPS using TLS1.2 encryption Learn more about our security features here. 2. Workbook Level Protection A big part of your workforce planning strategy is designed around helping employees and departments work in a frictionless environment. When multiple people have access to an Excel workbook, you should consider locking the structure that you’ve created. This requires others to use a password to make changes. For example, when you lock the workbook structure, other users no longer have the ability to add, delete or rename worksheets. This comes in handy particularly when you have multiple connected workbooks and you need to be sure that structure remains consistent across departments or teams. Vena’s Role Based Access Control allows you to set per-user permissions to all of your data. This system allows for fine-grained access control, enforcing segregation of duties within an organization to maintain compliance with internal and external data controls. Vena also provides a complete audit trail for all spreadsheet, document and budget versions. Users can view any version and roll-back to previous versions in just a few clicks. And each spreadsheet and document version is date, time and user stamped to improve accountability. 3. Worksheet Level Protection If you want to control how users use worksheets, this form of Excel security is best. It allows you to specify what a user can and can’t do, with the idea of keeping your data safe and as well as customizing the intended user experience. For example, you may want to specifically prohibit users from using Sort and AutoFilter. They can still view the worksheet and do other things, but they’re prohibited from these functions. To "softly" secure your data, you might combine hiding rows or columns and applying worksheet protection. This can be a convenient way to hide drivers and assumptions you may want to remain out of view. Vena offers continuous data backups as part of our security enforcement. We perform full backups of your data every day so you can recover your data from any date (up to one year in the past). And our EPM tools offer the replication of backups into an entire separate region (where available), ensuring that your data is protected even in the worst case scenario. Is One Type of Excel Security Protection Best? There’s no simple answer to this question. It depends on your organization, your role and what you’re trying to accomplish.  At Vena we prioritize the security and integrity of our customers’ data. That’s why our EPM software uses best-of-breed technologies and stringent operational processes to ensure that customer data is safe at all times. Outside of our solution, the best thing you can do is master the ins and outs of each type of protection to keep your sensitive Excel files secure. That will help you use the right one at the right time. Here is some general guidance that can help you get started: Use file level protection to control user access: For instance, if you have a budget Excel file that you don’t want anyone outside of your department to see, you can keep it private with file level protection. By encrypting the file, a password is needed to open it.  Use workbook level protection to control how people use worksheets: It’s common to have a workbook that houses multiple worksheets, such as if you’re a sales manager who wants a separate sheet for each sales representative. This type of protection allows each rep to add data to their own worksheet without the ability to modify any others in the workbook.  Use worksheet level protection to control how people work with individual worksheets: Reformatting worksheets over and over again is time consuming. This level of protection allows you to control what users can and can’t do.  There’s a good possibility that you’ll use all three types of protections in a business setting.  Furthermore, it’s common to change protections, such as when you bring a new employee into your department or an employee is terminated.  We're Keeping Security at the Forefront At Vena, we understand that many organizations lean on Excel to store, track and measure data. While Excel is a powerful and secure tool in its own right, our enterprise level security takes it to the next level. Our performance management software allows you to control data access and drill down into the history of a spreadsheet so you know who has been in your templates and where your numbers are coming from. Rather than constantly worrying about Excel security, use this information to keep your data safe and secure at all times. 

As we all continue to navigate today’s ever-changing business environment, finance teams everywhere are doubling down on scenario analysis. Now more than ever, addressing those “what-if” questions and preparing your business in advance for any number of potential scenarios is one of your finance team’s biggest priorities. After all, as this Deloitte report points out, “Stakeholder expectations for information and insights will increase dramatically” by 2025. Monthly or quarterly forecasting cycles just won’t be enough for finance teams because you’ll need to know immediately how today’s business decisions will impact tomorrow. “Finance goes real time,” the report proclaims—and that’s why what-if analysis is so important to embrace. Agile scenario modeling is easier said than done, though, especially if you’re wrestling with spreadsheets and aggregating data from multiple source systems. Vena’s Complete Planning platform makes scenario modeling simple by integrating all your data sources into one central planning hub—and now it’s even easier to adjust your data models in response to change. Our Spring ‘21 Product Release features a refreshed Modeler UI, which includes several usability improvements and tweaks to the modeler’s look and feel. Read on to discover how Vena’s New Modeler can help you perform quick, thorough and reliable what-if analysis—and ultimately give you the confidence to prepare your business for anything. A Simplified Layout for Managing Multiple Data Models Modeler Landing Page The most obvious difference between the old modeler and the new one is a simpler, more user-friendly interface. We’ve added a new landing page where you can view all of your models in list format, instead of having to select them from a crowded drop-down menu. This makes it easy to switch quickly between the models you’re working on and to add new data models when your business requirements change.  New Modeler Landing Page Redesigned Members Page Once you’ve selected a data model to work on, the redesigned Members layout displays all your modeling dimensions across the top of the page. This can help you determine which specific dimensions (account, entity, product line, etc.) are contributing to the results in your data model. You can also move quickly between dimensions and add members, remove members or edit your member hierarchy on demand. This would be particularly useful if you’re gauging the profitability of a new warehouse, for example, or if your company is restructuring and you need to merge multiple business units.  New Members Page You’ll Have More Control Over Your Models With Bulk Member Movements, Saved Versioning, Data Previews and Revisions Tracking Responding to change quickly and tweaking your models on the fly is a crucial piece of the puzzle when you’re analyzing potential business scenarios. That’s why Vena’s New Modeler was wired for “self-service” flexibility and speed—because your finance team needs the freedom to assess your business decisions from every angle. Bulk Member Movements In Vena’s old modeling environment, moving individual data points within your dimensions had to be done one by one. But today, with the new Bulk Member Movement feature, you can move multiple members at once and restructure your data models instantly. This is especially helpful if you have new data points coming in through an ERP integration—or if you want to start experimenting with a new organizational structure and roll-up reporting hierarchy. New Bulk Member Movement Feature Saved Versioning Vena’s advanced versioning tool is the backbone of our scenario modeling functionality. With the New Modeler experience, we’ve updated the versioning tool with two major enhancements: 1) A save button and 2) a much simpler interface for selecting the dimensions to include in your analysis.  Let’s say, for example, that you want to use this year’s actuals as the starting point for next year’s budget model—and then experiment with three different spending scenarios to chart the best path forward for your business. Instead of creating those three different budget scenarios from scratch, you could just copy your budget automatically into three versions with different names before adjusting the inputs and dimension filters. You wouldn’t even have to run the scenarios in order to save them to the Vena database, which makes it easier to stay organized and keep track of your potential outcomes. New Saved Versioning Tool Improved Data Preview Window In Vena’s world, data points that are defined by multiple dimensions in your data model are called “intersections.” Our modeler has always allowed you to preview your data before versioning scenarios, but the New Modeler experience has made the preview window a lot cleaner. Now you’ll see an organized table that returns more detailed results—ultimately making it simple to ensure your data model is properly configured.   New Data Preview Window Detailed Revisions Tracking Much like the versioning tool, Vena’s audit trail functionality is an essential aspect of our Modeler. In order to make sure your scenarios are always reliable and accurate, you need to be able to track when your teammates go in and make changes. That way, as an administrator, you’ll be able to vet those revisions yourself before sharing your data models with decisions makers. It’ll also help you weed out mistakes and maintain 100% confidence in your numbers—even as your what-if analysis efforts get more complicated as your business evolves. The old modeler featured a drop down menu where revisions were listed in order. We’ve replaced that with a detailed table view so you can see exactly what was changed in your data model, when the change was applied, and by whom. New Revisions Tracking Window Easier Attribute Management for More Clearly Defined Dimensions Categorizing the various members in your dimensional hierarchy with attributes (such as currency, product categories, reporting package, etc.) will help keep your data models clean. With Vena’s New Modeler, you don’t have to look very far to identify relationships between data points—because instead of forcing you to manage all your attributes from a separate tab, you can now add, remove, edit and search for attributes from the Members Page. Attribute filters will also help you build alternate views of your data model so you can uncover hidden insights when testing assumptions and modeling scenarios. New Attribute Management Experience See Vena's New Modeler in Action  As of April 13th, 2021, current Vena customers can enable the New Modeler from their Vena tenant. You can also click the link below for an interactive walkthrough of the new functionality. It’s important to keep in mind that no matter where you are on your finance team’s growth journey, the need for agile scenario analysis is only going to increase. Finding the right solutions to make the job easier is crucial—because you can’t make decisions today without assessing their impact on tomorrow.

The financial close process is essential to understanding and verifying your company’s true financial position.  While that sounds simple enough, the year-end financial close process has the potential to bog you down on many fronts. If you don’t know what’s working, what’s not working and—most importantly—how to fix it, you’ll continually head down the same path. On the plus side, there’s no shortage of steps you can take to improve your company’s year-end financial closing process. It all starts with a thorough review of your current month-end and year-end closing processes. This gives you all the information and insights you need to take the appropriate action. What Is Meant by Financial Close? Financial close is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a recurring process during which accounting teams “close the books” on a specific period of time, such as a month or fiscal year.  During this process, account balances are thoroughly reviewed and reconciled in order to identify any irregularities and errors that need to be addressed. Financial statements are then produced in order to provide a detailed look into your company’s financial position for key decision-making stakeholders such as investors, lenders, and management-level employees.  Ultimately, the financial close process tracks the health of your company through the aggregation of the data produced by these financial reports. Month-end vs. Year-end Close: How They Work As previously mentioned, accountants typically perform the financial close process at the end of every month or at the end of a fiscal year. In each of these scenarios, your company may create different reports, depending on the stakeholders receiving them. The two closing processes are very closely related, with each month-end close feeding into the accuracy of your year-end procedures. There is the option to reconcile accounts on a quarter-end basis, however this method of managing accounts can lead to missed The month-end financial close process allows you to catch errors before they turn into major dilemmas down the line. By making this a monthly process, your close is not extended and your company will benefit from timely reports.  The closer you’re able to complete the closing process at month’s end, the better off you will be when year-end closing rolls around. Otherwise, you will likely set yourself up for troubling reconciliations—specifically with intercompany and interfund transactions. Establishing a set of rules for your month-end vs. year-end financial close process is essential to accurate and consistent reporting, as each process impacts the accuracy and efficiency of the other. A fast close is possible on a monthly basis if you have tight processes and good tools in place, ultimately leading to better strategic decision making year over year. Typical Issues With the Financial Close Process The way you close out the financial year is unique to your company. However, some basic issues have the potential to cause trouble for every business, regardless of size or industry. Here are five typical issues with the year-end closing process: 1. No Defined Process If you’re going to close out the financial year the right way—and that’s your hope—you must have a defined process. Even if the process isn’t perfect, it’s a starting point to build from and you can make any necessary changes moving forward. In some companies, there is not a seamless or well-established closing process. Instead, it comes down to nothing more than a group of employees relying on their memory and knowledge to make the best of the situation. That’s not a viable, accurate, or long-term approach. That’s a cluster of people who are scrambling to collect documents, rushing others to provide the applicable information, and hoping that everything comes together by the deadline.  2. No (Or Little) Automation There used to be a time when the year-end closing process relied solely on human input. And while that’s still necessary to a certain degree, there are more tools than ever before for automating the process.  Without automated capabilities, you’ll continually run into issues such as: Delays completing tasks, such as collecting expense receipts from salespeople Two or more people working on the same task(s) Working extra hours in hopes of meeting key deadlines Greater number of mistakes Automation is no longer the future. It’s the here and now. When you automate the year-end financial closing process, you increase your speed, reduce mistakes and put less stress on yourself and your team.  3. Scrambling To Find Data This issue can take time to fix, but the sooner you address it, the sooner you can find a solution. The year-end closing process is full of data, data and more data. But if you don’t have access to what you need when you need it, it’s a challenge to efficiently move through the process. Let’s assume that you have to collect expense-related data from several departments. While it sounds simple, that’s only the case if you have a standardized system in place. Without this, some employees and departments will forget to send the data. Additionally, those that do will share the data in different formats, making it a challenge to organize. 4. Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen This doesn’t mean you should tackle the entire process on your own. But it does mean to beware of having “too many cooks in the kitchen.” The more people involved with the year-end financial closing process, the greater the chance for mix-ups and time delays. You know how many people you need to get the job done. Assign them tasks and deadlines, track their progress and manage the process as a whole.  When you have unnecessary people in your “kitchen,” it’ll only complicate matters.  5. Lack of a Post-Close Review The last thing you’re thinking about during the year-end closing process is what will happen next year. And once the process is behind you, you won’t want to think about it for quite some time. That’s a big mistake. A post-close review is just as important as the process itself. This is what you’ll use to fine-tune your approach for the following year.  During your post-close review, you can address questions such as: What went wrong? What went right? What types of changes are necessary? Do you need more help? Less help? Were there any delays? What was the cause? Even though it’s not your idea of fun, conducting a post-close review will benefit you in the long run. You’ll thank yourself for it 12 months in the future.  How to Improve the Closing Process At this point, you have a clear understanding of typical issues associated with the financial closing process. But that’s not good enough. You need to implement a solution (or solutions). The good thing is that there are many ways to address the issues above while also improving your closing process as a whole. Here is a solution for every problem listed above: 1. Define a Process  If you don’t have a defined process, now’s the time to create one. Here are the basic steps for doing so: Decide who you want to involve in the closing process Make a list of tasks and responsibilities by mapping workflows Build stable internal controls to prevent miscues Implement technology to save you time and reduce headaches Remember this: Every step during the financial closing process should add value. If it’s a time-waster or something that doesn’t move the process forward, eliminate it.  2. Automate as Much as You Can Automation technology is available in almost every industry imaginable and that definitely holds true for financial professionals.  This Deloitte’s report touches heavily on automation and its benefits.  “Automation brings clear benefits to the close process in terms of efficiency, transparency, and speed. In finance organizations that are lacking automated capabilities, tasks are often delayed simply when a key member of the team is on vacation or out sick.” It’s natural to hide from technology, especially if you’re used to the system that you have in place. But if you ever want to take a step forward in regards to efficiency, transparency, speed and accuracy, automation technology — powered by Vena — is a must.  3. Implement a Standardized Data Collection System Scrambling at year-end to collect data is no fun. You’re under a tight deadline so you don’t have long to wait around. The problem is that the people who have what you need may also be working on year-end projects.  The solution to this problem is implementing a standardized system for data collection, such as providing the necessary employees with access to a shared spreadsheet. In other words, you want everyone in your company—from top to bottom—to provide data in the same manner. You don’t want one person sending you an email, another sharing a spreadsheet and others using Slack. This puts pressure and stress on you as you then have to collate the data before you can do anything else.  4. Set a Defined Team Help is a good thing when it comes to your year-end financial closing process. But remember this: more is not always better. If you have too many cooks in the kitchen, disagreements are more likely to happen. Also, this increases the odds of overlapping work, which eats into time that could be used to complete other tasks.  All key players — primarily accounting personnel — should have a clear set of tasks and responsibilities. Everything they do should add value to the process. Should you find that there are too many people pulling the closing process in different directions, review your team to pinpoint the key players.  5. Create a Post-Close Review Process  You spend so much time working through the actual closing process that it’s easy to overlook what comes next. The post-close review process is essential to your future success. Without this, you won’t know what went right, what went wrong and how to make changes for the better. Customize your post-close review based on your team’s performance and future goals. Here’s what the process might look like:  Determining when to start the closing process in the future Understanding what type of data you do (and don’t need) Deciding who should and shouldn’t be involved in the closing process Reassessing and reassigning responsibilities Organizing closing documents for future reference A comprehensive post-close review process will help you better prepare for next year by ensuring that you have an accurate and stable foundation to build from.  Financial Close Checklist  You must customize your financial close checklist to match your business. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.  Adding to this, the month-end financial close process and the year-end financial close process will share some differences. The primary difference is that the month-end closing process only takes into consideration one month of business. Conversely, the year-end process brings together 12 months’ worth of data.  Here’s a good start to any month-end or year-end financial close checklist: 1. Gather Financial Statements  Your financial statements give you an in-depth look at the overall health of your business. And with that, executives can make more informed decisions. At the very least, you should gather the following financial statements: Cash flow statement Income statement Balance sheet Not only are financial statements important to the month and year-end closing processes, but they’ll come in handy during tax season. 2. Collect Past Due Invoices This is a particularly important step during the year-end financial closing process. Do your best to collect money that’s owed to you before the calendar turns. Some steps you can add to your collection strategy include: Setting up payment terms Sending out regular payment reminders Establishing a payment plan Offering to accept different forms of payment The longer past due invoices linger, the more difficult they are to collect. Also, when you carry these invoices from year to year, it can cause confusion on the accounting front.  3. Collect the Necessary Forms and Data The forms and data you need depend on the size and type of business, as well as company structure.  In regards to forms, be sure that you have a W-4 on file for every employee. And if you use contractors, they’ll need to complete a W-9.  Note: This article explains the difference between W-4 and W-9 forms. Data includes things such as employee expenses, revenue numbers, the value of assets and liabilities.  4. Review Payroll Accounting and payroll records are a big part of any financial closing process, regardless of the time of year.  Your payroll records must be accurate and up to date, allowing you to continue seamlessly into the next month or new year or. Pay close attention to details such as: Total payroll The total cost of benefits Withheld tax amounts Year-end bonuses Take this one step further by creating a year-end payroll processing checklist.  5. Reconcile Bank Accounts Reconciling bank accounts is the process of cross-checking your accounting records against your bank records for accuracy. The best way to do this is by comparing the information on your bank statements to your accounting records. Does the balance on your bank statements match your accounting records? If not, what’s the reason for the discrepancy? If you take the time to reconcile your bank accounts monthly, there’s less chance of running into a complex problem at the end of the year.  Closing Out the Financial Year With Excel  There are many ways to close out the financial year, but it’s critical to choose the approach that’s best for your company. Using Excel for financial close management is an option to strongly consider as it provides benefits such as: Familiarity: You already use Excel for day-to-day operations. Technology can complicate things: Your focus should be on business insights, not complex technology. Excel is a program that you know and understand.  Accuracy: For more than 35 years, businesses have been using Excel for everything from tracking data to accounting—and that’s just the start. With a long track record of providing accurate results, you’ll have peace of mind. Scalability: A system that can’t easily scale is a system that’ll eventually let you down. Vena can scale alongside your company’s growth, including revenue and employee count. With Vena, you can scale and transform your close process without abandoning Excel. If you want to close your books with confidence—and it’s safe to say that you do—with Vena, you can manage the year-end financial close process with the flexibility and familiarity of Excel while gaining trust in your numbers. Vena in Action: Cut Month-End Close Times by 50%  As we’ve discussed within this guide, an efficient and accurate financial closing process is essential for every finance team. However, reconciling accounts and closing the books can be a sluggish and difficult process when reporting on multiple business units each month. That’s the problem Capstone Infrastructure had before getting introduced to Vena. Capstone Infrastructure is an independent Canadian power producer, serving the clean energy sector with 24 facilities across the country. They were dealing with significant quality control issues, data integrity, and a lack of standardization. Completing the financial close process using offline spreadsheets didn’t help the matter. After implementing Vena, they were able to focus on improving data accuracy, reducing the amount of time spent on reconciliation, and standardizing the month-end financial close process—all in one central database. Vena’s capabilities empowered Capstone to reduce their month-end close times by 50%, decreasing from 10 days to just 5. “Vena has truly transformed our financial reporting capability and significantly reduced our errors and the time it takes to complete our financial close process. By setting up standardized and largely automated templates in Vena, we have cut our monthly close process in half.” Devendra Kalwani (Finance Manager, Capstone Infrastructure Corp.) Read the full case study here.

Is your financial close process slowing you down and leaving you feeling like it’s the same old problems, just a different month? Then it’s about time you learn how to close your books faster and with more confidence so you can get your time back. Join us at PlanToGrow.com for The Financial Close Livestream on November 16, 2021 from 12:00–3:30 PM where you’ll get to connect with industry leaders, Vena Experts and your peers and learn how to master financial close management. Plan to Grow Livestreams bring finance, operations and business leaders together throughout the year for a half-day, live and interactive digital experience specific to seasonal needs and challenges. At the Financial Close Livestream, you’ll get to: Learn best practices and methods for tackling year-end planning from industry experts See how to transform financial close management processes with the combined might of Vena and Excel Discover how leading organizations optimize their financial close process Learn, connect and grow with a community of finance and accounting peers Earn up to 3 CPE/CPD credits For the first part of the afternoon, Vena’s very own VP of FP&A Tom Seegmiller and VP of Finance Muneerah Kanji will kick things off in the keynote, Excel at More With Financial Close. You’ll learn how to close with confidence in a virtual world, from mapping workflows to building internal controls and other best practices that will help you scale with speed, accuracy and greater visibility. Following the keynote is the Modern Finance Financial Close Panel, where you’ll meet Vena’s Chief Solutions Architect and Co-founder Rishi Grover, John Power (Founder and COO, Fluence), Christine Harms (Controller, Arizona Cardinals) and Brian Carlson (VP Financial Planning, Otter Tail). During this discussion, you’ll find out how leading finance professionals are transforming their financial close process with automation, data integration, enhanced performance analysis and more, without abandoning Excel. In the second half of the afternoon, Michelle Canada (Director of Financial Planning, Tanger Outlets) will be joining Rishi and Tom for The Formula To Scale Your Financial Close. In this talk, you’ll discover how forward-thinking companies are leveraging Excel through the power of the Vena Growth Engine to accelerate account reconciliation, simplify complex financial consolidations, drive collaboration and save time with their financial close. Following this session and closing off the afternoon, we’ll be holding two Financial Close Interactive Demos, one exclusively for Vena customers, with Vena Experts. Experience Vena firsthand in these live demos as our Experts guide you through our financial close solution and answer all of your questions. To learn more about all of our speakers, click here. An afternoon of expert advice, industry best practices, the formula and technology to improve and scale your financial close process is all it will take to help you close your books confidently and in record time. Oh, and did we mention it’s free? All you have to do is save your spot.

Let’s talk about the power behind data analytics. Data analytics can drive your organization forward, help with strategic decision making, give you a visual way to effectively become a data storyteller and measure if you are meeting your business objectives.  That leads to an important question: what’s the best way to use data analytics? There’s no right or wrong answer, but Microsoft Power BI makes it easy to create a data-driven culture with business intelligence for every team member.  In this blog, we’re going to highlight three reasons why you and your organization should be using Power BI (if you aren’t already), to reap the rewards of data analytics.  1. Power BI Gives You Data Readiness  Data preparation is important to ensure you can effectively meet your business’s objectives and its needs. And with Power BI, you can bring self-service data preparation capabilities into the picture so your data is ready for any type of analysis.  What does this mean exactly for you and your organization? What is Power BI? Power BI allows you to easily understand, clean, transform and integrate your data from a large pool of data sources. You can also easily create data flows by leveraging Power Query.  According to this Microsoft article, Power BI moved from a previous ETL-based logic for datasets to current dataflows with  ELT logic elevated to a first-class artifact within Power BI. Power BI also has the added benefit of storing data in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, simply meaning that your organization’s business analysts, data engineers and data scientists can collaborate on the same data together. That feature makes data preparation a lot smoother. The Power BI dashboard supports the Common Data Model (CDM), which is essentially a set of standard data schemas and metadata systems that will allow for standardized consistency across the platform.  And as Gartner points out, Power BI is known for its capabilities of augmented analytics and automated ML, as well as AI-powered services, such as text sentiment and image analytics, all contributing to your data readiness. 2. Power BI Is Inclusive, With High Software Adaptability and Usability Power BI is powerful for its data analytics capabilities, but an even more impressive attribute is that it’s known for its high adaptability and usability. Power BI is designed in an accessible way so that different users, regardless of their roles, can access and understand data reports quite easily.  According to this Microsoft article, Power BI also designs reports to “enable users who may have visual or physical impairments to benefit from your reports.” Ventana’s 2021 research ranked Power BI at 74.3% in terms of adaptability and 78.4% in terms of usability. Power BI is also included with the broader Office 365 package. According to Gartner’s 2021 research, “the inclusion of Power BI in the Office 365 E5 SKU has provided an enormous channel for the platform’s spread, making it ‘self-seeding’ in many organizations.”  Power BI’s integration with Office 365 makes it easier for Office users to begin working with the data analytical program. Power BI also has the added benefit of a low cost of entry, therefore creating one of the most powerful BI tools on the market at a price point that is accessible. 3. How To Use Power BI’s Intuitive Analytics and Easy Access Features When you utilize Power BI, you gain access to all of its latest features, from report and dashboard creation, report themes, table formatting and all the new ways to organize your workspace. A Power BI report gives your team the freedom to expand its capabilities in working with your data. Vena also integrates with Power BI, giving you access to all our latest features and connectors such as: Decomposition Tree With Vena’s Power BI integration, you have access to project data visualizations that you can filter by your organization’s department to see how specific departments are contributing to revenue.  You can also see the data over a selected series of time, with the ability to dive into each dimension so that you can do in-depth, cross-dimensional analysis of the data. This is an extremely powerful feature. For example, with a Power BI report, you can quickly see what the key influencers are and where you should be paying attention. If you are making a stand-alone Excel report with this kind of data, you will have to manually drill down into specific regions to see what’s performing best for revenue, but with Power BI users can go into specific accounts and divide it into different dimensions and see the key drivers for your business. By using Excel alone, generating insights can be extremely time consuming as you build specific queries. It’s not how you want to be spending your time. Key Influencers Key influencers in a Power BI report allow you to visualize what members and dimensions have the most influence. So for example, a rate increase, if sales increased by 20% last year, what exactly influenced that the most? What is the investment in expenses? Incentives? This feature quickly illustrates the top influencers to help make the right decisions. At the bottom, you see the impact (the % or dollar value) and count (specific clients, new logo clients). Explain Increases / Decreases Power BI can pinpoint exactly how an increase or decrease happened over a period of time between two data points. For example, if you see a large increase or decrease in sales between two years, you can pinpoint exactly when and why that may have occurred. With Power BI and Vena, the analysis is performed with the click of a button. Goals  Power BI users can track goals and see who on your team contributes to each goal. Power BI even has visual progress tracking integrated. This feature becomes important when you have finance and operations managers tracking goals since they will be able to see quickly where things may be tracking ahead or behind. Power BI gives you the ability to know instantly when to make a change if there is a problem because you can see who is at risk of not meeting their goal. Smart Narratives Smart narratives are key for any team to obtain timely takeaways, trends and other pertinent report information. Smart narratives help you tell a story through your data in Power BI. The best part? Since Power BI is integrated with Office, instead of pasting screenshots of the key takeaways from your data reports, you can add narratives that are updated with every refresh across Office programs such as PowerPoint. Start Using Power BI Now These are our top three reasons why you and your organization should be using Power BI reports to help drive your organization forward, enable strategic decision making and master effective data storytelling. And while data is on your mind, learn more about our Power BI Connector. With this, you can supplement your FP&A processes with business intelligence and visual data analytics from Microsoft Power BI. And best yet, there’s no technical experience required. You don’t need formal Power BI training, but should you require integration assistance, we’re here every step of the way. 

Here at Vena, we’re always working on creating the best version of our product. That’s why this month, you can look forward to using our new modeler wizard feature. Read on to discover three ways our new modeler wizard can help make your finance and operations planning so much easier.  1. Learn Best Practices for Business Data Modeling With our new modeler wizard, you can learn the best practices for data models. You can use a standard data model template based on our own expert recommendations, or you can customize and build your data model yourself. With Vena’s recommended model, you have eight standard dimensions that are included as part of Vena best practices. Each standard dimension includes a pre-built hierarchy. You can edit the name associated with each dimension and add additional dimensions as well. Once you save your model, you will be redirected to the Vena data model list which will automatically refresh to show your new data model. 2. Full Customization Is Still Possible Sometimes you know what you want when it comes to building out your models. That’s why our modeler wizard allows you to fully customize your own models with our “configure your own model” tool.  While the wizard functions as a starting point, with the standard dimensions being based on industry best practices, users can still add their own dimensions, as needed. This feature is available in both the standard model and the "build your own" model option.  You can add your own dimensions by selecting the Add Dimension button and selecting from the drop-down list. You can choose from standard dimensions or create your own by selecting the Add new option at the bottom of the drop-down.   3. A More Formalized and Guided Process of Creating a Data Model When you are building out a new business model, following modeling best practices is key to helping you develop the best version of your business model. Vena provides a guided solution that takes you through a series of steps to build your model. For example, Vena provides naming conventions for modeler data and also provides eight standard dimensions within the recommended model.