Vena and Microsoft Announced a Strategic Partnership to collaborate on CFOTech Solutions
Vena was launched over a decade ago with the vision of combining the familiarity of Excel and other Microsoft Office Applications into a robust Financial Planning and Reporting Platform.
Yes, other FP&A Platforms have offered a level of Excel integration for some time before Vena. Oracle Hyperion (Now Oracle EPM) has offered an Excel / Office connector called Smartview for a long time and similarly, IBM TM1 (Now called IBM Planning Analytics) also offers an Excel Connector.
What made Vena’s launch of a new FP&A Software Platform a game changer was the level of integration to native Excel across not only the user interface but also the modeling and template design. Previous Excel connectors never behaved like real native Excel to users. The experience was always limited. Planning software designed in a previous generation requires the core modeling to be performed within proprietary components and coding. Only after the model was published, would users have the option of interacting with that model and data through an Excel interface.
FP&A users accustomed to Excel operate in a very dynamic environment. This means they often need to pivot from interacting with a published model to retooling the model or launching entirely new models. The Excel connectors offered by older-generation platforms did not permit this fluid transition. This is precisely where the old Excel connectors show their limitations and where Vena shines.
Vena fixed this entirely by fully integrating their platform to native Excel. With Vena, business users can now create models from the ground up within native Excel and undergo a mapping process to the Vena platform. This approach represented an extraordinary advancement in improving the user experience for teams that love Excel but also require a corporate system to manage their FP&A activities.
Vena has acquired well over 1,000 global clients across industries and Microsoft has seen the value in closer collaboration with Vena.
Access the announcement for more details about this new partnership.
The expected benefits of this new collaboration are described as:
“The announcement builds on more than a decade of collaboration between Vena and Microsoft to transform how businesses Plan To Grow™, creating the only Native Microsoft Excel, cloud-based corporate performance management platform built for Microsoft 365 with Power BI Embedded. Vena Complete Planning automates key finance-led planning processes and connects data from core financial, ERP, CRM and all other critical source systems to power FP&A, extended planning and other spreadsheet-powered business processes in a single platform.”
RVNA Technologies partners with both Microsoft and Vena to bring amazing FP&A solutions to CFOs and their teams. Learn more about RVNA’s capabilities at rvnatech.com.