Newsroom | Vena Solutions (2)

Both the level of uncertainty and the pace of change over the last few years have cemented how important trust is in managing our organizations and cultures. Here at Vena, trust is an important part of our company culture. In fact, Customer Trust is one of Vena’s four core values. It’s one of the things we value above all else. We are One Team (another core value) with many voices and one purpose. We trust each other and are united in the service of our customers and our purpose. “We understand that a company culture built on trust empowers everyone. It sets the foundation for collaboration, creativity, innovation and growth. But we also understand that trust must be earned. That’s why we work hard every day to build and maintain that trust at Vena—at every level of our organization,” says Vena CEO Hunter Madeley. “We all do our best to walk our talk, to align our behavior with our core values and to keep our promises to our people, customers and communities.” Building a Winning Culture On Comparably, a leading workplace culture and corporate brand reputation platform where employees can leave anonymous ratings and reviews about their employers, one of our Vena employees shared, “I appreciate the transparency with which they lead this company. It is refreshing! There are no egos, no politics or hidden agendas. They do a great job of communicating a vision and helping everyone understand what their role is in achieving it.” It’s true, leading with transparency and building trust in our workplace starts with our leaders, but these are shared responsibilities across the culture. We all strive to be transparent, collaborative and to lean on each other to do great work together—at the best of times and especially when facing adversity. We celebrate our collective wins, but are always looking for new ways to grow and to better serve our customers and our culture. Our customer and employee NPS processes have been invaluable in shaping the value we provide and we’re always grateful for the feedback. We feel that Trust is strengthened with each cycle of feedback and action, and we’re excited for the future we’re creating together. Last year, our employee ratings and reviews earned Comparably Awards for Best Company Culture, Best Company for Diversity, Best Company for Women and more. For the full list of Comparably awards Vena won in 2021, click here. Did you know Vena was named one of Greater Toronto’s Top Employers in 2021 and one of Canada’s 2022 Top Small & Medium Employers? “I appreciate the transparency with which they lead this company. It is refreshing! There are no egos, no politics or hidden agendas.” —Anonymous Reviewer Comparably Employee Feedback Building trust within our organization is also heavily reliant on our employee feedback. It influences the happiness of our team, the quality of our execution and the satisfaction of our customers. We invest in our team’s growth, nurture their interests and skills and provide support for their mental, emotional and physical well-being. In our culture of open communication, not only do we frequently ask for employee feedback, we take action on that feedback. Some of the ways we took action on employee feedback are reflected in the recent changes we made to our Parental Leave Program which put inclusivity, equity and flexibility at the forefront of our policy. We also expanded our health and wellness initiatives to offer additional support to our employees. “Ensuring our employees feel valued, heard and appreciated is part of our every day,” says Vena Chief People Person Tracey Mikita. “At every stage of our employees’ journeys, we work to ensure that they have the tools and support they need in their personal and professional lives to excel in their roles.” We call it Respect & Authenticity (another core value). Employees want to feel valued and empowered to do their best work. To do that, we strive to provide them with a safe space and the freedom to be themselves so they can feel a deep sense of belonging and togetherness. Our employee-run resource groups, what we call Vena Resource Groups (VRGs), are one of the ways we aim to create the space and freedom for our employees to be themselves and to celebrate and value our differences. Through our various VRGs, including our new Spectrum (2SLGBTQIA+) and Melanite (Black employees) groups, employees are encouraged to bring together their diverse perspectives and experiences and are given a platform to join the important conversations happening internally and externally. When our employees can bring their authentic selves to work, we can all work closely together to do great work in the service of customers—and take pride in Execution Excellence (another core value). After all, it’s the many dimensions of diversity that give us strength and push us to think differently and to be better. "Ensuring our employees feel valued, heard and appreciated is part of our every day.” —Tracey Mikita Chief People Person, Vena Customer Trust and Service In order to best serve our customers and to ensure the security and integrity of their data, all of our employees are part of our culture of security. Our organization-wide commitment to trust and security means we all care deeply about helping our customers grow and succeed and act with their best interests in mind. We employ best-of-breed technologies and stringent operational processes to ensure customer data is safe at all times. You can read more about our commitment to Customer Trust here. Commitment to Innovation In serving our mission of helping our customers Plan To Grow™, we’re aware that our customers look to Vena, the only native Excel Complete Planning platform built for Microsoft 365 with Power Embedded, to help them build agility and resilience in their financial and operational planning processes. To learn how industry leaders are growing a healthier business through a smarter approach to planning with Vena, read our Customer Stories. Recently, the feedback of our customers and community helped us earn 2022 Top Rated Awards from TrustRadius for Budgeting and Forecasting, Corporate Performance Management and Financial Close. Actually, the trust they have in Vena strengthens our ongoing commitment to product innovation that puts the needs of our customers front and center. Our tailored solutions that serve all industries are an example of building with Customer Trust top of mind. Interested to know how much verified users value Vena? Click here to read their reviews. These accolades that are a direct result of our customer feedback drive us to do even more for our community of customers and partners, especially when it comes to excelerating their personal, professional and business growth at plantogrow.com. From events, forums, free financial Excel templates and the Vena Academy, there are so many opportunities for members to learn, connect and grow in a diverse community of finance and operations professionals. Come Grow With Us Interested in learning more about Vena’s winning culture and growth? Vena is hiring! We are a hybrid remote-office workplace with offices in Toronto, Canada and London, England. Visit our newly launched Careers site for current job openings and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook to learn more about life at Vena.

We are delighted to announce that our CMO, Allison Munro, has been appointed Chief Marketing & Ecosystem Officer at Vena with a mandate to drive finance-led transformation and elevate the strategic office of finance through the combined power of Vena’s product, partners and community. Business agility has never been more important for organizations than it is today with rapid change and constant uncertainty underpinning an increasingly complex business environment. In her new role, Allison, previously Vena’s CMO, will work cross-functionally to connect Vena’s partner network, services, lines of business, intellectual property and community advocacy to extend the value of the Vena platform, empower the strategic office of finance to navigate businesses through these challenges and accelerate the growth of Vena customers and partners. “Vena Partners are an indispensable part of our business as they extend our brand and platform value, and support our mission to transform how businesses Plan To Grow with their deep product and solutions expertise,” said Vena CEO Hunter Madeley. “Allison brings the passion, perspective and leadership we need to align resources and unlock the full potential of our partner channel as we build the industry's most influential ecosystem.” Working in close collaboration with leading Vena Partner organizations, including Microsoft, BDO, Finext, Fluence, Prolytics, the Kansas City Chiefs and more, Allison will orchestrate an ecosystem built on cooperative platform innovation, solution integration and go-to-market channel alignment across sales and marketing via co-selling and Vena’s digital community on plantogrow.com. “At its core, ecosystem growth is about aligning product, channels and community to accelerate growth, and over the last two years, Vena has built a thriving partner network and digital community that integrate into our product-led motion and demand programs,” said Allison. “I am excited to continue driving this growth forward with a focus on finding new and innovative ways to bring our partners, product and community together to drive interconnected and customer-centric value through our growing ecosystem.” Allison will also preside over the ongoing development of the Vena Partner Program, which will continue to invest in the growth of Vena Partners through services, training and enablement. Click here to learn more about the Vena Partner Program.

Here at Vena, we realize that adding a member to your family is a big change—to both your home and work life. The journey from parental leave to working parenthood affects everyone differently and that’s why it’s important for us to create a culture of inclusion and equitable support around parental leave. "When we were looking to revise our parental leave policy, promoting diversity and inclusion, which is reflective of our workplace culture, was top of mind,” says Monica Illiopoulos, Senior Total Rewards Manager at Vena. “We wanted to take a gender-neutral approach and factor in family diversity, realizing that all parents, whether birthing or not, should equally be entitled to paid time off. We also asked our current and exiting employees what mattered to them and made adjustments based on what they told us.” Some of this feedback was received through company surveys. Others provided feedback during exit surveys, while others offered their experiences upon return from parental leave. As a result of this direct feedback, we identified a need to improve the inclusivity for all family structures in our programming so that regardless of how a dependent comes into your life, (e.g through birth, adoption, surrogacy, etc.), all Vena parents are able to enjoy the flexibility needed in our program. Our employees also told us that more education and resources were needed to support parents upon their return to work and that more options to decide when and how they return to work would be beneficial. In order to best support new parents and to continue honoring the needs of working parents, we were driven to make enhancements to our Parental Leave Program which put inclusivity, equity and flexibility front and center in our policy. Vena’s New Parental Leave Program We’ve taken action on all the feedback we received and have made the following changes to our Parental Leave Policy at Vena: Top-Up Program: Our Top-Up Program applies to ALL parents equally, whether birthing or not, regardless of gender All parents receive 20 weeks of top-up pay at 80% of salary Alternative: 10 paid Parental Days if not participating in top-up pay The choice to opt-in for: Gradual return to work flexibility Leveraging accrued vacation days before/after leave Staying in touch on Vena updates while on leave Resources for Parents: What To Expect Guide: resources by country; details on leave planning Family Essentials Spend: monetary gift from Vena Wellness Spending Account for dependant-related expenses Headspace App for parents/dependents Access to an internal Vena Parents Slack community Regardless of how our employees are choosing to grow their families, we remain committed to supporting them in creating a career and family strategy—with paid leave, flexibility and job security—that works for them. Did you know? Vena was named one of Canada’s 2022 Top Small and Medium Employers? And last year, Vena won Comparably Awards for Best Company Culture, Best Company for Diversity, Best Company for Women, Best CEO and more. For the full list of Comparably awards Vena won in 2021, click here. Come Grow With Us Vena is hiring. We are a hybrid remote-office workplace with offices in Toronto, Canada and London, United Kingdom. Visit our newly launched Careers site for current job openings and to learn more about life at Vena.

Vena's Complete Planning platform scores “top rated” for ranking in the top tier of all three categories We're thrilled to share the news that Vena has been recognized by TrustRadius with three 2022 Top Rated Awards in the Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Budgeting and Forecasting and Financial Close categories. Based entirely on customer feedback, TrustRadius Top Rated Awards have become the industry standard for unbiased recognition of B2B technology products. Second Consecutive Win for Vena CPM TrustRadius issues Top Rated badges to products in the top tier of their categories. This is the second consecutive Top Rated win for Vena in the CPM category. In 2021, Vena also earned Best of Customer Support and Best of Feature Set for its corporate performance management. Interested to know how much verified users value Vena? Click here to read their reviews. The Most Complete Excel-Based Budgeting and Forecasting Software Vena won a Top Rated award for Budgeting and Forecasting based on excellent customer satisfaction ratings. Vena’s Complete Excel-based Budgeting and Forecasting Software can scale to thousands of users with consistent performance to meet the demand of customers—now and in the future. With its familiar Excel interface, data integrations with various source systems and endless capabilities, Vena’s budgeting and forecasting software can be counted on to cut cycle times with its intelligent budgeting and forecasting tools. Looking to share your own feedback? Please leave a review here. Finance Teams Close Faster With Vena The high rankings Vena customers gave Vena’s Financial Close Management Software for its reliability to build trust in numbers, shorten time to close and improve everyone’s confidence in the numbers teams are reporting led us to receive our third Top Rated win. “At Vena, we’re always so grateful for the positive feedback and trust our customers put in our Complete Planning platform,” said Vena CEO Hunter Madeley. “We’re always looking at feedback from our customers to guide us in better serving them. To receive top ratings from our user community in all three categories inspires us to continue growing and investing in innovation with our partners. We will always strive to be better in serving our mission to power our customers’ Plan To Grow™.” Go here to learn how the world’s biggest brands are powering their growth with Vena. About TrustRadius TrustRadius is the most trusted research and review platform for business leaders to find and select the right software for their needs. Decision-makers across industries rely on verified, peer-based guidance and research from TrustRadius. Vendors engage and convert high-intent buyers by telling their unique stories through rich reviews. Over 12 million visitors a year create and engage with high-quality review content and data on Trustradius.com. Headquartered in Austin, TX, TrustRadius was founded by successful entrepreneurs and is backed by Mayfield Fund, LiveOak Venture Partners, and Next Coast Ventures.