If there’s one thing you can do to get on the nice list permanently within your organization, it’s having an agile budgeting process in place. Not only does this style of operational planning and budgeting lead to quicker decision making, it keeps an eye on your short-and-long-term objectives and allows you to create a roadmap ahead using scenario modeling and forecasting. Agile budgeting also helps achieve operational alignment by keeping key players from various departments on the same page and focusing on the critical financial and operations performance data that matter to the company. But perhaps most important of all, agile budgeting helps organizations stay flexible by managing risks, but leaving room for change. Bottom line: Organized budgeting and forecasting processes help your business achieve more in less time. Don’t know where to begin? Here are five best practices to help you create more agile budgets—and stay off that naughty list once and for all. 1. Automate Manual Data Entries for the Ultimate Comfort and Joy Keeping your business competitive in today’s super-charged, fast-paced market requires harmonious processes. If your company relies on data that’s not easily accessible, manual data entry can quickly become a bottleneck that does harm to your organization’s bottom line. Luckily, Vena’s financial reporting software helps automate your financial reporting processes so you can spend more time delivering the analysis and insights that make your business jingle all the way. From comparing financials to reviewing actuals, Vena helps you pull timely information together so you don’t have to waste time consolidating data into your reports, dashboards or templates.  2. Yule Want to Bring All Your Data Into a Single Source Solution The data-driven decision making of today calls for never-before-seen levels of importance for collecting and analyzing data. The problem is, most companies spend way too much time debating which numbers to use, as different sources produce different numbers. How do you eliminate the confusion? Establishing a single source of truth, that’s how. And Vena’s planning software can help you do just that. You’ll be able to create real-time, long-term forecasts in minutes based on data from a single source so you can make the decisions that drive your business.  3. Drive Teamwork and Transparency Across Your Entire Workshop Keeping all the budgeting, forecasting and planning to yourself? Bah humbug. It’s time to involve the entire workshop in budgeting and forecasting. To keep things running like a well-oiled production line, you need accurate data from a wide range of sources to ensure budgeting and forecasting is on point. That means you should consider this task a team effort so everyone is on the same page and has a clear understanding of their needs. Plus, having all of your elves with their finger on the pulse in all the different departments can give you the data you need to make accurate predictions and set realistic budgets. It also allows them to offer their perspectives on where business is now and where it could be in the future.  4. Plan Faster and Forecast More Frequently for Holly Jolly Efficiency Where the budget is a quantified expectation for what your business wants to achieve, a forecast is an estimate of what will actually be achieved based on your numbers. And as any good business elf knows, both budgeting and forecast need to go where the cold wind blows. If needs change, so must your plan, as basing major business decisions on outdated data can put a serious damper on growth. Vena’s financial forecasting software empowers you to make quick top-down adjustments to your forecasts to meet those last-minute deadlines while building agility.  5. Give Your Budgets Room To Grow and Sparkle With Scenario Modeling, Intuitive Workflow Tools and Data Visualization The last thing you want to do is rely on guesswork in developing plans for the whole workshop. Not only could it lead to inefficient operations and spending, it could put your workshop at financial risk. That’s why it’s important to keep a watchful eye on anything and everything that could impact your financial outcome now or in the future, such as customer behavior, headcount, profit targets, cash flow targets, the list goes on. These metrics measure how well sales processes are performing and with the help of scenario modeling, will allow your elves to mitigate risks and make improvements before it’s too late. Managing your end-to-end budget process with intuitive and data-informed workflow tools will help all your elves proactively plan for your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly needs, ensuring alignment to strategic goals, yet leaving room in your budget to adjust to change when needed. What’s more, data visualization tools can help you discover hidden insights and to act on them faster, leading to smarter decisions and better outcomes for your entire workshop.  Set Off More Flexibility in Your Budgets Nothing will bring more joy to your world than getting a handle on corporate budgeting. Not only will it help you operate more effectively, meet growth goals and keep up with ongoing market demands, it’ll secure your spot on the nice list for all eternity. Worried it sounds too complicated? Luckily, Vena makes corporate budgeting as easy as pumpkin pie. You can create flexible budgets based on the size of your workshop using top-down or bottom-up budgeting while ensuring they align with your business goals, whether they’re driver based or zero based. The best part? You’ll recognize a familiar interface: Excel.   

Are you ready to present your financials to your board of directors at your upcoming end-of-fiscal-year board meeting? The meeting agenda will likely include reviewing your nonprofit financial statements and grant reports, approving next year’s KPIs and signing off on next fiscal’s budget. It's your board’s legal responsibility to ensure that grant funding has been spent appropriately and effectively. They’ll ask questions about your grant management such as: “How much from the Development Grant did we spend on employee salaries? On how many grants are we awaiting a decision? What percentage of our projected cash inflow do grants account for in next quarter?” The question you might ask yourself is, how am I going to answer those questions? The answer is in how you approach your grant management. What is Grant Management? Grant management is the process in which organizations oversee and track their grants to review how they’re allocated and spent. To make strategic decisions, your board needs visibility into that process. And as a strategic advisor to your business, you should provide your board with the answers they need to create a stronger relationship between you and your board of directors. This will better position your organization toward fulfilling its mission. In this post, you’ll discover three important questions your nonprofit board of directors will ask about your grant management and how to get those answers. 1. How Much From the Development Grant Did We Spend on Employee Salaries? Your board will want to protect against misspending and confirm that spending has complied with the budgets originally proposed to provide accountability to funders. If your organization budgeted employee salaries at 4% in its original proposal for the $1.1 million awarded, you should know if spending has complied with that budget. While your Statement of Functional Expenses reports the expense allocation by function—such as by program, management or fundraising—break this down further by reporting post-allocation spending by project, account, entity and department. 2. How Much Revenue Did the Community Outreach Fund Generate? Evaluating spending effectiveness to maximize program impact—and profitability—is another point of interest for your board. They’ll want to know each grant’s profitability to determine if spending reallocation is necessary so you’ll want to break down revenue figures by grant. If the Community Outreach Fund generated 187% revenue from its original amount but the Development Grant earned only 109%, you’ll gain insight on which spending model is more effective—and profitable. Read how WWF-Canada turned two hours of reporting into two seconds with Vena and were able to report funding allocation—dollar for dollar—to individual grants and donors. 3. What Percentage of Our Projected Cash Inflow Do Grants Account For in Next Quarter? Your board will want to know the statuses of your nonprofit’s current funding and funding opportunities to more accurately forecast cash inflow and cash outflow. Nonprofit organizations rely heavily on grants—it’s reported that 80% of nonprofit revenue in the United States comes from government grants or contracts and fees for services. As cash remains the largest portion of a nonprofit’s total assets, your board of directors will want to know how much funding is entering and exiting—especially in the short term. This means you should know how many grants and total funding are scheduled to finish, on how many proposals the organization is awaiting a decision and out of those, the likelihood of winning each one. If your nonprofit expects 26 donors that total $3.1 million to exit, you should have a strong forecast of how much is entering. If you have a 40% chance of winning the $825,000 Settlement Grant—one of the nine pending proposals—what are the projected values of the others? For your board to approve next fiscal’s budget, you’ll need to reconcile that budget with your grant timing. By having grant tracking reports you can quickly retrieve—that monitor restricted and unrestricted remaining grant balances—you’ll be able to more accurately forecast cash inflow and cash outflow. Transforming Your Approach to Grant Management Your nonprofit financial reports and grant reports need to clearly answer questions on compliance, revenue and cash inflow and outflow. By having the answers to these questions at your fingertips, you can give your board—and grantors—confidence that spending has complied, been maximized for profitability and that there are enough funds coming in. In an unpredictable and volatile economic climate, it’s important to implement agile planning to prepare for every scenario. Vena’s Complete Planning Software specially priced for Not For Profits—which includes pre-built grant report templates, data models and a grant tracker—can help you get those answers to empower your board toward making strategic, data-driven decisions—and sign off on next fiscal’s budget.

Your recent budgets had significantly high variances—higher than 10%. Your management team will want to know why and they’ll be asking questions such as: How much did we budget Production Volume Costs for in December? What was the difference between what we budgeted and the actuals? 17%—why is it so high? What happened in December? You’re the strategic advisor. To answer their questions and to provide possible causes, you need to know how to create a variance analysis report in Excel. Your report should be quick to create, easy to read and visualizes the data to tell a story, providing insights to your management team to inform their analysis and decision making. In this blog, we’ll cover: 4 best practices for visualizing variance data in Excel 3 common problems in variance analysis and reporting 4 Best Practices for Visualizing Variance Data in Excel 1. Vertically Align Variance Amounts With Budgets and Actuals Your management needs to see variance amounts with their respective budgets and actuals—alongside other variance amounts and those respective budgets and actuals. Only when these variances are analyzed comparatively, can they gain insights to inform their decision making. Some examples of insights they may glean include: Which expenses have the highest cost increases Which product lines have the lowest sales increases Which territories have the highest employee tenure decreases To vertically align variance amounts with budgets and actuals: With your two charts (one for variance amounts, the other for budgets and actuals) completed, hold the alt (shift on Mac) key to align your variance amount chart underneath your budgets and actuals chart. Delete the title and x axis labels from your variance amount chart. Your two charts are now one—one chart that tells one story, and one story that provides multiple insights for your management. Watch the video to learn from Excel nerd Chandoo how to vertically align variance amounts with their respective budgets and actuals to gain decision-making insights.   To watch the full Advanced Excel Charts for Finance Professionals workshop on demand, become a Plan To Grow member and join the community. Don’t miss out on mastering data storytelling. 2. Apply Conditional Formatting Now that you’ve aligned your two charts together to tell one story, apply conditional formatting so that your management can quickly view which variances in your chart are adverse and which are favorable. To apply conditional formatting: Select your variance amount chart to open the Format Data Series menu. Check off the Invert If Negative box (located under the Fill heading). You now have the option to select your two colors—one for negative values—to fill the bars in your chart so your management won’t lose time to guessing which are adverse and which are favorable. Notice how you can apply conditional formatting to quickly distinguish adverse variances from favorable variances.   Bonus Time-Saving Tip: Watch how you can use this "secret" Excel menu to replicate the style of formatting from one chart to another. 3. Insert Comments After applying conditional formatting, answer your management’s questions about what’s caused these variances by inserting comments. They’ll have questions—you know they’re coming—so be ready with answers in your report. Some questions they may ask include: What’s causing our insurance costs to rise much quicker than projected? What’s causing our electronics line to sell significantly fewer than planned? What’s causing our employees in Australia to resign so much faster than predicted? To provide possible answers, add comments by right-clicking the cell and then select ‘Insert Comment.’ Your comments should address: What you think has caused the variance. Whether you predict it’s a trend or an anomaly. Whether you believe it’s positively or negatively impacted your company. While some organizations analyze only adverse variances, it’s important to evaluate favorable variances as well. That’s because not all adverse variances negatively impact a business and not all favorable variances have a positive impact. While you may already know this, don’t assume your management does. Example: If your Total Production Volume Costs for December saw an adverse variance—17% higher than planned—perhaps your sales were higher than forecasted. Simply, it cost your company more to manufacture that month because your customers were buying more. Conversely, if your Total Production Volume Costs saw a favorable variance—13% lower than planned—perhaps your sales were lower than forecasted. Insert your comments to get ahead of your management’s incoming questions. 4. Track Forecasts With Thermometer Charts After addressing your management’s possible questions, they’ll want to know: Your company’s performance up-to-date performance Whether or not your company’s on pace to meet year-end goals Example: If an expense item saw a favorable variance—22% lower than planned—does that mean your company found efficiencies to save on costs, or is a project behind schedule? The answer is in your forecasts. To illustrate progress and monitor performance, create a thermometer chart out of your budgets vs actuals chart to overlap your budget and actual numbers. To do this in Excel: Right-click on your budgets and actuals chart. Open the Format Data Series menu. Drag the Series Overlap slider to 100% (Note: Ensure that your chart has multiple series within one category. Your bars won’t overlap correctly if your chart is plotting multiple categories within one series. To verify this, right-click on your chart and select Select Data. Select Switch Row/Column to toggle and ensure that your Budgets and Actuals are correctly listed as Legend entries.) Select the Budget portion of the overlapped bar. Select the Format menu tab at the top.  Select ‘Shape Fill’ and then select ‘No Fill’ to remove the color. Select the Format menu tab at the top. Select ‘Shape Outline’ and then select the color that matches the color of the Actual bar. Thermometer charts effectively and quickly visualize performance and progress to track your forecasts. Now your management can see—instantly—the company’s up-to-date performance and whether your company is on track to meet year-end goals or not. Notice how you can create a thermometer chart to track forecasts and quickly illustrate progress.   You’ve learned four best practices for creating a variance analysis report in Excel, so now it’s time to find out which common problems may occur when analyzing and reporting variances. 3 Common Problems in Variance Analysis and Reporting 1. Time Delay If last month’s books still haven’t closed, you can’t create a report with only fresh numbers. You’ll send an outdated report to your management, from which they’ll analyze and then make decisions—but it’s already too late. Your company needs to close last month’s books faster so you can create a timely report that allows your leadership to make timely decisions. 2. Disparate Data Sources Without data integration, you can’t identify causes of high variances through a big-picture lens. Sure, your management may analyze your report, but neither you nor your leadership will feel confident that data isn’t missing. You’ll need to integrate your data sources—such as your ERPs, GLs and HRISs—before you can create a complete variance analysis report to get the full picture. 3. Historical Budgeting Logic If you don’t know how previous budgets were set, you can’t deliver a report with any value to your management. Your variance analysis report derives its logic from the budget, so if each budget evolved from previous versions, you need to know the historical budgeting logic and your company needs to be able to retain budget calculations. Looking at and understanding the progression of budgets and variances will help you create a historically informed report which your management can trust. Variance Analysis Visualization Every variance analysis report should provoke questions. If your leadership doesn’t ask questions about your report, that’s a sign that it’s not well visualized. As a strategic advisor, how you illustrate your variance data and create your report—in a clear and easy-to-read presentation—should provide value to your organization, by spotlighting areas of improvement and subsequent actions to take. Variance Analysis Software When you’re inevitably asked, “What happened in December?” by using vertical alignment, conditional formatting, comments and thermometer charts in Excel, you’ll be able to answer your management team’s questions and provide them with the decision-making insights they need. With Vena’s Excel-based Variance Analysis solution, you can automate your variance reporting. By consolidating your spreadsheet data and automating the addition of your actuals at the end of every period, your company can eliminate user errors, retain your calculations and distribute your variance analysis reports faster.

A financial dashboard is designed to track a variety of finance-related key performance indicators (KPIs). With it, anyone and everyone with access to this data can quickly obtain an accurate overview of the performance in question. In this guide, we answer a variety of questions related to financial dashboards and also dive into why they are critical to the success of an organization. What Are Financial Dashboards?   Above, we shared the basic definition of a financial dashboard. Now, let’s dive into the finer details to better understand if it’s something your company needs. A financial dashboard is a data visualization tool used to track KPIs across the financial spectrum. This can include, but is not limited to departments such as accounting, sales, marketing, customer service and human resources. By sharing data with different stakeholders across your organization in an easily digestible format, such as charts and graphs, it’s simple to track the ongoing health of your company’s finances, regardless of the amount of data or where it’s being pulled from.  Why Do We Need Financial Dashboards? No two companies are identical, but the majority of them share similar reasons for using a financial dashboard. Here are four of the most common reasons why dashboards are important for performance: 1. To Save Time Have you ever attempted to manually gather data month after month? How long did it take you? What could you have done with that time? Without a financial dashboard, you have two options: manually gather data from data sources or skip this altogether. Neither option is ideal. But with a financial dashboard, everything is done automatically on your behalf. Once your dashboard is set up to pull data from the appropriate sources, you no longer have to spend any time on this task. Depending on how much data you have and how often you manually gather it, setting up a financial dashboard could save you many hours of tedious work over the course of a month.  2. To Reduce the Risk of Errors Not only is the manual collection of data time consuming and cumbersome, it also increases the risk of errors. And if you do that, it could result in a chain of events that leads to lost time and money, poor decisions and personnel issues. By removing the tedious, manual compilation of data from the process, you eliminate the risk of errors. There are no more concerns about writing down the wrong number or pulling data from the wrong date range. 3. To Efficiently Share Data It’s one thing to collect data, but another thing entirely to share it with others in your organization. Without a financial dashboard, you may rely on traditional methods of sharing data, such as email and in-person meetings. While there is a time and place for these options, they’re far from efficient. Once you create a financial dashboard, you can share it with anyone (or everyone) in your organization with a click of your mouse. Furthermore, you can decide which type of access to grant. For example, some people may require read-only access while others need administrative rights.  4. To Track Performance The last thing you want to do is assume that you know how your company is performing. Even if you’re right, it'll cause confusion down the road. A financial dashboard allows you to accurately track the performance of KPIs in real time. You can then compare periods, such as month over month or year over year. And best yet, you can do all this within a matter of seconds.  5. To Have Your Data All in One Place If your revenue numbers are here and your expense numbers are there, you don’t have an efficient system in place. Data that’s scattered all over the place is more likely to go missing and to have inaccuracies. Using a financial dashboard allows you to keep all your data in one place, allowing you to quickly review and share with others. There’s no more jumping around from one resource to the next. Examples of Popular Financial Dashboards  There’s no shortage of the types of financial dashboards you can create. If you need it and if you can dream it up, you can create it. Here are five financial dashboard examples, including guidance on what they can do for you: 1. Business Health Dashboard A business health dashboard helps you consistently measure the overall financial health and well-being of your organization.  It’s used to measure both short- and long-term financial metrics with a focus on data points such as revenue and net-new revenue, net profit margin and LTV:CAC.  A business health dashboard may not answer all your finance-related questions, but it’ll always keep you informed of your company’s general financial health.  2. Customer Health Dashboard This is all about the relationship you have with your customers. It’s particularly important if you have a subscription-based business in which turnover rate is critical to financial health. Also, with a customer health dashboard, finance leaders can better communicate with sales, marketing and customer success teams to resolve challenges and implement new and improved strategies. A customer health financial dashboard can include data such as the number of active customers, gross and net revenue retention and time to value.  Remember, you don’t have a business if you don’t have customers. That’s what makes this dashboard one of the most important.  3. Employee Health Dashboard Without employees, you’d have a difficult—if not impossible—time satisfying your customers. And when customer satisfaction dips, so does revenue.  An employee health dashboard tracks metrics that are important to the financial health of your company as well as to its overall performance. It can focus on metrics such as revenue per employee, employee retention, new hire training costs and headcount budget versus actuals.  4. Profit and Loss Dashboard Just because you’re generating revenue doesn’t make your company profitable. In addition to a standard profit and loss statement, a profit and loss dashboard will keep you current on the profitability of the company.  The goal of a profit and loss dashboard is to track metrics including but not limited to revenue, gross profit, OPEX ratio, operating profit margin and net profit margin.  5. CFO Dashboard A CFO (chief financial officer) doesn’t need (or want) to know what’s happening at every level. Instead, they’re most interested in an accurate, current, high-level overview of the company’s financial health.  A CFO dashboard gives them that, with key metrics such as revenue, gross profit, EBIT, EBIT %, net income and operating expenses.  How To Create a Financial Dashboard in Excel The steps that you take to build a KPI dashboard are unique to your company, its financial circumstances and its many financial needs.  On the plus side, there’s no shortage of options available to you. Conversely, you have to narrow your options to make an informed and confident decision.  A growing number of companies are opting to create a financial dashboard in Excel, as it allows them to work toward  their goals while using a familiar application. In many ways, building a financial dashboard in Excel is the same as with any other tool. There are basic steps you must take to lay the foundation: 1. Gather Data Sources This can be the most time-consuming step because you’re chasing down data from various services. At the same time, you’re learning how to implement all of this data with your Excel dashboard. You can make this task easier by enlisting the help of your co-workers. For instance, if you need to connect sales-related data sources, work closely with the sales department to do so. 2. Design Your Dashboard How do you want your data to be displayed? Do you have everything you need to design a dashboard that suits the needs of you and your team? There’s no shortage of options, so experiment with several to see what piques your interest. And once again, consult with others to get their feedback. When getting started, it’s often easiest to choose a simple layout, such as a four-quadrant dashboard.  3. Verify the Information Once your dashboard is actively pulling data, it’s time to verify the information. Answer questions such as: Does the dashboard include all the metrics you need? Are the metrics being displayed properly? Is the data accurate? Adding to the above, Excel alone is not generally powerful enough for most organizations. This is where Vena comes into play.  Rather than abandon Excel in exchange for another platform, Vena gives you the flexibility and  tools you need to build a powerful and scalable dashboard—empowering   you to store, edit, share and analyze the data that drives your business your way. Strategic Decision Making With Financial Dashboards  In today’s business world, data-driven and strategic decision making is easier than ever with the help of financial dashboards. And with more informed decisions, you get better results. Here are some of the ways that the use of financial dashboards can improve strategic decision making: Comparing data points in the same place: Jumping from one tool and service to the next to compile and compare data leads to inefficiencies across the board. Strategic decision making calls for access to up-to-date data, all in the same place.  Spot trends: Some trends are more important than others, but most are difficult to spot since you don’t know where to look. Not only does a financial dashboard help you spot trends,  it also gives you a place to actively look. Does your revenue increase during a specific time of the year? Do expenses rise during the fourth quarter? Spotting trends allows you to take the appropriate action.  Presentation of data: It’s not always good enough to consume data and keep it all to yourself. There are times when you need to present it to others, such as stakeholders, investors and co-workers. A dashboard allows for this presentation of information so you can collectively make strategic decisions.  Frequently Asked Questions About Financial Dashboards  Even if you’re experienced in the world of financial dashboards, you’re likely to have questions now and again.  Here are some of the most frequently asked questions: What type of data should you include in a financial dashboard? The answer to this question depends largely on your goals. For example, you may be interested in a dashboard to enhance your financial reporting process. Or perhaps you need to create a dashboard for your CFO that provides an overview of the company’s finances.  Can you use Excel to create a financial dashboard?  Many finance professionals prefer to use Excel since they’re already familiar with the popular spreadsheet tool. This familiarity, along with the power of the Vena Growth Engine, allows you to seamlessly build a dashboard that meets your needs.  Which tools can you use alongside a financial dashboard to improve its performance? There’s no shortage of tools and integrations to consider. Power BI is one such tool to consider, as its intuitive analytics will have you seeing your data in a new way. Who should have access permissions to a dashboard?  The answer varies from company to company. Maybe you’re the only one who needs access to a dashboard. Or perhaps multiple departments could benefit from the data. The decision is yours and you can always add more people at a later date. Is it possible to have too much data on a dashboard?  Yes, yes and yes again! It’s imperative to include all applicable data, but that doesn’t mean you should go overboard. With too much, your dashboard becomes difficult to view and understand.  It’s best to create multiple dashboards as opposed to attempting to cram everything into one.  Recap: The Ultimate Guide to Financial Dashboards Business intelligence and financial dashboards have come a long way over the years. Today, it’s simple to build a high-powered dashboard that saves time and money and assists with strategic decision making.

According to our CFO Darrell Cox, in order to be a great CFO, you need to be action oriented and growth minded—proactively looking for insights and leading the change by driving forward-looking business motions. In this blog, we highlight Darrell’s Evolution of the Strategic CFO and his five key principles on being an agile CFO for your business.  Being an Agile and Strategic CFO According to Darrell, being an agile CFO means maximizing your organization's success by mitigating risk during down times. As most organizations experienced during the pandemic, it’s important to have a plan, but as Darrell highlights, the ability to move quickly and make a change if the plan doesn’t benefit the business is important. “Your plan is going to be wrong one way or another as you introduce risk. Agile planning is operationalized across the business to achieve short-term goals and longer-term outcomes. It's not just a budget, it's a process. It enables the company to move and maneuver to make changes around them.” In case you missed Darrell’s talk at Vena Nation week, he highlights his 5 principles of the agile CFO, which takes a lot of influence from his original 7 Principles of the Agile CFO. His 5 principles represent a shorter methodology for agility. The principles leverage the term “agile” as an acronym that describes the different steps of becoming an agile CFO, which are reflected below: The 5 Principles of the Agile CFO: 1. Act and drive action. The “a” in agility represents acting quickly and driving action. It means having a positive impact as a leader and always thinking about how and when you say or do something with your team so that you achieve your desired result. 2. Grow and think big. The “g” represents growing and thinking big. Darrell highlights that when you think about setting something up or analyzing something, ask yourself, are you learning from it?  3. Iterate and plan forward. The “i” represents continuous iteration and planning ahead. As Darrell points out, a CFO does not focus on one single budget, but many small connected plans that lead to an ultimate objective. 4. Leverage technology. The “l” represents leveraging technologies that assist in the day to day. Technology can really enable leaders to amplify their impact. 5. Engage, align and enable. The “e” represents engaging, aligning and enabling teams. Darrell points out that it’s important to engage your audience so that they become aligned and are enabled to achieve and be the best that they can be. It’s also important to be approachable and human in our role. It means being a great storyteller in order to get your team working together and moving forward as one team. Be the Best Agile Leader That You Can Be As Darrell put’s it, being the best agile leader that you can be means thinking big and not just focusing on the details. A strategic and agile leader needs to be finding clues in the details about how to drive a great business. As business and operations professionals it’s important to be agile and proactively looking for insights and changes, so that you can continue to drive your business forward.

As part of Vena's birthday we created a timeline for you to enjoy, check it out: A Decade of Planning To Grow: Milestones and Highlights from Vena’s First 10 Years As we celebrate Vena’s 10th birthday, it’s time to look back and reflect on the growth we’ve accomplished so far. This is how Vena evolved from a three-founder startup in 2011 into a cloud FP&A leader with 900+ customers in 2021. April 2011: Longtime friends Rishi Grover and George Papayiannis launch the company. They begin building the software out of George’s parents’ basement.  August 2011: Don Mal joins as the CEO and third co-founder. Vena is officially born! December 2011: After building the original product, refining the go-to-market strategy and hiring some early employees, Vena brings on First Wind Energy as its first customer. June 2012: George and the Product and Technology team launch the first version of Vena’s OLAP financial database, ultimately laying the foundation for long-term growth and innovation. October 2012: Vena moves its office to Islington and Bloor in Toronto after raising $3 million in funding from close friends and family. This also included an angel investment from a PE firm, Klass Capital.  2013 - 2015: The sales team continues to shatter its revenue and customer acquisition targets. Vena signs some huge clients including Nando’s, McDonald’s Canada, Santander and Kobo.  July 2014: The Product and Technology team successfully transform Vena from an on-premise application into a cloud-based SaaS solution. July 2016: Vena secures its first major funding round, a $30 million Series A investment from Centana Growth Partners. May 2017: Hundreds of customers and prospects gather in New Orleans for VenaNOLA, the company’s first-ever user conference. September 2017: More customers + more employees = the need for more space! Vena moves offices again to its current global headquarters at 2 Fraser Ave. in Toronto’s Liberty Village.  December 2018: Vena caps off yet another record-breaking year with enhancements to the modeling, workflow, integration and data mapping features. January 2019: JMI Equity leads a $115 million funding round as Vena continues to attract top-tier talent and grow its market share.  August 2019: Don steps down as Vena’s CEO as the company begins to adopt a more targeted product-led growth strategy. SaaS veteran Hunter Madeley takes the helm as CEO as Vena begins to prepare for a period of aggressive expansion. May 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic sparks the birth of Vena Nation week, a fully-virtual conference for the entire finance and operations community. Vena unveils Plan To Grow™ shortly after, an innovative online learning hub and CPE-accredited content platform. November 2020: Vena launches the Vena Preview—its first product-led growth initiative—and begins work on additional enhancements to drive demand for the business. February 2021: Vena forms a partnership with the Kansas City Chiefs in order to champion digital transformation in the sports and live entertainment industry. Vena also launches pre-configured solutions for SaaS, banking, education and other key market segments. April 2021: Vista Equity Partners leads another $300 million funding round, giving Vena the momentum it needs to continue thriving for the next decade and beyond. May 2021: Vena’s Product and Technology team prepare for major releases including Vena 365 Connect and embedded dashboarding with PowerBI.

Here at Vena, we love Excel and we know you do too. So we partnered with Excel MVP Punra Duggirala, also known as Chandoo, who is passionate about data analytics and visualization. Chandoo has developed a platform for sharing knowledge about Microsoft Excel, Power BI and new ways of presenting data. We also partnered with long-time Excel MVP Liam Bastick, who is the Director of SumProduct and also a chartered accountant and chartered management accountant specializing in financial modeling and strategic advice. Both of these Excel experts offer their latest best practices, tips and tricks around Excel. When you work with Excel on a daily basis, there’s always room to grow and learn more. Read on for our top three Excel best practices for building effective spreadsheets to save you time and keep you  organized. 1. Always Follow the CRaFT Principles While Building Spreadsheets The CRaFT methodology comes from Liam Bastick and refers to the four key principles for building effective spreadsheets. CRaFT is actually an acronym and each letter represents a specific principle to follow while building your spreadsheets. Consistency  The “C” refers to consistency, and as Liam points out, it means that when spreadsheets are built with consistency in mind, they should be incorporating pre-defined formats and styles in a coherent way. So for example, this means ensuring all formulas are copied uniformly across ranges and also presenting periodic data and formulas in columns consistently, establishing similar structures for similar spreadsheets. Consistency allows for fewer mistakes, promotes model integrity and makes it easier for developers (and users) to understand models quickly. This also makes it easier when you are collaborating with other team members and need to generate and update reports quickly. Robustness The “R” refers to robustness, essentially that models need to be free from errors, mathematically accurate and readily auditable. Liam points out that this principle is key since it keeps models simple, consistent and transparent for you and your team. You and your team can work efficiently since there are established formulas and no hidden macros. Flexibility The “F” refers to flexibility and reminds users that all models should have the structure to provide invaluable “what if?” scenario analysis. Keeping spreadsheets flexible saves you and your team valuable time later if an analysis needs to be conducted. Transparency Lastly, the “T” refers to arguably one of the most important principles—transparency. Spreadsheets need to be clear, concise and cohesive so that others can understand them when working collaboratively. According to Liam, modelers should create their calculations and output in a user-friendly way. 2. Use Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts To Save Time According to Excel wizard Chandoo, leveraging keyboard and mouse shortcuts while using Excel is key to saving time and minimizing stress (especially when working with large data spreadsheets). In fact, he highlights how getting around spreadsheets easily and quickly through keyboard and mouse shortcuts allows you to keep data prep and clean up in mind when designing your spreadsheet. The easier a spreadsheet is to navigate using shortcuts is really dependent on how you set up the spreadsheet from the first step.  That’s why it’s important to put the time and effort into designing your spreadsheet effectively first (see step 1 above). As finance and operations professionals (and even outside of that), you’re probably leveraging Excel and navigating through different sets of data. Leveraging shortcuts not only saves you time, it helps you get around your spreadsheet in a smarter and more efficient way. For example, to navigate through your spreadsheets quickly and easily and to get to a specific point within a spreadsheet, select the end key and any arrow on your keyboard to bring you to the last cell of a sequence in the arrow's pointing direction. 3. Tell a Story Through Your Spreadsheets Telling the right story with your data is key to informing your teams on the latest business updates and making changes if and when necessary. We’ve highlighted how going beyond the numbers to shape a powerful narrative with your data is an important skill for finance leaders to master. According to Liam, it’s important to have a narrative in mind while building out your spreadsheets in Excel. In Liam’s experience, he has found that building a narrative into your spreadsheets and data has been shown to increase comprehension, interest, engagement, recall and it also eases the comprehension of data when it’s been reviewed. As Liam says, “The importance of good storytelling is that it’s not all about one thing.” This is especially true when you’re working with budgets and organizing them through Excel reporting. Liam also argues that when it comes to any kind of report building, “understanding one-offs is critical to understanding business performance and setting financial statements. You’ve got to maintain a register of the one-off items, both positive and negative, for the current and prior periods to see the actual trends.” This is key to managing both on a day-to-day level as well as strategically for the long term for any team. The Power of Excel Whether you’re a finance professional or business leader, you’ve probably leveraged Excel in some capacity. Maybe you need to build a budget report, create a financial forecast or just organize your team's vacation time. Excel is so powerful for your day to day and Vena is the only Complete Planning platform that combines enterprise-class functionality with the comfort, flexibility and power of Excel. Our Growth Engine technology features a native Excel interface, so you can use the tool you already know to do things you’ve only imagined. The point being is that Excel is an integral part of the day to day for most teams and it’s a tool that helps keep us organized and working efficiently.

You’re probably wondering what Excel Nerds Unite is all about. Well, this community came out of Vena’s desire to bring together Excel nerds and enthusiasts alike. We wanted to create a community that celebrated Excel nerd culture. As part of our official launch, we built a dedicated website where Excel nerds and enthusiasts can unite together. The website will continue to grow into a space for Excel-related content—blogs, spreadsheets, Excel memes and puns and more. And Excel Nerds Unite is also part of Vena Nation week, which is our annual virtual conference for finance, operations and business leaders to excel together.  There are some great things you can look forward to that Excel Nerds Unite will be doing as part of Vena Nation week. We’re bringing in two legendary Excel experts to speak on all kinds of interesting Excel-related topics—from new Excel features you just need to know to understanding the importance of effective data storytelling in Excel. Both of our speakers are recognized as Excel MVPs by Microsoft. But wait, there’s more. You can even submit your Excel questions on our Excel Nerds Unite website and they will get answered during Vena Nation week (and beyond that during our yearly Plan To Grow talks). So if you’ve ever been stuck on an Excel problem, now’s your chance to chat with the pros! So with that, why don’t I tell you a little bit about our Excel Nerd speakers who will be with us during Vena Nation Week.  Punra Duggirala aka Chandoo Let me begin by introducing Chandoo. Punra Duggirala, also known by his nickname, Chandoo, holds an MBA from IIM Indore and Computer Science degree from Andhra University. Chandoo is really passionate about data analytics and visualization and has developed a platform for sharing knowledge about Microsoft Excel, Power BI and new ways of presenting data. He loves Excel (possibly even more than we do here at Vena), and for Vena Nation week this year, he’ll be teaching you New Excel Features You Need To Know and The Ultimate Excel Shortcuts to help you become the nerdiest Excel expert. To make it even better, Chandoo will be answering your Excel-related questions, so be sure to submit them before June 15! Liam Bastick aka SumProduct Liam Bastick is a full-time Excel legend and part-time comedian (you’ll see more of the comedian during his sessions). Liam is a chartered accountant and chartered management accountant specializing in financial modeling and strategic advice. He is also the Director of SumProduct, a business providing Power BI to financial modeling services and strategic advice, decision analysis support and training to corporate, banking and service delivery clients nationally and internationally. For Vena Nation week, Liam will be walking you through Creating Effective Spreadsheets in Excel and Effective Data Storytelling in Excel. Missed Vena Nation Week? Check out all the Vena Nation week sessions on Plan To Grow, and stay tuned for more updates and all the ongoing content that will be released on Excel Nerds Unite. Make sure to check out all the great talks and live and interactive events we had during Vena Nation week this year.