How Cumming Group Drove Global Expansion Through Scalable FP&A With Vena

Cumming Group achieved 255% ROI on their Vena investment in the first six months of use

The platform supported Cumming Group in expanding from a $50 million to $600+ million global business

Scaled process automation as their business grew, adding integrations with minimal IT involvement

The Challenge: Managing a Growing Business and Its Emerging Complexities

When Brian Spence first joined Cumming Group (CG) in 2021, taking on the role of Director of FP&A, the multi-faceted consulting firm was already using Vena across their budgeting, financial close and account reconciliation processes. A Vena customer since 2014, the company had eliminated time-consuming data gathering and aggregating tasks and had increased data visibility across the organization—achieving a 255% return on investment (ROI) within just six months. Vena’s drill-down feature allowed their team to work independently to find answers within their data, while the workflow tool let FP&A leaders delegate and share tasks easily.

“When I was interviewing for my role, one of the things that was really attractive was the fact that we were using Vena and just the scale and the responsibility that it pushed down to our business leaders,” Brian remembers. “The fact that it really freed up time for me to focus on the business and spend less time bringing together a bunch of manual reports, it was definitely a reason for me accepting the position here.”

Since they first implemented Vena, CG has experienced unprecedented global growth—expanding from a $50 million company to a $600 million+ company in 2024. That growth has added new complexities for their FP&A operations—including global dealings and currency translation needs. The company has also implemented new technologies and data sources since launching Vena, making integration another priority.

Brian and the rest of the team—including Cumming Group’s former Chief Business Intelligence Officer, Dominic DiBernardo, now Partner with their Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) partner Citrin Cooperman—knew the business would need to scale its FP&A processes. But, they were confident Vena was up for the job.

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Building Future-Proof Systems With Vena

When it comes to making changes to set CG up for continued growth, the fact that Vena is Excel-based and finance-owned meant they could support their evolving FP&A environment without a lot of IT involvement.

The CG team started by implementing new templates that map to their new processes, taking advantage of Vena’s scalable workflow engine to send notifications to users when due dates are coming up. Monthly rolling forecasts ensure the team is continuously looking five years into the future at any given time, with little to no oversight needed from the FP&A team.

“These are very complex processes going on, and we’re able to simultaneously roll out three very large processes to hit the right people,” says Brian. “When you think about that and the impact that has, it’s pretty exciting.”

So exciting that the team is already looking ahead, planning for “Vena 3.0” in anticipation of the business’s future needs.

That includes adding multi-currency reporting and beginning to report in constant dollars, so that everyone is looking at the same performance metrics. “We've also just recently uncovered a need to look at our client types … and being able to slice and dice our backlog across that spectrum, and particularly around sectors and even secondary sectors,” Brian says.

Vena’s scalability means Cumming Group can easily support their evolving needs like adding new dimensions for analysis and data sources—including a new ERP currently being implemented. No matter how big the business gets, Brian and his team know they’ll have the right tools to drive their FP&A.