Today, Excelerate =SUM(it) was all about agility, adaptability and staying ahead of the curve. From contemporary skills for strategic finance professionals to best practices on effectively implementing change within your organization, our thought leaders provided plenty of food for thought on powering your personal and professional growth while driving optimal business outcomes—even in the face of today’s challenging market conditions. Our all-star speaker lineup included Microsoft MVP Megan Strant, “The FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst, Vena VP of Finance Muneerah Kanji, Vena Senior Consultant Vern Redwood and a panel discussion led by Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen, featuring Venanites Tom Seegmiller, Burzin Contractor and Laura Victoria. Read on for our highlights from day four of Vena's third annual virtual conference. Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand. Agile Business Forecasting Best Practices     Speakers: Laura Victoria, VP, Global Talent Acquisition, Vena; Burzin Contractor, CPA, VP, Revenue Operations and Strategy, Vena; Tom Seegmiller, CPA, CA, VP, FP&A, Vena; Shaun Jansen, VP, Sales, Vena Today, finance teams are at the forefront of change—leading their businesses as they plan for today and tomorrow. With this responsibility comes the need for a new way of working: an agile methodology for business forecasting.  Agile business forecasting is about more than just informing quick decision making. It’s about planning differently, growing smarter and harnessing change. In today’s session, led by Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen and featuring fellow Venanites VP of FP&A Tom Seegmiller, VP of Revenue Operations and Strategy Burzin Contractor and VP of Global Talent Acquisition Laura Victoria, the panelists shared best practices for connected planning across finance, human resources and revenue operations to drive agility and resilience in the face of ever-changing business conditions.  Throughout the lively session, the trio (or the “three legs of a stool that support the business''—we’ll get to that shortly) shared their own personal experiences of achieving cross-functional alignment at Vena and how adopting an agile approach to business forecasting helped them get to where they are today. Shaun kicked off the conversation by asking the panelists how they define agile business forecasting through the lens of their respective functions—finance, human resources and revenue operations. “To me, agile forecasting means keeping up with the times,” said Tom. “It means not tethering yourself to a plan that you perhaps set at the beginning of a fiscal year and instead adopting and adapting as a business to ongoing changes in the macro economic environment. This includes changes in competition within your industry, regularly looking for new opportunities within the business, mitigating against any potential risks that could pop up and ultimately updating your plan on a regular basis so that it reflects the realities of your business.” So does the way in which agile business forecasting is defined depend on which function you work in? Laura weighed in with her definition from a human resources perspective. “You know, it actually doesn't differ at all. I think what Tom said is entirely spot on. When I think back over the last two years from a talent perspective, I don't think we could have necessarily anticipated the labor market conditions that we find ourselves in right now—and I think this is universal across industries,” Laura explained. “I've been part of organizations that have had a single forecast or plan for talent for the year and have ultimately had to throw it by the wayside because the market conditions simply no longer allowed for it. So it has this downstream impact with regards to our ability as a talent function to support the business because there was no agility with regards to the forecast. We were entirely unprepared for the market conditions we found ourselves in.” Lastly, Burzin weighed in through the lens of revenue operations. “The way I see agile forecasting is as a ‘play’ to ultimately achieve our desired business outcomes. It allows us to make business decisions on a more timely basis, deploy resources and react accordingly to business information in real time as we receive it.” By exercising a finance muscle that many other companies simply aren’t yet using, agile forecasting gives finance teams an advantage—ensuring the best processes and practices are in place to anticipate and adapt to whatever uncertainty arises throughout the course of the fiscal year, as Tom explained. “Working within a business with all the dynamics and assumptions at play over the course of a year—and then expecting to be correct at the outset—is probably not an accurate assumption on our part,” he said. “You’re obviously going to try to achieve the best plan based on the information that you have today, but I think it’s good to acknowledge that what you have is imperfect information and the world is going to change and you're going to get better information over time—and you're going to want that opportunity to be able to course correct and tweak your plan accordingly.” When asked how businesses can get started with agile business forecasting, Tom recommended beginning by sharing your vision and getting buy-in from your cross-functional partners in crime.  “I think the starting point is to make that decision yourself to say, ‘I want to operate differently as a finance organization,’ and then start with your partners in crime. In this instance, I'm calling my partners in crime the people team and the revenue operations team. I think about us as sort of ‘three legs of a stool’ that are supporting the business,” Tom explained. “So go to your partners in crime and share your vision with them. Tell them how you see operating differently and get their buy-in. Then, if all of you approach the business with a united front and say, ‘We truly believe that this is the optimal way to operate our business,’ the likelihood of the business accepting that in light of all of the changes that will have to occur to make it happen increases in leaps and bounds.” And what about the benefits of agile business forecasting? Tom focused on two elements in particular: risk mitigation and having the ability to be opportunistic. “There are really two things that agile planning or rolling forecasts bring to the table. One, it gives you the opportunity to be opportunistic. How do you not miss out on extraordinary business opportunities through being too tied to a past plan?” Tom explained. “The second is risk mitigation. Over the past couple of years, some organizations have had to course correct just to survive. So [agile planning and rolling forecasts] are equally as valuable and equally important to an organization. I think the risk in not running an agile planning forecast is that your organization remains stagnant and you're either exposing yourself to risk or missing out on awesome opportunities because you failed to adapt.” Beyond the obvious benefits of agile planning, Burzin also discussed the more intangible benefits that improved agility can bring to an organization. “There's certainly a lot of ‘intangibles' to having a strong agile process,” Burzin explained. “For example, from the employee side, I think you see it in their overall sense of happiness. At Vena, we conduct people surveys on a regular basis. And when we've got a strong process in place, strong data for people to work with and when people know how we're doing as a company, the results speak for themselves. They’re more positive. So there's definitely that intangible element to getting this process right.” The conversation then turned to getting buy-in from key stakeholders across the organization and helping them see the advantages of adopting a more agile planning process.   “As things evolve and grow and improve, you find budget owners coming to you saying, ‘I want to talk to you about my next forecast. How do we shave this? How do I help?’ There's an element of excitement that starts to enter the mix,” Tom explained. “To me, that's the point at which you know you've achieved a strong level of business partnering within your organization. When you're no longer begging the business for their time and they’re coming to you instead and saying, ‘I really want to engage you because of the value you bring to this conversation’.” In short, by adopting agile business forecasting best practices, as Tom, Burzin and Laura have demonstrated through Vena’s own experience in achieving cross-functional alignment, you too can turn change into an opportunity to realign your business plans and chart the best course for the future—no matter what that future might look like. Contemporary Skills for Strategic Finance Professionals     Speakers: Paul Barnhurst, The FP&A Guy; Muneerah Kanji, MBA, CPA, CA, VP, Finance, Vena; Olivia MacDonald, CA, Senior Manager, Financial Systems and Operations, Vena; Truman Tang, VP, Customer Lifecycle and Community Marketing, Vena To be a strategic finance professional, which contemporary skills do you need? Vena VP, Customer Lifecycle and Community Marketing Truman Tang who moderated this panel began by asking this question before polling the panelists for what they believed is the most important skill for strategic finance professionals to have in order to thrive right now. The “FP&A Guy” Paul Barnhurst said business partnering, Muneerah Kanji picked leadership and Olivia MacDonald chose agility. Each panelist shared anecdotes about their journey to finance. Olivia discussed her path from auditor to consultant because she wanted to learn about Vena’s Excel-native automation before moving into financial systems and operations. Paul talked about starting in government procurement and Muneerah shared that she first graduated in forensic science. It was a diverse panel—while they share little academic and early career overlap, the one thing they all have in common is they’ve become strategic finance professionals. In a recent FP&A Trends report, it was described that there were five emerging FP&A roles that teams must play to be successful in planning and forecasting to fulfill the demands of the business: architect, analyst, data scientist, storyteller and influencer. Which of these five do our panelists play? For Paul, none of them. He believed that there’s a sixth—interpreter—and a seventh—connector. Paul said he’s a connector and that he’s been doing this for a long time. Olivia saw herself as a connector-architect hybrid (she said they’re in high demand lately because there’s a growth in the volume of finance data and organizations are becoming more siloed). While Muneerah never “claimed” a role, she said teams need every role fulfilled to succeed. This steered the conversation toward additional contemporary skills. The panel seemed to agree on the theme of partnerships and relationship building. They talked about overcommunicating, automation and change management, mentors and mentees, telling a story with data visualization, the many layers of asking “why”—beyond that first, surface-level “why”—and partnering with internal teams. Evolving Relationships With Change Management Methods Speaker: Megan Strant, Microsoft MVP Microsoft MVP Megan Strant led us through the relationships and the different ways in which we can create effective change. She talked about change theories and models, the “Learning Pit,” change agents and concluded by providing change management templates. She defined a change agent as “anyone in an organization who is a catalyst or advocate for change” and change management as the “structured strategic management approach aiming to implement changes effectively.” Megan said anyone can be a change agent. She explained the differences between a change theory and a change model, walking us through three theories—the Bridges Transition Theory, the Kubler-Ross Change Curve and the Nudge Theory—and three models—Lewin’s Change Model, McKinsey’s 7-S Model and ADKAR. As Megan guided us through these, she outlined situations where each would be effective. For example, Lewin’s doesn’t fit today’s world of ongoing change, but it’s effective for creating drastic change. ADKAR isn’t effective for a major transformation, but it’s great for the “people journey.” To Megan, the people journey is crucial to consider in change management. She asked, “What is your role in supporting the journey of others?” As a change agent, you need to acquire trust and to give support. “In your role, you could be explaining data, charts, forecasting or details about ledgers. You’re the expert on that detail and people need to understand and trust you. And supporting them will drive stronger change and results,” she said. “If you’re doing a change management review and an impact assessment, talk to people and support them on their journey.” These were Megan’s five qualities of a successful change agent: Demonstrate flexibility and resilience Recognize growth opportunity Stride for results Lead courageously Gain buy-in Her provided templates—which included detailed program plans, micro/macro impact assessments, the Stakeholder analysis RACI Matrix and more—followed a “plan, assess and teach” approach. Megan’s session taught us a lot about evolving relationships and change management methods, but most importantly, she taught us that anyone can be a change agent. Training: Vena’s Change Management Playbook       Speakers: Vern Redwood, CPA, Senior Consultant, Vena; Naman Gupta, Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager, Vena Change and adaptability are necessities in any business or industry in order to thrive. As technology disrupts and simultaneously ameliorates our workplace practices, it’s essential for businesses to be prepared to navigate change at both macro and micro levels. Today, Vena Senior Consultant Vern Redwood and Vena Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager Naman Gupta walked us through exactly how to implement change management processes to ensure that your organization's adoption of Vena is seamless and rewarding. Building upon the principles of change management to further strengthen partnerships, Vern stressed the importance of storytelling to operationalize the process of adopting Vena. The story goes like this: The Prologue: Set the stage for change, including: Define reasons and goals for change Build out clear, visible project sponsorship Introduce Vena to employees Outline how the system works, how it integrates and the key foreseen benefits Share an estimated roll out date Act 1: Generate desire for change, including: Have a call to action by main finance leader in your organization which reiterates support for change Appoint Vena Champions (employees designated to facilitate the transition) Identify who will require training Act 2: Enable and ensure everyone is involved in the change, including: Schedule training Build a knowledge base of Vena Ensure everyone is able to demonstrate a working knowledge of the software Have training follow ups Create user acceptance testing Act 3: Ensuring the change sticks, including: A clear “Go-Live” announcement Get feedback from users Take stock of what is working and what needs improvement Monitor usage over time Schedule Vena quarterly business reviews According to Vern, the implementation of well-structured storytelling surrounding the implementation and adoption of Vena at your organization ensures that the value of Vena’s functionalities is fully understood and that your team is fully prepared for the change. In doing so, you can preemptively address hesitancy and give your company a proactive stance toward preventing resistance to change.  

We’ve officially reached the halfway point of Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 and what a week it’s been so far.  Today’s all-star lineup of speakers included Strategic Advisor and Bestselling Author Priya Parker, Vena Chief Marketing and Ecosystem Officer Allison Munro, Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen, Vena Solutions Consultant Nolan Southfield, Vena VP of Product Andrew Stanbridge, and a panel discussion featuring Venanites, including Senior Manager of FP&A Thomas Krolak, Director of Sales Operations Ruslan Valeev and Director of Marketing Operations Andre Proulx. Read on for our highlights from day three of Vena's third annual virtual conference. Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand.   Keynote: The Art of Gathering     Speakers: Priya Parker, Author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters; Allison Munro, Chief Marketing and Ecosystem Officer, Vena On Monday, as we all gathered once again to learn, connect and grow for our annual digital conference experience, Vena CEO Hunter Madeley kicked off Excelerate =SUM(it) with an important message about community: “Our purpose is to excelerate your growth through the power of community.” There’s a purpose for gathering, but as Facilitator and Author Priya Parker explained in her keynote today as she was joined by Vena Chief Marketing & Ecosystem Officer Allison Munro for a lively discussion, there’s also an "art" to gathering—and it has everything to do with how we meet and why it matters. So what’s a gathering and how is it different from a community? Priya defined a gathering as “anytime three or more people come together for a purpose with a beginning, middle and end.” As she explained, people come together for a shared purpose—whether that’s to identify with a community or vision. In this respect, gatherings can be seen as a tool and are shaped (think of weddings, funerals, conferences, etc.). It’s significant to understand when, why and how communities come together, but it’s also just as important to understand how they fall apart or dissolve.  This is something Priya learned early on in life after her parents divorced and she came to understand how conflict resolution worked through the contrasting experience of living with both her parents. And as a facilitator, she helps groups understand not only the “how” of coming together, but the “why” as well.  In helping people come together, Priya explains that we should consider: What it means to “host” well What it means to “guest” well Then there’s also the structure, journey and start of a gathering to consider: The structure of a gathering involves: Getting off autopilot and being intentional about how we gather Establishing the purpose of why we gather The journey of a gathering involves: Assuring a purpose is obvious and shared Creating moments in the making (What is the need at this moment for the community?) Identifying the need/purpose of your gathering (Your community wants to come together to help you do something.) Having your community come around and asking them for help, advice, etc. Asking questions such as: Should only women be allowed at baby showers? The start of a gathering involves: Not starting with logistics Building a temporary world  Inviting people to come to your gathering (what Priya calls the “cold open”) Addressing why you have all gathered Then doing logistics The Art of Gathering in a Virtual World Priya wrote her book in 2018 and as she helped audiences understand the art of gathering, two years later, the pandemic changed everything. “It helped us see gatherings when we weren’t allowed to gather anymore,” said Priya. The pandemic changed the way we gathered and the form of gathering. “When we couldn’t have the hardware, we went to the software for connecting.” There’s still an art to gathering in a virtual world, but as the pandemic taught us, it’s made us think differently about how we meet and why it matters. For instance, who we include or exclude matters for different reasons in a virtual environment. Some of these reasons include: More isn’t necessarily better Group size matters When we don’t know why we are gathering, we tend to over include Great conversations happen with six people Most of us are overbooked, in back-to-back meetings or Zoomed out Be mindful and give people back some of their time  The art of gathering in a virtual world involves: Helping people settle and land in the environment Turning off mute Connecting your guests Using the chatbox and starting conversations Being mindful of purpose and time Remembering that a gathering is a temporary social contract where everyone has rights, responsibilities, etc. Being clear about roles and terms (tell people their roles at meetings and provide terms) Remembering that every gathering is about power Establishing how decisions are made Determining collectively the need and purpose of the meeting/gathering Deciding when and how you meet Establishing team agreements (people join groups of gathering because they want to grow, be relevant, build something they couldn’t do on their own) Protecting, connecting and equalizing your guests Gathering becomes even more complex in a hybrid environment because, as Priya explains, a hybrid meeting is not one meeting—it’s three meetings: Virtual In-person (deal with each other’s dynamics) Choice (mix of virtual and physical) And what about the disputable voices? Conflict and confrontation is hard on Zoom, but not impossible. How can we make conflict resolution work in a hybrid environment? Here are some of Priya’s tips: Have regular confrontations that address conflict Create a culture of normalcy around disagreements (Example: ask everyone about their “rose and thorn”) Normalize thorns (it’s normal to not have things go well) Remember that politeness is a killer of creativity Facilitate ideation and rejection As a leader then, what can you do to make gatherings more purposeful for your teams? Priya suggests, “Ask them. Create a safe place for them to tell the truth (in polls, surveys, etc.) then determine the shared sacred text that will work for everyone. And remember, training is a shared experience that allows a group to gel.” Which ties nicely into one of Allison’s favorite quotes of Priya’s, “Training changes the metabolism of a team.” But the conversation doesn’t end there. What else did Allison find out about Priya’s research, experiences and upcoming work? And what else can leaders and facilitators do to drive more meaningful interactions in today’s world? Watch Priya’s keynote on demand to catch the entire conversation.  Demo: Vena for SaaS       Speakers: Shaun Jansen, VP, Sales, Vena; Nolan Southfield, Solutions Consultant, Vena Vena VP of Sales Shaun Jansen asked Solutions Consultant Nolan Southfield, “What makes SaaS finance unique?” Nolan, a veteran of the SaaS industry, said it’s the wealth of data. In SaaS, there are so many disparate data sources with finance data coming from your ERP and opportunity data from your CRM. The trove of disjointed data creates challenges for detailed revenue planning. Finance professionals need to bring together multiple Excel files, tie them together and slice and dice thousands of lines of data from slow, mammoth spreadsheet files. Organizations try to leverage Excel as a data warehouse, but it’s not designed to do so for that volume. Nolan said that revenue recognition in SaaS is different from other industries and that revenue recognition varies widely between SaaS organizations. One of the major reasons SaaS organizations’ KPI—annual recurring revenue, churn and customer acquisition cost, to name a few—vary is that much of the revenue is subscription based. When SaaS businesses offer software service bundles and non-fixed implementation prices, that’s when revenue planning becomes very difficult to forecast. That’s why businesses need a flexible, agile process to develop a scalable solution to plan subscription revenue. He demonstrated that, with Vena, you can drill down revenue by account, account group, customer group or entity and more parameters to gain a granular view and perform scenario analysis. And like every one of Vena’s pre-configured solutions by industry, the SaaS pre-configured solution has AI features, including predictive forecasting and analysis. With a trove of data, Vena is the Excel-native central database that can store your wealth of data—which Excel wasn’t designed for—and help you bring it together to slice and dice for generating instant insights. Nolan said, “What you’re doing right now can be replicated in Vena.” On the Road to Growth Speaker: Andrew Stanbridge, VP, Product, Vena Vena VP of Product Andrew Stanbridge—along with Vena experts Cindy Alberta, Luana Faria-Fichelli, Manksh Gupta, Carter Russell and Jenny Crawford—led us through Vena’s latest—Spring ’22—quarterly release and a pair of customer stories. Launching May 16–17, Vena customers will see enhancements to their Vena instance that will help excelerate their growth with a more seamless user experience and greater access to business insights. These were some highlights of the updates customers can expect in the spring season: Integrations Upload data and files in both CSV and JSON formats Retrieve information on ETL (extract, transfer, load) jobs, templates and statuses Manage ETL processes across different data models Upload multiple CSV files and JSON datasets into an ETL job Updated UI in Vena to support new ETL statuses from Public API API documentation for developers Modeler  Cleaner, intuitive design Bulk move members Bulk attach/detach attributes Filter by attributes Save versioning configurations Enhanced keyboard accessibility Automatic Calc Triggers Faster, partial deploys Increased data integrity Bulk update support Reduce data validation time Improved logging in ETL History Key Themes Vena Product Managers took us through the three key themes of the quarterly release: Faster Workflow and Budgeting Cycles Statics Task Binding Configuration, the new, easy-to-use UI, is now available in Vena.io to simplify the template workflow and reduce the time to implementation. Data Validation Rules enable managers to establish guardrails around what data contributors can enter, gives the flexibility of Excel to enter any logic the manager wants and reduces the back and forth that causes errors in data. More Granular and Detailed Planning Staging Queries enables users to pull transaction-level tables in Vena templates to do more granular, detailed and accurate planning. Customizable Templates To Meet Multiple Use Cases  Expand & Collapse (formerly Zoom-In / Zoom-Out) expands nested member hierarchies within Dynamic Rows to prepare detailed reports tailored to your audience or investigate variances with a single click.   Agile Revenue Planning Best Practices     Speakers: Thomas Krolak, CPA, Senior Manager, FP&A, Vena; Ruslan Valeev, Director, Sales Operations, Vena; Andre Proulx, Director, Marketing Operations, Vena; Howard Dresner, Chief Research Officer, Dresner Advisory Services LLC In this panel discussion hosted by Howard Dresner of Dresner Advisory Services and featuring Venanites Thomas Krolak, Ruslan Valeev and Andre Proulx, the panelists discussed the benefits of agile revenue planning, sharing best practices on how to align finance, marketing and sales departments to power organizational growth.  Howard kicked off the conversation with a simple question: Why is it important to have an agile revenue process?  There was a general consensus among the panelists. Thomas, Ruslan and Andre each stated that the finance team plays a pivotal role in building out an organization’s growth journey, leading it through change and determining its future success. But when market conditions change unexpectedly, finance teams need to adapt quickly, consistently and intelligently in order to provide the right information to key stakeholders across the organization, allowing them to make more informed decisions in the face of heightened volatility. And during such times, agile revenue planning processes are key to empowering teams to adapt with speed to unexpected events and shifts in market conditions. “The way I view agile revenue planning is that it’s all about continuous improvement—how do we keep getting better at what we’re doing and drive more results and more efficiency,” said Thomas. “The agile planning process really encourages speed. It helps with making decisions and allows us to course-correct along the way.”  The conversation then turned to one of the central components of adopting a successful agile revenue planning process: technology. In order to plan for today and be ready for tomorrow, finance teams require agile planning solutions that enable them to keep moving forward and building towards a successful future. However, while having the right technology in place is important, it’s not the only consideration to make. “Technology should be viewed as an ‘enabler’,” suggested Howard. “The change agents are ultimately going to be the people within the organization—the ones who leverage the technology to improve and transform that organization.” This led the conversation to the subject of change management. While the panelists acknowledged that during the early days of any organizational change, people might initially feel uncomfortable, they agreed that over time the benefits would soon become apparent. “What helps [with change management] in my opinion is transparency,” Ruslan said. “As long as you’re transparent with your team as to why you’re making the changes, that helps people feel more comfortable with it.”     However, it’s important to remember that agile revenue planning isn’t a process that’s adopted overnight. “Even when I think about my time here at Vena—it’s been almost four years now—it’s insane to think about the amount of change that’s occurred within the finance department,” Thomas explained.  “When I think about where we were when I started to where we are now, the two companies that I’m describing are like night and day. Just completely different. But what I’ve realized is that change happens over time—it’s not like you can just snap your fingers and suddenly you’re doing agile revenue planning. It truly is an evolution and it involves constant iterations and the desire to constantly make things better. It’s also about the time, effort and willingness to team up and partner up that really drives that journey to agile revenue planning—and of course all of that takes time.” So what were the key takeaways from the discussion? To sum up, with the right technology, data and processes in place, you can start to identify and address any unknowns in an agile fashion—long before they run the risk of negatively impacting your business. And that’s exactly why agile business planning is so important to master: it puts finance teams in the driver’s seat as you plan for today and tomorrow.  

Today marked day two of Excelerate =SUM(it). It was an action-packed day filled with insights, inspiration, networking and of course, plenty of opportunities to learn and earn CPE/CPD credits to power your personal, professional and business growth. Today’s lineup of luminaries included Vena CTO Hugh Cumming, Microsoft’s Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer Wendy Braithwaite, the Kansas City Chiefs’ finance team, Chief Excel Officer Purna Duggirala (a.k.a. Chandoo), Microsoft MVP Parvinder Chana and more. Read on for our highlights from day two of Vena's third annual virtual conference. Missed a session? Register now for Excelerate =SUM(it) 2022 to watch all content live or on demand. Keynote: The Future of Planning Technology Speaker: Hugh Cumming, Chief Technology Officer, Vena Vena CTO Hugh Cumming began his keynote by sharing a quote from Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, “In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it’s the fast fish which eats the slow fish.” So how does this relate to finance and the future of planning technology? Hugh believes that during this fourth industrial revolution—enabled by the democratization of large-scale computing—technology and humanity are coming together to advance humanity. As technology transforms finance organizations globally, he’s seen the profound impact finance has had on the rest of the business, too, affecting how organizations think about the role of finance and how finance teams influence business strategy. The finance team no longer only reports—they bring data, enable strategy and move companies from being intuition- and instinct-driven to insight-driven. And accordingly now, the company no longer budgets and plans once a year—it’s a part of the everyday. Hugh talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated businesses’ digital transformations toward working digitally, collaborating in real-time and unlocking human creativity to make powerful, faster and insight-driven decisions—which aligns with the number one priority on the CFO agenda, found in the most recent Gartner study: creating insights. So how is this changing what Vena customers are saying about what they need? Hugh discussed three important factors coming together to shape the future of planning technology: Usability and flexibility Scalability and extensibility Advanced data and analytics These three factors will create insights faster—so that Vena customers can swim faster. Keynote: The Power of Vena and Microsoft       Speakers: Hugh Cumming, Chief Technology Officer, Vena; Wendy Braithwaite, Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer, Microsoft In this joint keynote by Vena CTO Hugh Cumming and Microsoft Chief Financial Planning & Orchestration Officer Wendy Braithwaite, the pair discussed how businesses are benefiting from the latest product advancements in Microsoft Excel, Microsoft 365, Power Automate and Power BI, and how these capabilities are empowering finance teams to solve complex real-world problems.  On the Vena side, Hugh and Wendy explained how the Vena platform helps orchestrate complex financial workflows, creates relationships between data across the organization and turns static financial planning processes into dynamic, agile business management processes.   To kick off the keynote, Hugh began by asking Wendy how she thinks the role of finance is evolving at Microsoft.  “Microsoft started our journey of digitally transforming our own finance function some years ago. Why did we head down this path? Because to be successful in the fast-paced modern business environment, finance teams must reclaim time and deploy their focus on things that matter most to their organizations,” she explained. “We must minimize manual effort and speed up time to critical decisions and action.”  Wendy added that by incorporating Microsoft Azure Machine Learning into the organization’s own revenue forecasting process, it allowed the team to cut forecast variance by 50% and augment the work of their analysts to lock financial outlooks faster and with more confidence. “What has changed in the finance function is that we’ve evolved from being a ‘transactions’ finance office to a 'strategic' finance office, from being backward-looking to being forward-looking, and from being internally-focused to being customer-obsessed,” she explained.   When asked how she thinks Microsoft’s finance team has evolved, Wendy discussed the development of her team’s skill set. “I imagine a classic before and after picture—pick your image. Before, our people were operational thinkers with transactional expertise. Now, several years after our digital transformation, people within the Microsoft finance function are deep, analytical, strategic thinkers—skilled at influencing and negotiating with an advanced knowledge of the business.” In order to navigate today’s climate of increased volatility and uncertainty, Wendy explained how her team is currently racing to harness ever-growing amounts of data and derive forward-looking insights. “Machine learning is a critical tool for predicting outcomes and managing risk, and we’re now using machine learning and Microsoft Azure AI across the organization to stay ahead of our business,” she said.  As a result, the Microsoft finance department has advanced the business conversation from describing what has happened (descriptive analytics), to what will happen (predictive analytics). “That’s where the power of AI and machine learning comes in,” she added.   The conversation then turned to how businesses can transform their finance departments in a similar way to Microsoft’s own finance team’s evolution. When Hugh asked Wendy for tips and best practices to share with the audience, she was happy to provide guidance based on her own experience.  “A key best practice that is always top of mind for me is data hygiene. Poor data hygiene will destroy trust and undermine your strategic finance office really quickly,” said Wendy. “Poor data hygiene is what makes people like me who grew up with Excel want to stay with Excel instead of leveraging the great possibilities of Power BI and data visualization. We need to know that the underlying data quality is robust before we can trust the visualization, machine learning and AI.” Wendy’s last tip was around “actionable insights”. “At your last webinar one of the speakers said something that really resonated with me: ‘The data you present must be useful.’ Real-time data visualization is more than transferring the basic data into charts or graphs. It’s about seeing the interconnectedness of data, the comparisons and anomalies, and that’s how you really leverage the power of the data visualization to create actionable insights that advance the business.” Keynote: The Future of Vena Complete Planning Speakers: Andrew Stanbridge, VP, Product, Vena; Rachel Taguicana, Senior Product Manager, Vena; Cindy Alberta, Product Manager, Vena There’s a transformation taking place in the Office of Finance and many organizations are already reaping the benefits. Finance teams are moving from static back-office processes into more strategic, business partner-oriented roles. Gartner describes this transformation as “the evolution of planning, combining financial and operational planning on a single composable platform.”  It extends beyond traditional FP&A solutions focused on finance and into other enterprise planning fields—such as workforce, sales and operations planning. In other words, this approach to financial planning enables organizations to to drive agile, business-wide planning, resilience and growth.  Here at Vena, we refer to this holistic approach as “Complete Planning.”  In Vena VP of Product Andrew Stanbridge's keynote, “The Future of Vena Complete Planning,”  he shared the vision behind Vena’s Complete Planning platform and how it’s been designed to power the transformation of the strategic Office of Finance.  So what is Complete Planning? In a nutshell, Complete Planning is a framework for financial planning and decision making in business that elevates the financial intelligence of an organization. It increases the speed and accuracy of insights and empowers the entire business to respond with the agility they need to succeed in today’s ever-changing market conditions. Complete Planning automates laborious, manual tasks to save time, money and effort that can be spent on higher value and more strategic priorities. By adopting a “Complete Planning” approach, you’re positioning your finance department to become strategic partners to your business by providing the simplest, easiest means to automate complex data processes—providing instantaneous insights, data storytelling and business intelligence at the exact moment other departments in your organization need it most.   “Vena is the only Complete Planning platform with a native Excel user interface, supporting you in your finance function and beyond,” Andrew explained. “As companies deploy Vena from finance-led planning to extended planning and finally to beyond planning, they organically build a ‘data warehouse’ in Vena—connecting systems, disparate data sources and multiple users to be able to provide strategic value for their organization.” However, you can’t have truly effective “Complete Planning” without the right technology to help drive your business forward, Andrew explained. “Vena is the only vendor that truly balances flexibility and usability to provide customers with a platform that allows them to plan the way they want, while ensuring cross-functional users can seamlessly participate in planning cycles.”  In his session, Andrew also discussed some of the handy innovations that are now available in Excel, including Office Scripts and Analyze Data (formerly known as “Ideas”). “Vena continues to invest in enabling customers to leverage these features to help them plan to grow,” he added. The Kansas City Chiefs Excelerator Showcase     Speakers: Michael Ragsdale, CPA, Director, Strategy and Analytics, Kansas City Chiefs; Rebecca Swank, CPA, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, Kansas City Chiefs; Jenny Crawford, Customer Success Manager, Vena  The Kansas City Chiefs finance team was using data from disparate systems for budgeting, forecasting and reporting. They couldn’t upload their Excel spreadsheets themselves. Their users called their Accounting department to whom they then emailed their information. The accountants would then upload the data to their ERP on behalf of the finance team before converting the reports to PDF. There was no user buy-in for their then-ERP. The tipping point to find a new solution? Version control problems and inefficiencies when producing budgets and reports for the monthly reviews to the executive team. When these poor user reviews reached their Chief Financial Officer Dan Crumb, he assigned Michael Ragsdale to evaluate vendors. Michael said he was looking for a “one-stop shop” and wanted better structure and communication to gain oversight of user access (which they didn’t have) and data transfer (which had occurred primarily through email). He chose Vena for its security, collaborative capabilities and familiar Excel-Native interface. They had had a poor implementation process prior to Vena. “We wanted to work with a great group,” he said. As the Chiefs’ use of Vena grew and transformed, so did Rebecca Swank’s career. She began as one of their external auditors before supporting the Chiefs’ implementation of Vena.  She said, “I originally started as an external auditor. As I was gaining familiarity with Vena and helping others use the platform, I realized what I could do and shifted my role to strategy.” Today, along with budgeting, forecasting and reporting, the Chiefs use Vena for their 20-digit general ledger structure. They also use Vena for OPEX and salary planning, which includes their players. They assess injury probability per player and if the team needs to take out insurance policies for injury. If they don’t, then that opens up the budget for other areas. Michael said, “Vena makes life easier for the guys on the football field to focus on their side.” He said that people ask him what it takes to win a Super Bowl. How does he answer? Michael humorously noted that the Chiefs won the Super Bowl in 2020—a year after they implemented Vena—and that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in 2021—again, a year after they implemented Vena—defeating the Chiefs in the big game. As of late, the Chiefs have been winning on—and off—the field. They’ve significantly improved how their users consume information by growing their use of Power BI to produce different ways of consuming information. He’s excited to show their leadership as they plan, maintain and grow their data-driven strategy. Michael said, “We want to be leaders in the sports industry, but also in business in general.” Demo: Power BI Embedded Pre-Built Dashboard Showcase Speaker: Rishi Grover, Chief Solutions Architect, Vena Rishi Grover showed us how fast and easy it is for users to gain actionable AI-powered insights from Vena with Power BI Embedded. It’s data done differently—self-service, instant insights for a data-driven culture in a secure and collaborative way. This means out-of-the-box and no coding. He walked through visualizations for analyses of scenarios, profitability, revenue, OPEX and more—all with predictive forecasting capabilities. Rishi said, “The only limit of Vena with Power BI Embedded is your own imagination.” He took us through some AI features available, such as Key Influencers, the Decomposition Tree and Anomaly Detection, and then demonstrated how the best data visualization solution in the marketplace makes intuitive assumptions to visualize your data the way you want it. For every pre-configured solution offered by Vena, users receive industry-agnostic pre-configured workflows and pre-configured Power BI dashboards that follow best practices to provide quick time-to-value. He demonstrated with a decomposition tree of Net Interest Margin Rate—that drilled down into Earning and Loan Closing Volume as well as Deposits and Loans Volume—for the pre-configured Banking and Credit Unions solution. He then drilled down further by filtering to only Commercial Loans and then analyzing Gross Margin Predictive Forecast. “What we’re doing here is creating a strategic data hub,” Rishi said. It’s a hub that’s only limited by our imagination. (Want to learn more from Rishi? You can watch recent videos of him guiding us through six advanced Power BI features or new videos of him teaching us how to create a dashboard in Power BI in 10 minutes.) Workshop: Data Visualization in Excel       Speaker: Chandoo (Purna Duggirala), Microsoft MVP Back by popular demand, Purna Duggirala (a.k.a. Chandoo), took the virtual stage for his second year in a row. Chandoo led a fun and interactive workshop on building dynamic budgets in Excel that incorporate the latest best practices in data visualization. Here at Vena, we can’t resist a good Excel joke, which is why we knew Chandoo was off to a good start when he kicked the session off with some finance-based fun. As any finance professional knows, data visualization is a skill that’s highly in demand. During his workshop, Chandoo shared his top tips on “how to create magic” using Excel charts and graphs. “Dynamic and interactive charts are one of my favorite Excel tricks. I use them in almost all of my dashboards and Excel models and my clients are always wowed by them.” Workshop: Advanced Data Visualization in Power BI Speaker: Parvinder Chana, Microsoft MVP Microsoft MVP Parvinder Chana led us through best practices for creating a scalable solution in Power BI during his workshop, providing tips on data preparation, choosing options and settings, data modeling and data visualization. Parvinder spent most of the time speaking about data preparation because he felt this step was the “make or break” stage of your Power BI use. He offered practical tips, such as labeling your columns consistently and hiding unwanted columns to improve user experience. Parvinder also advised us to bring only columns needed for visualization and to convert numbers to whole numbers or fixed decimal numbers when possible. He said it’s easier to transfer data from development to production than it is to remove data. These two tips reduce data size and preserve memory to accelerate your performance and save you time from watching your data visualizations load and update after every click. Another tip that saves data file size is turning off the global auto time/date setting, because “you always want to create your own data dimension table,” the Microsoft MVP said. Parvinder finished by highlighting the importance of creating theme files and report templates. This means consistently using your corporate colors in your data visualizations and reports. Inconsistent design decreases user adoption, while consistent design increases users’ ownership of the data.