Anaplan is a scenario planning and analysis platform designed to optimize decision-making in complex business environments so that enterprises can outpace their competition and the market. By building connections and collaboration across organizational silos, the Anaplan platform surfaces key insights.
N/A
Vena
Score 8.7 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Vena Solutions provides a financial process automation solution to automate Corporate Performance Management, accounting and budgeting, Regulatory & Compliance, and other finance-related processes. It is scaled for medium to large-sized organizations.
N/A
Pricing
Anaplan
Vena
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Professional
N/A
Complete
N/A
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Anaplan
Vena
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
—
The Professional Plan is the most flexible way to get started quickly and can be added onto as a company grows. The plan includes: Vena Platform, Customer Success Manager, Standard Support and Customer Portal.
Complete Plan includes everything in Professional, plus: Vena Insights, Premium Support, Sandbox Environment, and Expert Managed Services.
For a limited time, new customers who use Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Online) as their primary ERP can get a free year of Vena and 40% off implementation costs.
Vena also offers special pricing for not for profit organizations. To learn more, speak to an expert.
Anaplan vs Oracle Hyperion - Anaplan is far better calculation engine and way more modern. However, Anaplan still struggles to provide reporting, especially adhoc reporting in excel based off a data model.
Anaplan vs Pigment - Anaplan is a more proven product, however, Pigment …
Anaplan is easier to implement, easier to use, easier to maintain than these tools. It scales easily with the business. Workflows are easy to implement. It is easy to drill down and understand how the tool obtained a specific result, giving confidence in its calculations. …
Easy of use is Anaplan's main advantage. As Anaplan is code-less configuration, and the logic for model building is by far the simplest, it would make the learning curve less steep. This is very important when we are showing our clients that, their complicated planning scenario …
Anaplan is one of the only tools flexible to handle bespoke commission calculations. In addition to Sales Performance Management, Anaplan can be used to support other business functions, such as workforce planning or financial planning & analysis. Anaplan provides the …
Anaplan is a proven tool for scalable applications and is flexible to support multiple use cases. Its support is established and the user community is strong. Resources to support the product are readily available.
Anaplan is more powerful than Pigment considering that it is an Enterprise class system and is able to manage bigger data sets. Anaplan allows for advanced scenario modeling and formula capabilities along with custom reporting functionalities. Anaplan has proven its …
Anaplan and these other tools are very similar. I cannot say that I selected Anaplan over them as I have worked with and been involved with setting up a number of tools for clients. They all have their advantages and Anaplan is a very strong tool in the cloud planning space.
can be implemented across multiple use cases- also Anaplan is an enterprise solution. Had good reviews in market and also used by other competitors in industry
Both platforms are excellent but come with some challenges. They are often complex to configure and offer limited customization options. Their user interfaces are not very intuitive, and their reporting capabilities are somewhat restricted. The total cost of ownership is …
In my professional experience, I've exclusively worked with Anaplan. The tool's impressive features made learning it an ongoing, engaging process. Its continuous updates and capabilities kept me consistently learning and adapting, so I never felt the need to switch to a …
The tools generally fill different niches, Anaplan is the best for corporate and enterprise planning, OneStream's strengths are in Consolidations and working with large data sets by IT, and Pigment is a strong contender for finance teams at small organizations with less-defined …
Compared to OneStream and Venna Anaplan offers a more modern look and feel of the platform. It is better situated and maintained in regards of platform updates as it's a full SaaS software there are never any issues with the system version as it's always automatically up to …
Anaplan is using hyper block, so calculation is faster. The implementation of Anaplan is also very straightforward, so COE team can quickly catchup on the solution. If additional functions are required after go-live, COE can also support the implementation by themselves. …
Managing spreadsheets in Excel or Google Sheets becomes too time consuming as the business and team grows so transitioning to a tool like Anaplan is a natural evolution. I have used Power BI as a complement to Anaplan in the past in order to make the data that was consolidated …
Anaplan is cloud based which automatically removes the pain and risk that comes along with emailing around different versions of spreadsheets. Concurrent users can interact with different parts of the model at the same time greatly improving time spent adding inputs to the …
We selected Anaplan because of the breadth of their vision and their approach to tackle "planning" of all kinds and integrate planning processes into a true Connected Planning ecosystem. We found that their flexibility and ease of use ultimately provided a better avenue to …
Vena also allows for much more dynamic report building and refresh rather than manual updates throughout reports. The user interface is also much easier to understand compared to Oracle, which allows new users to adopt faster and get familiar with Vena. Overall, Vena is …
Vena is much faster than other such software which is available in market. If we talking about pricing $$$ so Vena is affordable to smaller companies also. it's help us quicker integrations with other software and User Interface is much better than other software. Vena gives …
We found Vena to be much more intuitive and easy to leverage with our existing models and templates we've built in Excel already. It allowed our finance and ops teams to get traction and value from the solution much faster than we felt the other CPM solutions we looked at.
Both the softwares have effectively been integrated together to make my job as an analyst easier. This helps in generating accurate data interpretations and led to better results in sales of our products and improved client services and feedback.
I guess they both compliment each other by integration and by both checks I can get the accuracy in result. And growth in sales by finding the key parameters where we need to work.
Business Development Executive and Lead Generation
Chose Vena
Vena Solutions stands out due to its familiar Excel-based interface, making it easy for our team to adopt without extensive training. Compared to alternatives like Anaplan and Oracle Hyperion, Vena's strong customer support and efficient automation have significantly reduced …
Vena stands out from competitors due to its seamless Excel integration, which allows us to leverage a tool we are already familiar with while adding automation, collaboration, and advanced financial planning. Unlike some platforms that require fully new systems, Vena's …
Data Rails is similar to Vena but easier to use and at a lower price. Historically, ERP systems provided much of what we used Vena for. That currently is not the case and these additional subscriptions are necessary. What used to be a simple process that required little …
In comparison to its competitors what has helped Vena stack up against them is its wide range of solutions in specific. Having a curated group of solutions, powered with IT-backed automation, integration with 365 and compliance with the latest trends and legal formulations is …
We did not evaluate any other products. We knew we wanted to embrace, not replace, excel, and Vena is best in class as a CPM tool that leverages Excel as a lens into the database.
Ultimately we decided on Vena because of the Excel interface which we knew would improve adoption. We also like the platform agnostic integration and easy-to-use web interface. The OLAP cube was also appealing to allow for a variety of pivoted reports.
We had quotes from three different companies including Vena. Even with a higher pricing, Vena made the best impression with a powerful software and a solid solution. With another competitor, we would have to engage a bookkeeper to support our consolidation. Vena didnt …
Tableau is by far the best tool I've used. Vena in comparison is very good but it's missing the master data link to SAP, and the ability of data to refresh when the hierarchies move. It's also lacking standard reports on system set up like basic P&L's, etc. It's also missing …
we used Fiserv AML Risk and MPC. Risk was used for ALM (we will still need to find another solution for this as Vena does not offer this). We also used Fiserv MPC for budgeting and forecasting. This system was extrmely inefficient and provided us with many complications and …
Vena being a Excel add in makes it very attractive. Also, there are certain features that Vena had was very fascinating compared to their competitors. It was easy for users to grasp it as it looked and worked just as Excel.
Anaplan is best suited for strategic planning initiatives in industries like CPG, Manufacturing, FS, Pharma. It can handle multiple use cases for each function in the company like Supply chain, Finance, Sales and more. It is one of the best tools I have seen in scenario modelling. It is not suitable for very detailed level planning, essentially execution level eg. Production scheduling.
Whether you have processes you are looking to make more efficient or starting from scratch, Vena is a great tool to handle both. When we started with Vena all of reporting was either very manual or frankly nonexistent. Vena was pivotal in bringing us from zero to 10 in a short time. it helped us streamline the process of gathering data to the end reporting
What i like best about Vena is that it is very seamless Excel integration.
Vena fosters collabs across teams, helping multiple members to work together on financial planning in real-time enhancing overall efficiency.
We now also can automate manual processes like budgeting, consolidation of data and reporting saves my valuable time and also reducing the risk of errors.
It could improve the ease of implementation; it could take a long for an inexperienced IT team.
From the ERP system perspective, it can be linked easily, but it has room for improvement when you make core changes and require a Vena specialist again.
Some administrators can get confused while working on Excel implementation; it has complicated technical requirements.
Anaplan is already an established market leader in enterprise planning area. Its flexibility to build multi-dimensional models, real time scenario plannings are proven to be the best features and successfully implemented by global organizations. Anaplan's ambitious product team is ensuring to roll out new features regularly based on customer/ partner feedback. e.g their new improved polaris environment has strong potential to build very large models without worrying about sparsity. The integration with other tools/technologies is being easier (e.g. cloudworks). Hence, considering Anaplan as a platform that has proved to be successful tool in enterprise level planning, its focus on regular feature enhancements and future release roadmaps I believe this platform has potential to evolve further along with our business processes and requirements
It saves me so much time - to go back I would have to hire multiple people to achieve the same results. It is a cost effective tool for our uses and continues to pay for itself in time savings.
Anaplan is interesting because it is at the same time easy to use and difficult to use. An end user can navigate a well-constructed app, being pointed in the right direction every time they feel a slight bit of confusion, and find everything they need in what feels like a straight line. Similarly, a model builder (developer of sorts) can have the exact same experience, but the journey is longer and more complicated. End users have great experiences with Anaplan, but sometimes model builders have a frustrating one. That is not to say model building is hard (because it truly is not), but things change, and when things change in complex systems, the effort required simply to investigate where a model builder needs to make an adjustment may frustrate them but also frustrate their non-technical bosses. However, the reality is that with complicated businesses, complicated business problems, come complicated solutions. It is actually a testament to Anaplan's capabilities that it has taken on the biggest problems at the biggest companies. It may be daunting to adjust it in those environments, but at least you know it did meet the needs there, which is more than most tools can say.
This is split between usability from an end-user perspective and administrative. Administrative - The tool is lacking in a cohesive way to administer the tool, both from more of a back-end perspective (ETL/Integrations, scripting, etc.) as well as from a business administrative (Processes, Models, etc.). On the more back-end IT related aspects, the tool is a mishmash of modules that were clearly developed in stovepipe fashion. Basic feature/functionality aspects such as version control, auto vs manual save, etc. differ between the code preparation components. It is also lacking in any sort of coherent version control. Not all pages display the context information, so extreme caution must be used. There is also no coherent migration strategy. The process and model navigation has been somewhat challenging for our business administrators, often requiring assistance from Vena when creating or altering templates. 2 of 10 End User - This is better. The Excel add-in generally functions well. Creating basic templates is straightforward, and there is a large degree of flexibility when creating reporting templates. Being part of Excel puts many users into a comfort zone. The toggle switch between template and data mode is not well conceived, and the add-in pop-ups occasionally have issues on multi-monitor displays. 6 of 10
There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues
Vena has been available and running. There are notifications well ahead of scheduled maintenance and so far, scheduled maintenance has been occurring during off hours and fortunately has not occurred during a time that is crucial for us to be actively using.
Generally, pages load quickly and reports complete within a reasonable timeframe. However, when working with large or complex datasets or during times of multiple active users, performance can sometimes be impacted. That said, much of the performance depends on how the model is built and whether best practices have been followed. Optimized models tend to perform much better, so the experience can be somewhat subjective based on the setup.
Vena Solutions pages load quickly and only a few times does it get a bit slow, only when there are many integrations and the reports are long. But in general it is always fast and honestly I am very satisfied with the speed in the generation of statistical reports and the pages
Support quality has dropped since Thoma Bravo has taken over. I think some serious re-focus needs to happen here -- part of the beauty of being in the Anaplan community was how involved you felt in it before. Before I didn't dread sending a support ticket, now I am starting to.
From initiate setup to going live, Vena's customer representatives and technicians have proven to be responsive and enthusiastic in getting our company up and running. They have been patient with our questions and frustrations and worked to troubleshoot issues that have come up.
In my opinion, in-person training is always the best if you have the option to do so. This allows real-time interactions with the instructions, whereas the online training I took required me to write-down questions, email them, and wait for responses. This slows down the process, as you can imagine. That said, in-person training is an extra cost and it likely isn't needed for everyone. I would suggest selecting a small number of people to take in-person training and then having them act as mentors to the rest of your team. That way, as the rest of the team takes the online training, they have a resource to help them in real time.
Our initial in person training was a little rough b/c I felt like our trainer wanted to focus on maximizing Vena rather than understanding what we were needing for our organization. He was very responsive and added insights, but could have worked to understand our needs a little better.
Learning made easy . One of the best trainings i have attended. Training was very detailed training by the trainer, which helped me understand the basics of the model building. Level 1 training was easy and instructor was most helpful here. Level 2 training was challenging but was able to go thru due to understanding of the basics.
The training was structured as a group training to learn the basics of creating a data model and mapping a template. While we had nearly 10 participants, I was the only actual implementer so we probably didn't actually need the training and could have just learned the initial skills from the implementation consultant. Two years later, when we hired a new team member, they completed several modules in Vena Academy (a self paced learning course) which allowed them to get up to speed on the basics with just a bit of supplemental guidance from me as our existing admin.
Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
The Vena consultant had great knowledge of both the Vena solution and Excel and Excel functions. He was able to help suggest ways to build our templates that met our requirements using Excel functions we had not previously considered using. And we have been able to use the Excel information he provided in other ways outside of Vena. He was very patient and flexible as we learned the Vena tool and created templates
Anaplan is one of the only tools flexible to handle bespoke commission calculations. In addition to Sales Performance Management, Anaplan can be used to support other business functions, such as workforce planning or financial planning & analysis. Anaplan provides the scalability needed for an enterprise-level solution. While taking longer to implement, it also can provide a greater ROI.
Vena Solutions stands out due to its familiar Excel-based interface, making it easy for our team to adopt without extensive training. Compared to alternatives like Anaplan and Oracle Hyperion, Vena's strong customer support and efficient automation have significantly reduced our budgeting cycle time. We chose Vena for its seamless integration with our existing systems and substantial time-saving benefits, ultimately enhancing our decision-making process.
We have managed to leverage Anaplan for financial planning and forecasting across the business. It is now used by almost every department, with more than 50 users (but I know of companies that have hundreds of users) and still the platform is quick and reliable. It is easy to make changes to divisions and departments or add users and apply different user settings - the core part of the model is not affected and end users can continue their work without any disruption
Vena solutios is a software that provides robust tools that help different departments in their statistics and we can visualize a lot of promising and visually attractive data. Vena Solutions' level of scalability is high and sustainable over time thanks to the fabulous technical support that is ready to help us at all times
Reduction in time spent by sales ops team in processing compensation by almost 20 %
Ability to drill down into each compensation calculation to understand the details of how the comp is calculated. This has provided more transparency / traceability to end users
we are able to release updates to the system faster as it is easier to maintain and sync
