Businesses collect large volumes of data, but according to survey results published in Vena’s 2020 Industry Benchmark Report, it seems that a good majority of companies are still in the dark when it comes to finding the data they need and making the most of it. When 350 global business leaders and finance and operations professionals from a wide range of industries were asked if they had located and identified all the data that is collected in their businesses, 67% claimed that they had not.  So why are businesses collecting so much data when clearly most of it goes unused?  Sitting on an Internal Data Gold Mine There’s no denying that data—both hidden and visible—is a valuable resource for businesses. But when businesses have too much data, especially when it’s disparate and siloed, it’s like sitting on a gold mine of missed opportunities for your business. What good is internal data collection when you can’t find it, structure it and harness that data to extract value from it? Removing barriers to data location is the first step in turning data into actions. And it starts with automating and integrating all of that data—in different formats and from various sources—into a centralized database instead of manually gathering, sorting and filtering it. Not only does automating and integrating data save businesses time and money, it also reduces error margins, ensures data reliability, easily allows for data updates and improves business efficiency across the organization. Once your team is set up in a secure and collaborative work environment instead of digging through multiple systems to get to the data they need, that’s when they can really start putting all of that data to work.  Read this blog to find out how automation, analytics and accuracy are the top three priorities and challenges facing finance teams.  Turn Data Into a Direction Quick access to data leads to faster insights and smarter decisions. When your team is instantly able to view data with ad hoc reporting and rolling forecasts and to test assumptions with scenario modeling, you’ll get to know your business from every angle, mitigate business risks and change course when needed to keep your business on track. And most importantly, with those insights you can turn that data into a direction, helping your business stay agile and competitive no matter what changing market trends or economic conditions come your way. Learn four best practices for preparing your business for the future by reading this blog on scenario modeling. The future is not about how much internal data you have, it’s about unlocking the power of that data to transform your business and guide you on your path to success. With the right people, process and technology in place—and the data you need to back up your decision making—you’ll be able to adapt to rapid change and keep moving forward with a shared vision. Discover how to accelerate your budgeting and forecasting processes so you can position your business for the future on a daily basis.   Download Vena’s 2020 Industry Benchmark Report here.

Discover the seven pillars behind our Growth Engine technology and learn how they can help your business plan to grow with confidence.   Whether you’re expanding headcount to win customers in new territories, transforming your operating model to win in an increasingly competitive marketplace, or adapting quickly in the face of uncertainty, one thing is for sure when it comes to driving business growth—you need to have a plan.  But no matter where your business is on its growth journey, the road ahead will never be easy when your planning process is hindered by obstacles like tedious manual processes, complex workflows, data silos, inaccurate data and, ultimately, the inability to enable agile, well-informed decision making. For strategic planning to really take root, you need cross-functional collaboration—from the office of finance to operations and beyond—and a complete view of business performance so your teams can do the data-driven analysis needed to move the business forward quickly and confidently. That’s why we created the Vena Growth Engine—to help businesses like yours connect departments, people, processes and systems to streamline and scale your plan to grow. In this blog post, we’ll break down the seven pillars that comprise Vena’s Growth Engine technology and show you how it can accelerate your plan to grow. Read on to discover: What is the Growth Engine? The seven pillars of Vena’s Growth Engine technology How to put the Growth Engine into action What Is Vena’s Growth Engine? The Growth Engine is the power behind your business plans. Created by our team of experts, the Growth Engine combines best-in-class technology and methodology with the world’s leading grid, Excel, to drive Vena’s Complete Planning platform—making it the only planning and analysis solution robust enough for enterprise-level scalability, performance and extensibility, yet simple enough for anyone at any organization to use.  The Growth Engine inspires innovation, enables cross-functional collaboration and gives teams the freedom to analyze financial and non-financial data with intent. Built on the foundation of seven key technology pillars, the Growth Engine has everything you need to inspire confidence, champion teamwork and cultivate enthusiasm and innovation across your business as you plan to grow. The Growth Engine’s 7 Pillars A central cloud database Integrations with existing source systems A native Excel interface Modeling and analysis Customizable workflows Pre-configured solutions Advanced security features These pillars all work in tandem to help you drive growth at scale. Keep on reading to learn a little bit more about each one. 1. A Central Cloud Database Data can be overwhelming sometimes, even for the world’s most experienced business leaders and finance professionals. Digging through old spreadsheets, triple-checking your numbers and building reports manually is tedious and error prone. Process automation, especially when it comes to data consolidation and reporting, is top of mind for finance teams today. It all starts with building a data warehouse in the cloud—and that’s exactly what Vena’s Growth Engine enables.   Vena makes it easy to analyze data how you want to by providing a single source of truth for company-wide information. The OLAP cube data structure lets you slice and dice for summarized totals, while our relational database lets you query your numbers and drill down to transaction-level details.  Let’s say, for example, that you’re CFO of a women’s clothing company. As you plan for the upcoming quarter, you want to compare last month’s sales totals for sundresses in California versus Texas. Instead of searching your inbox for copies of itemized sales reports—and then running multiple VLOOKUPs to find the values you need—Vena would run the query for you and pull your numbers in a couple of clicks. Working from a central database is always more efficient as you chart your plan to grow. Think about this for a moment: What could you accomplish today if you had more time to focus on tomorrow? 2. Integrations With Existing Source Systems Vena’s 2020 Industry Benchmark Report revealed that 57% of finance teams are struggling with disparate data silos. Building a central database is the first step toward solving this problem, but you still need to ensure the right numbers flow in from your data sources, including your:  ERP or GL CRM HRIS or payroll software If all the data you need isn’t accessible in one system, it’s tough to track performance and make informed decisions on the fly. You’d also have to jump between financial (and non-financial) data sources to get a holistic view of your business, which might make it difficult to uncover the story your data is telling you. However, thanks to the Growth Engine’s seamless integration capabilities, Vena connects the dots and sets your data free. Our direct ETL engine and flat-file integrations can connect Vena with any source system—in the cloud or on premise—saving you the hassle of pulling out numbers manually. With company-wide planning data at the tips of everyone’s fingers, you’ll be able to tear down data silos and plan smarter with cross-functional stakeholders. And with everyone working from the same set of numbers, you’ll never have to worry about data accuracy again. Learn more about how Vena can keep your entire business connected. 3. A Native Excel Interface According to the 2020 Pulse of Performance Management survey, 82% of finance teams that already have planning software still use offline spreadsheets for core FP&A processes. This really isn’t surprising, because Excel is the universal language of business. It’s flexible and easy to use, but it gets clunky and hard to manage as your business needs grow—leading to version control issues, data integrity problems and time-consuming manual entries. If you’ve ever had a workbook crash when you’re racing to get month-end reports out, you understand why Excel alone isn’t meant to serve as a database. But what if you could have the best of both worlds? What if you didn’t have to sacrifice the comfort of Excel to level-up your growth journey with the database functionality you need? Vena leverages an Excel grid interface, so you can use the tool you already know to do things you’ve only imagined. With the world’s leading grid inside of the world’s most complete planning platform, everyone at your organization can experience the joy of finance. Instead of forcing you to adapt your processes and learn a rigid, unfamiliar platform, Vena brings you the best of Excel—but without all of its usual pitfalls.   4. Modeling and Analysis The power of the Growth Engine really shines through when you model and analyze potential business scenarios with Vena. Interacting with your database from the comfort of Excel means you don’t have to flip between templates to see your budget, actuals, forecasts and unique models. Vena’s enterprise-level modeling engine lets you challenge your forecasts on-demand and confidently measure how specific variables—either internal or external—will affect your long-term outlook. All you have to do is input the assumptions you want to model so Vena can work its magic and apply them to your datasets in seconds. There’s also no limit to the models you can build in Vena because you’ll always be able to update them as your business drivers, revenue assumptions and reporting needs evolve. If you don’t have the flexibility to model new scenarios when you need to, it’s hard to adjust course when business conditions change. And if you aren’t always ready to answer “what if” quickly, it’s tough to stay on track and help leaders make data-driven decisions. That’s why scenario modeling is such an important part of our Growth Engine. Vena makes it simple to test best-case, worst-case or any scenario you can think of so you can better understand how today’s choices will impact tomorrow. 5. Customizable Workflows Is that board report approved yet? Has everyone submitted their budget entries? Is Joe almost finished with that variance analysis?  Finance leaders ask these questions a lot, but getting answers quickly isn’t always as simple as it sounds. Every organization’s planning process has a lot of moving parts and ensuring it all runs smoothly can be the difference between success and failure. Like you, we value teamwork and transparency here at Vena, and that’s why a visual workflow designer is baked into our Growth Engine. Instead of constantly chasing your colleagues down for progress updates, Vena makes it easy to: Assign tasks to teammates based on their specific role or department Track and audit the status of those tasks with real-time progress dashboards Formalize the review and approval process with managers Set up automated email reminders so nothing falls through the cracks Repeat, refine and build scalable workflow processes—because Vena grows right alongside you 6. Pre-Configured Solutions Rolling out a planning platform isn’t easy, but the Growth Engine makes it easier with pre-configured solutions. You’ll always be able to customize Vena to meet the specific needs of your business—and even use your existing Excel templates, if you wish—but you don’t have to build it all yourself. You’ve got enough on your plate already, and the last thing you need is for your implementation to take longer than it needs to. Pre-configured solutions accelerate your time-to-value. They include purpose-built templates and data models, pre-defined business logic and source system connectors to meet your industry-specific business requirements. 7. Advanced Security Features At Vena, we will never stray from our commitment to keeping your data safe, and we’re not just talking about network security and encryptions here. Our platform is still supported by best-in-class data security, but the Growth Engine takes it further with internal data controls and user-level security permissions. Let’s say, for example, that you’re rolling out a bottom-up budgeting process and you want your regional department heads to take ownership of the numbers they’re responsible for. With Vena, you can apply user-based security permissions to individual cells in your template so contributors can only alter the values relevant to them. And if there’s sensitive data you don’t want certain employees to see—such as salary information, for example—you can restrict access by removing those cells from their view. With Vena, only the right people have access to the right data. Other security features include: Audit trails: So you can track and verify any changes made to your templates Validation rules: To prevent data entries above or below certain thresholds Check out this datasheet to learn more about Vena’s advanced security features. How To Put the Growth Engine Into Action With the Growth Engine’s seven technology pillars behind you, you’ll always be prepared to take on the future with confidence. But in order to accelerate your growth journey and make the most of our platform, you need to understand what your goals are so we can work with you to achieve them. If budgeting and forecasting are slowing you down, Vena’s Finance-Led Planning configuration will help automate manual processes and drive efficiency across your business. If you want to dive deeper into your data and support workforce planning, revenue planning, capital expenditures and more, our Extended Planning use cases can open those doors for you. You can even look Beyond Planning and streamline consolidations, account reconciliations and financial close with Vena. No matter where you are on your growth journey, Vena’s Complete Planning solution is always here to help. The possibilities with us are endless, but it’s our Growth Engine that provides all the power. We’ll help you excite your teammates, simplify your processes and take finance-led growth to a whole new-level—because that’s what the Growth Engine is all about.   Request a demo today and transform your growth journey with Vena.

Budgeting prepares your business for the future by allocating resources for the budgeting cycle ahead. But how can you really be ready for a future you can’t predict? With only limited visibility into what that future holds, it’s easy to end up with inefficiencies in your budget or a lack of alignment with your strategic goals. Ideally, you want practices in place to help offset that possibility. That’s where predictive budgeting comes in. As one of the newest budgeting capabilities available to finance teams, predictive budgeting helps you look ahead to see how your budget will hold up in the future and to identify potential flaws that might keep it from performing well.  For some teams, it’s a way to deepen your existing budgeting process—adding extra checks and balances after your budget is already built. Others choose to integrate it into the budgeting process from the start. Either way, it’s the next evolution of budgeting and something leading finance teams are beginning to see as a must-have—whether they’re already using it or envisioning it as part of their own budgeting future. So what do you need to know about predictive budgeting? What is predictive budgeting? How can predictive budgeting help your business? Prerequisites for predictive budgeting Best practices for predictive budgeting What Is Predictive Budgeting? Predictive budgeting adds accountability to the corporate budgeting process, using predictive analytics to make predictions for the future—both short and long term. Often used alongside technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, it leverages modeling and statistical algorithms to do so and draws on broad and deep sets of historical and current data. Through those tools and data, it identifies trends and patterns, determines potential risks and forecasts future outcomes. The result: insights that can drive better decisions on how to allocate your resources and better prepare your budget for the future ahead. By enabling predictive budgeting across your plan—from revenues and inventory to receivables and so on—you can connect these data-driven insights to your strategic goals, reduce inefficiencies and better justify your resource allocation choices to both the executive team and broader organization as a whole.   How Can Predictive Budgeting Help Your Business? As a newer methodology, predictive budgeting is often used as a system of oversight—something to compare against as you settle on your final budget. Whether you use it that way or integrate it into your standard budgeting process from the start, it allows you to check assumptions and ensure your budget is on track with future objectives and strategic goals. In doing so, it can help you: 1. Make Cash Flow Projections By using historical data to fuel your forecasting, you’ll be able to better understand the cash flow needed in the budgeting cycle ahead—and make any necessary shifts to your cash flow projections. 2. Identify and Understand Your Critical Drivers You’ll be able to better identify your business’ main drivers—then take a deeper dive so that you can fully understand the business activities you can invest in for your optimum financial outcome. This is particularly effective when applied to areas of your plan with rich historical data, giving you a chance to really get into those key drivers. 3. Recognize Areas That Need Attention Finally, you can also identify any holes in your budget that might set your plans up for failure—and make the necessary changes so that you’re poised for success instead. While all of this might sound great, as with anything new it isn’t always easy—at least when you’re first starting out. To set yourself up for success, introducing predictive analytics to your budgeting cycle should start by ensuring you have a few key prerequisites in place. Prerequisites for Predictive Budgeting While predictive budgeting has a lot of advantages, there are also a few considerations to take into account before adding it to your budgeting process: 1. You’ll Need the Right Team As the next frontier in planning, predictive budgeting involves creating and applying predictive analytics equations and developing advanced modeling to predict the future using past results. That level of analysis will likely require a specialized team member or extra training for your existing team. 2. You’ll Need Access To Data In order to get to the insights you’re looking for and to make your predictions as accurate as possible, you’ll require access to data across disparate data sources—including, ideally, at least a few years of historical data. And you’ll need to clean and format that data before you can analyze it appropriately to ensure you get the results you need. 3. You’ll Need the Right Technology To get to those answers quickly, you’ll also need technology that can help you access the data you need when you need it and apply modeling to see what the future may hold. With all of those prerequisites in place, you’re ready to start adding predictive budgeting to your budgeting process. Consider the following best practices to get started.  Best Practices for Predictive Budgeting Once you’ve got everything in line to effectively introduce predictive budgeting, these four best practices will help you get the most out of this next-level budgeting initiative: 1. Start Small—and Make Strategic Choices As the next big thing in budgeting, there may be expectations on your team to rush into predictive budgeting and start doing everything at once. But that might not be the best approach for you. As something that can be complicated and time consuming to get off the ground, it might be better to start small and make strategic choices. Focus on short-term insights first, for instance, where you’ll be able to see your results quicker. Then work your way up to more ambitious plans. 2. Choose the Right Drivers Predictive budgeting can be a jumping-off point to strategic conversations around your business’s future and lead to more insightful decision making overall. To achieve all of that, though, you’ll want to make sure you’re looking at the right things. Target operational drivers that will empower your business and help you introduce real change. 3. Don’t Forget the Human Side Like all finance functions, predictive budgeting requires a combination of people, processes and tools to be successful—so you don’t want to let any of those lag behind. While technology and data may be critical in driving the performance of your predictive budgeting efforts, your team and the instincts they bring to your findings are just as important. It’s that combination of human experience and data-driven insights that will put your budget in the best place to thrive. 4. Apply Scenario Modeling You can combine your predictive budgeting efforts with more detailed and potentially increased scenario modeling in order to better understand the range of possibilities waiting for your organization. In doing so, you’ll help your organization stay ready for anything ahead. Done right—and with the best people, technology and processes in place—predictive budgeting can elevate your budgeting and ensure your business is on the right path to success.  After all, with predictive budgeting, the future is already here. Discover how Vena can help you build a better budgeting process.