Prophix vs. Vena

Prophix is substantially out of the box product to be easy to use but flexible enough to allow for varied business modelling. No technical skills are required to deploy and maintain the solution. Owing to its out of the box nature, departing from Prophix sweet spot e.g. when leveraging transactional data, the solution is not as capable, however this is being addressed by the new Prophix release.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Reports are very customizable - once you learn how to create reports, it is really easy to design the final output you'd like.
• The tool is easy to use, especially for those that don't work in the finance function.
• It offers an excellent workflow capability to send out tasks to cost center owners all over the company.
• We love the ability to create and customize cubes.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Version control; there are issues using the same budget version in multiple years if adding detail (line item detail). What Prophix has explained as a benefit is a huge detriment for us and we've been working with them for 6 months on a fix and it's yet to get resolved
• There are certain aspects that a messy; within our budgeting and forecasting detail, we have "unexplained balance" lines that show up that are distracting and add no value.
• Lack of a centralized location for content outside of tool; for example, training, help, support, intranet, etc are all separate websites and not easy to get to. I'm not sure why all of this isn't linked to the same account and accessible through the tool. Why should we need separate passwords for everything Prophix?!

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

The system works well for us, and meets all of our needs. All of our future plans can and will be achieved within Prophix, so there is no need to pursue another product. Prophix has continuously proven to improve their product over the years, which provides an even higher level of confidence in this tool, and future developments

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.

Incentivized

The
data can be sliced and diced many ways, and each user is able to do it however
they like. It is easy to create or run existing reports. We have made many of
our processes more efficient, and Prophix has allowed us to save more time than
you can imagine. We
are able to use Prophix for Expense tracking, Expense and Capital planning, reforecasting,
Compensation planning, Project tracking, Expense allocation, GAAP PLOB
reporting, and still have several more tasks to implement through Prophix

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

Incentivized

The availability in Prophix is relatively good. We have occurred random outages in different versions that wipe out data, which can be brought back. Or we have ran into system wide slowness that impacts all users in the system, but we have been able to get more capacity to supply our performance.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Prophix has always performed consistently. We are using on-premise so many factors can contribute to slower than desired performance, most having nothing to do with Prophix itself. If we move to the web-client cloud based solution I believe performance will even be better.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The Prophix staff is very helpful and quick to respond. I like that they teach me instead of doing it for me when possible, so I don't have to contact them as often! Never talked to anyone at Prophix that I didn't respect or think highly of! Very professional, great customer service!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The initial integration consultant was very helpful in making sure we were set up with all the essential uses we required: reporting/budgeting/forecasting. There was a learning curve but our consultant made it very easy to understand and helped me be comfortable in my Global Admin role in the system. Even after integration, we were given support whenever I came up with an idea I would get in touch and I would be trained on how I can implement it.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We used our system and created a test cube to work with our own data. We ran through the different functions of Prophix and covered alot of material. We did two sessions a week, with homework tasks assigned. We were able to ask questions and cover any questions during the followup sessions.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Planning, planning, planning. Prophix will send you some Excel spreadsheets ahead of implementation. If those spreadsheets are complete, implementation will be smooth. Also, set aside some time during implementation to work with the Prophix staff and ask lots of questions. The knowledge they share is invaluable.

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

I have used other budgeting and forecasting tools at different companies, and Prophix is a much easier product to use and implement. I have received better user feedback from Prophix compared to other tools I have used at other companies. Other tools lacked dashboard capabilities and account reconciliations.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I gave Prophix a 10 on scalability because we currently deploy the solution to department heads across our entire organization and never have any issues with those individuals using or accessing the system to look at their financial information within premade templates . They currently enter budgets and review reports within the system currently. The only issue is they cannot typically use the ad hoc functionality because that would require higher level licenses that cost more and it is not worth it to give them more costly licenses since they really aren't working in the system quite like the robust finance users

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Prophix has made it possible to move away from some Excel reporting we were doing, which allows for 50% quicker reporting on a monthly basis.
• Although it has saved us time, an improved PowerPoint feature that automatically updates our decks would save an additional 75% on top of what we already do.
• Our Board Reporting has improved by 10 hours by moving our reports fully into Prophix.

• Eliminated the necessity to manually combine multiple Excel budget worksheets into one file in order to compile an org-wide budget
• Allows end-users to be self-sufficient by having the ability to drill into transaction-level detail and conduct ad-hoc analyses
• Created more bandwidth in the FP&A team to spend more time on more meaningful analysis

Incentivized