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Choosing the right platform for your corporate performance management (CPM) needs can be a long and arduous process.
There are a lot of solutions on the market, each with their own pros and cons. Not all of them will meet the unique requirements of your business, which makes the assessment process critical for finding out which solution will give you the greatest return on investment.
Choosing the right software for your team, then, means winnowing down the options—deciding which don’t make the cut and what features are most important to your processes and people.
Sound like a lot of work? Well, we want to make it easier.
To help you with your search, we’re breaking down two of the most popular and highly rated FP&A solutions available today: Vena vs. Datarails.
Keep reading for an honest assessment of each across a range of categories such as key features, integrations, ease of use and more.
| Vena | Datarails | |
| Key Features and Use Cases | Vena has a native Excel interface and centralized OLAP database. The platform offers automated workflows, templates, audit trails, version control and collaboration features to support budgeting, forecasting, financial close management, financial reporting, analysis, workforce planning and sales and revenue planning. |
Datarails automates data consolidation and reporting through an Excel add-in and a relational database. The platform offers data visualization capabilities, enabling financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, scenario modeling and analysis. |
| Integrations | Integrates with ERP, general ledger, CRM, HRIS and homegrown systems, as well as CSV and flat files. Vena maintains connections to these systems using APIs, native connectors, ETL and Microsoft PowerAutomate. Vena is also deeply integrated within the Microsoft 365 Suite, with native connections to Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Power BI. |
Supports integrations to ERP, CRM, HRIS, accounting and payment systems. Datarails integrates with these systems via API, SQL, FTP and Email. |
| Ease of Use | Vena gets high ratings for ease of use across various review sites, thanks to its Excel foundation, central database, easy-to-use templates, industry-specific solutions and preconfigured reports. | Datarails gets high ratings from users on ease of use across many review sites. Reviewers like its Excel add-in and easy-to-use data visualizations and dashboards. |
| AI Capabilities | Vena offers two AI solutions: Vena Copilot—a complete planning AI assistant—gathers data, generates reports, analyzes trends, optimizes forecasts and answers complex business questions. Vena Insights embeds Microsoft’s best-in-class AI and machine learning technology via Power BI to support predictive analytics and anomaly detection. |
Datarails’ FP&A Genius AI tool is designed to dig through financial data to quickly find answers, offer insights and predict future trends. |
| Pricing | Pricing is available upon request. Vena offers two pricing packages to choose from. | Pricing is available upon request and is customized to customers’ needs. |
| Customer Support | Vena offers worldwide 24-hour online and phone support, available five days a week. The Vena Support Portal provides videos, FAQs and community guidance. Extended support is available through the Premium Support Plan. | Datarails offers support across the United States and EMEA. |
Vena is the only native Excel complete planning platform, allowing FP&A teams to work within an interface they already know well, backed by the power of Vena’s centralized database. Vena uses OLAP database technology purpose-built for CPM, with robust aggregations and calculations to provide a reliable single source of truth. The platform’s report sharing, automated workflows and audit trail features make it easy to collaborate across your team and wider organization.
Vena’s strategic partnership with Microsoft also means the platform integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products such as PowerPoint and Power BI, for compelling data visualizations, centralized data sets and powerful data-driven storytelling.
Vena enables use cases across finance and operations functions that include:
Datarails automates data consolidation and reporting. It features a relational database, with table-based data organization mapping to connected Excel files. Through its Datarails Flex add-in, it lets you connect to Microsoft Excel 2010 and higher, to take advantage of native Excel functionality. (Flex for Mac was introduced in 2023 but doesn’t yet have the full capabilities as Flex for PC.)
Through its data visualization capabilities, Datarails makes it possible to easily view financial data and drill down to further insights.
Datarails empowers the following use cases:
Vena supports a range of integrations to your source systems via APIs, native connectors, ETL and Microsoft PowerAutomate, including:
Datarails supports over 200 integrations via API, SQL, FTP and Email, such as:
Vena’s online analytical processing (OLAP) database technology enables multidimensional analysis of large volumes of business data, which means you have more points of view through which to examine your data. It’s built to easily combine various data sources, bringing them together to categorize and analyze them as required.
This is particularly useful in CPM because it lets you find the data you need from across your data sources to model various scenarios, create budgets, make forecasts and so on. It also requires less manual maintenance, with no admin necessary to create an intersection of data before it becomes viewable.
Vena also natively integrates with Excel, which means users don’t have to toggle back and forth between Excel and a separate application as they work together. Rather, data is saved back to the Vena database and populates Excel reports automatically—which means the workflow you’re used to of working within Excel is virtually unchanged.
Datarails’ relational database technology (ROLAP) relies on tables, rows and columns to structure information. Unique identifiers are used to distinguish one field from another and link information across tables. But, complex queries can lead to performance constraints with ROLAP database technology, as it requires your database to roll up your data each time you perform a function. Data isn’t pre-calculated or pre-aggregated, which means you have to wait for those calculations to be completed.
Unlike Vena, Datarails is not fully integrated with Excel, but rather works with Excel via Flex, an add-in. This lets you access your planning and analysis tools within an Excel workbook but has the limitations of any plugin—only allowing limited features, sharing and modeling capabilities. It can also introduce data management challenges. Updates made in your Datarails database—including new accounts and nomenclature changes—won't be reflected in Excel automatically, and to share templates with budget contributors you must create split Excel files for each department.
Vena’s foundation in Excel is a standout feature for most users, making it easy to use with a short learning curve. A range of secure templates, reports and industry-specific solutions built according to FP&A best practices and tailored to industry needs also get you up and running quickly.
“I love how easy it is to take any of my spreadsheets and integrate them into Vena. Was able to simplify a lot of spreadsheets … bringing the data in via the cloud rather than dropping it from our accounting system,” one G2 commenter states.
Customers give Vena an 8.5/10 for “Ease of Use” on G2, and on Capterra it gets a 4.5/5. On Software Advice, Vena earns a 4.5/5.
Customers rate Datarails high in “Ease of Use” as well. Users benefit from the Excel add-in, as well as easy-to-use data visualizations and dashboards. On G2, Datarails earns an 8/10 rating in “Ease of Use,” and on Capterra it gets a 4.6/5. On Software Advice, Datarails earns a 4.5/5
One Gartner user remarks: “It’s an easy tool to use and train on. Very adaptable, can look at our data in many different and useful ways…. Integrates with our ERP flawlessly. Can make changes in real time so decision makers always know exactly what’s happening and base the organizational direction on fresh data. Model building is straightforward, visualizations are enlightening, integrations are easy.”
A G2 reviewer adds: “Datarails has definitely sped up our internal processes. After you learn the new formulas and how information is tied in, it's relatively easy to create or adapt existing reports from Excel.”
But they also add: “Sometimes when attempting to build new dashboards it's hard to tell which fields to drag in, and which fields to exclude. You can spend a long time dragging and dropping fields in and out of the field picker to figure out which ones work and which ones do not work."
Vena has two AI tools: Vena Copilot and Vena Insights.
Vena’s newest AI tool, Vena Copilot, combines the power of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service advanced AI models—including GPT-4—and Vena’s central analytical data model, CubeFLEX™.
The complete planning AI assistant uses natural language to gather data, generate reports, analyze trends, optimize forecasts, answer complex business questions and more.
Easy to set up without the use of IT, data scientists or AI engineers, Vena Copilot lets you create and train custom AI models to improve your analysis and empower anyone in your business to work with financial data. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and provides enterprise-ready security, compliance and privacy capabilities.
Vena Insights, an intelligent reporting and analytics solution, incorporates best-in-class AI and machine learning technology through embedded Power BI to empower finance teams with faster insights. It offers tools such as predictive analytics and anomaly detection to root out inefficiencies, isolate key business drivers, look for trends and compare scenarios.
Datarails has launched their tool FP&A Genius, which uses conversational AI to dig through data to quickly find answers to business questions. It can spot trends, offer insights and generate charts.
Vena’s pricing is available upon request, with two price plans available:
Vena’s Business Value Calculator can help you calculate the annual estimated benefits you will achieve through Vena.
Datarails offers customized pricing based on business needs, available upon request.
Vena offers customers two separate support plans.
Reviewers give Vena a 4.5/5 for “Customer Service” on Capterra, 4.5/5 for “Customer Support” on Software Advice and 8.9/10 for “Quality of Support” on G2.
“The experience has been amazing,” one Capterra reviewer writes. “The team that assisted with the implementation was great, the sales team was extremely helpful, and the after care has been phenomenal.”
Datarails offers support across the United States and EMEA regions. Reviewers give them a rating of 4.9/5 for “Customer Service” on Capterra, 5/5 for “Customer Support” on Software Advice and 9.5/10 for “Quality of Support” on G2.
One Capterra reviewer writes: “The Datarails product and support team have been very good to work with.”
“We have our financial reporting moved to Vena and can update it on demand to have instant access to our statements and any reports we have built. Cut down month end close time significantly. [...]
The biggest benefits we realized was what else we could use it for. We use it for so much more than we initially intended to use it for.”
— G2
“The best part about Vena is the versatility of the implementation of the solution. The software can be adapted to any type of company even to the ones with the most complex behaviors. The implementation is easy … compared to other systems it has a very nice integration with your already existing Excel models, so it is very user friendly.”
— G2
“If you know Excel—you'll be able to master Vena! The ease of use is amazing and the possibilities are endless in how you use this tool.
There are very few cons with this tool. I would say that the implementation is intense but that's by design. No one wants to be implementing the tool as they go!!”
— Capterra
“The core of everything you do in Vena is Excel-based and the stored data is on the cloud and not on the spreadsheet. The capability to dynamically expand when and where in the models, reports and templates make life a lot easier for people who maintain these models, reports and templates.”
— G2
“Datarails has definitely sped up our internal processes. After you learn the new formulas and how information is tied in, it's relatively easy to create or adapt existing reports from Excel. We also have very good customer support to help us walk through issues along with mentoring from the sales group.”
— G2
“Datarails has been very helpful in consolidating data from multiple sources, allowing us to evaluate the data and then present it in a way that is consumable and useful for end users.”
— G2
“My experience with Datarails has been first class. I have assisted with a seamless integration for budgeting purposes and have now rolled out the solution for month-end reporting. In both scenarios I have been able to reduce the time required for completion by around 40%,”
— Capterra
“I like the ability to create and store multiple different reports in one platform that is easily accessible. With the number of reports our team produces it is beneficial to report out of one place.
There are limitations to the types of dashboards we need to create in the system. Some files we are unable to aggregate because of the data type which is crucial to a number of our reports. The file mapping can sometimes get confusing when there are additional columns that have been added and we need to reconfigure the mapping, but our historical data does not have the exact same data, it has caused issues in the past."
— Capterra
On the surface, Vena and Datarails may have some similarities, but when it comes to how both platforms’ underlying technology operates, there are some important differences to note.
For example, Vena and Datarails lean on Excel and the ease of use it adds to the user experience. But how both systems integrate with Excel is very different, with Vena’s native Excel interface providing a more seamless integration, in contrast to Datarails’ plug-in approach, which requires users to toggle back and forth between tools.
If your business is standardized on the Google suite and uses Google Sheets, however, Datarails may be the right fit as it has an integration with Google Sheets whereas Vena does not.
If you’re evaluating both Vena and Datarails for your FP&A needs, the size of your business will likely play a role in your decision: Vena is the best fit for small, mid-size and mature businesses looking for an all-inclusive solution to support the full scope of their financial and operational planning. Datarails, on the other hand, is best for early-stage companies primarily looking for a financial reporting solution.
Supporting more use cases beyond the FP&A department than Datarails—such as workforce planning and financial close management—Vena allows you to add more efficiencies to your corporate performance management needs and beyond. That makes Vena the best choice for rolling more of your functions into one platform.
Vena’s integrations with Excel, PowerPoint and Power BI are also a plus for Microsoft 365 users. As a Strategic Microsoft Partner, Vena is continually innovating alongside Microsoft, extending the value of your investment in the Microsoft suite.
Finally, Vena’s robust OLAP database is purpose-built for the specific needs of FP&A—meaning it can support complex planning use cases that require not just financial data, but any type of operational data that’s relevant to your business.
Datarails, for its part, excels as a reporting platform, with automation capabilities that can aid your team and a long list of integrations to draw from. But, aggregations and calculations are more clunky through Datarails’ relational database, making it more cumbersome for more advanced FP&A use cases.
Whichever you choose, we wish you the best of luck in your search for the corporate performance management platform that will best enable your team!
Want to see Vena in action? Request a demo.
Request a Demo to see how Vena can support your complete planning processes.
Schedule DemoNicole Diceman is Director, Product Marketing at Vena. With a proven track record of driving product strategy and direction, she is heavily involved in driving new product ideas and development efforts and is closely aligned with customer needs and requirements. With her extensive knowledge and experience in product marketing, FP&A and the Vena platform itself, Nicole is a regular contributor to the Vena blog and often speaks at virtual and in-person events to share her ideas. A powerful advocate for product marketing innovation, Nicole is always on the lookout for creative new ways to bring additional value to Vena customers.
