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Vena Sets New Standard in Agentic AI for FP&A With Microsoft Teams Integration

Vena Sets New Standard in Agentic AI for FP&A With Microsoft Teams Integration

National Post15-05-2025

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TORONTO — Vena, the only Complete FP&A platform powered by agentic AI and purpose-built to fully amplify the Microsoft technology ecosystem, today announced the general availability of Vena Copilot for Microsoft Teams. Designed to bring dedicated FP&A expertise and insights into businesses' workflows, this launch marks a bold new era for the Strategic Office of Finance.
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Unveiled at the company's annual community conference, Excelerate Finance 2025, Vena Copilot for Teams is a giant step forward in agentic AI for FP&A. For the first time, users across the business can access Vena Copilot's industry-first, agentic AI purpose-built for FP&A directly within Teams meetings, chats and channels—putting an FP&A analyst in every conversation, and the power of best-in-class FP&A expertise at the fingertips of every decision maker. From generating instant insights to scenario simulations to collaborative Excel reports, Vena Copilot is transforming how FP&A teams and business leaders plan, decide and drive impact together—without ever having to leave Microsoft Teams.
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'The best organizations thrive in all market conditions by simply being better at leveraging the power of data and their people to act decisively. To lead, businesses need connected, intelligent systems that enable real-time collaboration and actionable insights,' said Hunter Madeley, CEO of Vena. 'Vena Copilot for Teams delivers just that—freeing FP&A teams to focus on strategic planning while giving business leaders and budget owners instant access to the kind of insights and expertise they need to make faster, smarter decisions and stay ahead of what's next.'
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Agentic AI Already Transforming the Office of Finance
Built for agentic AI from day one, Vena Copilot now extends its power with Vena Copilot for Teams—bringing intelligent automation to finance professionals and decision makers where they work. With two purpose-built agentic AI tools and seamless orchestration that coordinates multiple capabilities behind the scenes, it's a smarter, faster way to plan, analyze and act—with more innovations on the way.
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Vena Reporting Agent: Officially launched at Excelerate Finance 2024 following a successful open beta, this powerful tool turns natural language prompts into custom, pre-formatted reports in seconds. It enables finance teams to deliver quick, confident answers to stakeholder questions and dive deeper into analysis through Vena's Ad Hoc Reporting—without the manual lift.
Vena Analytics Agent: An industry-first for FP&A, this agentic AI powerhouse was first introduced at Excelerate 2024 and has been helping teams move faster and plan smarter ever since. It runs complex variance and trend analyses, powers scenario simulations and delivers real-time, actionable insights—so finance and business leaders can lead with clarity, speed and impact.
Vena Planning Agent: (Roadmap 2025) This new AI agent integrates Vena Copilot right to where you do your planning—in Excel. Through a chat interface, users can perform driver-based planning and predictive forecasting—leveraging AI to deliver highly accurate financial plans informed by historical data and real-world economic trends.
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Trustworthy AI Purpose-Built for FP&A
Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, Vena Copilot is a virtual FP&A partner working seamlessly alongside professionals in both the Vena platform and in Microsoft Teams. Built with enterprise-grade security, it derisks the adoption of agentic AI by protecting customer data and never training public AI models—ensuring confidentiality and control at all times.
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Vena Copilot transforms conversational prompts into complex FP&A tasks, completed in seconds by a team of purpose-built AI agents. What once took hours is now automated—delivering instant outcomes with full transparency and data integrity.
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This innovation doesn't just automate—it democratizes FP&A. By removing workflow bottlenecks and making advanced AI accessible to all users, Vena Copilot frees up finance teams to focus on strategic priorities. With Vena Copilot, finance teams become faster, smarter and more agile, while maintaining the highest standards of security and trust.
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Already Delivering Results: Vena Copilot Is Turning AI Potential Into Real Performance
Vena Copilot for Teams is already driving measurable outcomes in the Office of Finance. With agentic AI tools and smart orchestration working behind the scenes, finance teams, like the Association for Institutional Research (AIR), are planning, analyzing, and executing faster and smarter.
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Charles McCumber, Director of Finance at AIR, adopted Vena Copilot to scale his team's capabilities, allowing him to focus on higher-value, strategic work. He shared the following insights based on his experience with Vena Copilot for Microsoft Teams:
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'Copilot in Teams is a natural fit—it's where our tools and processes already live. I can answer stakeholder questions faster, keep meetings on track, and cut time spent on recurring tasks by at least 25%—freeing me up to focus on higher-value work like scenario planning, budgeting and thinking strategically about the future.'
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Smarter, Faster, More Intuitive: What's New in the Vena Copilot Suite
In addition to the launch of Vena Copilot for Teams, Vena's agentic AI suite received a series of powerful enhancements designed to elevate the user experience and accelerate time to value:
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An updated UI that prioritizes scalability, readability, functionality and ease of use—including intelligent guidance that directs users to the right AI agent based on their prompts.
New pre-built prompts customized to each user's data set, giving first-time users an intuitive way to explore and get started.
A major expansion of the Vena Copilot prompt bank, with 500 new prompts tailored to real-world FP&A scenarios—based directly on user feedback.
Proactive feedback from Vena agents to continuously refine and improve output performance in real time.
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Innovation That Helps You Plan Better and Achieve More
Also announced at Excelerate, our latest wave of innovations brings powerful new capabilities across the Vena platform. From AI-driven insights to deeper integrations and more intuitive user experiences, these updates reflect our ongoing commitment to continuous innovation—so you can keep driving smarter, faster decisions with confidence. They include:
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Template Studio (Generally Available)
Quickly create standardized financial templates with a drag-and-drop builder and a library of pre-designed options like Custom Planning, OPEX and Income Statement templates.
Export API (Generally Available)
Seamlessly connect Vena's planning platform to your broader data ecosystem, enabling flexible consolidation, visualization and analysis.
Enhanced Ad Hoc Features (Generally Available)
Use Drill Transactions for detailed transparency and Aggregation for on-demand financial consolidation and streamlined analysis.
Enhanced Task Tab (Open Beta)
Boost workflow efficiency with advanced search, filtering and a scalable task view to help prioritize and complete work faster.
Vena for PowerPoint Improvements
Simplify template enrollment by managing it directly within Vena's PowerPoint add-in for a smoother onboarding experience.
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To learn more about how Vena enables finance teams to plan with confidence and lead with agility, visit www.venasolutions.com.
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About Vena
Vena is the only agentic AI-powered FP&A platform purpose-built to harness the full power of the Microsoft technology ecosystem for finance teams everywhere. Vena amplifies Microsoft's world-leading productivity tools, cloud technology and AI innovation to make FP&A, operational planning and adjacent strategic processes more flexible, efficient and intelligent. Thousands of the world's leading companies rely on Vena to power their planning. For more information, visit venasolutions. com.
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Toronto housing among least affordable on this global index. Here's what experts say needs to change
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Toronto housing among least affordable on this global index. Here's what experts say needs to change

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