Vena Implementation Partner or Do It Yourself? What One Lean Team Learned

Most finance leaders who look at Vena hit the same question early. Do we hire a Vena implementation partner, or do we set it up ourselves?

Here is the short answer. It's the same software either way. A partner adds the finance side. If your setup is simple, going direct can be the right call. Most teams land somewhere in between, and the real question is how much of the work you want to carry yourself.

Should you hire a Vena implementation partner or implement Vena yourself?

Hire a Vena implementation partner when your setup has real finance complexity: several entities, eliminations, a headcount plan or covenant tests. Go direct when the setup is simple and someone on your team has time to own it. Either way, the person who owns the model after go-live matters more than who builds it.

Vena's own team knows the product well. What a partner brings is the part the software can't decide for you: how your entities, eliminations, headcount and covenant tests actually need to work, built by people who have run a close themselves.

What does a Vena partner add that the software doesn't?

Three things, in my experience.

The first is a data check before anything gets built. How cleanly Vena connects to your ERP depends more on your data than on the connector.

The second is staying through the first real close or forecast. A build that looks right in testing has to survive a real month.

The third is the handover. The goal is a finance team that can run the system without us. If a partner can't describe what a normal month looks like after go-live, keep asking.

What did one lean finance team actually do?

Simon Dumais runs finance at Clareo, a dental group. In 2025 Clareo had eighteen locations, and the budget and reporting lived in huge linked Excel files built from NetSuite exports. Growth was making that unbearable.

Simon didn't have an FP&A team. He had a controller handling month-end close, and he was also running the group's acquisitions on a separate project. He still chose to be the main person on the Vena implementation, with our team linking the build to how Clareo already worked.

The first year was basically me and one of my colleagues doing the whole process, because we wanted to learn how the system worked.

They built their first budget in Vena while they were still learning it, and finished it faster than in previous years. Simon took the training from both Vena and MCC, learned the system first, then showed the VPs and the president how to use their reports.

So Clareo wasn't "partner" or "do it yourself". The finance lead drove the work, and the partner supplied the finance design, the training and a weekly call for questions.

What would they do differently?

I asked Simon that at the showcase. His answer is the most useful thing a buyer can hear.

One thing we did was try to recreate what we were doing before, and because Vena is so simple, we probably should have taken the time to rethink the way we do business, our budget, and our whole process.

They ended up redoing a few things in year two. That's the trap with any tool that feels familiar. Because Vena works inside Excel, it's tempting to rebuild the old spreadsheets in a new place. The better move is to step back and redesign the process first, then build.

This is also where an outside view earns its keep. Someone who has set up the same process at other companies can tell you which parts of your old workbook are worth keeping.

How much should you take on at once?

Simon's second lesson was about pace.

I don't think we'd still be here a year later, still using the platform, if we'd tried to do everything at once.

Clareo started with the budget and reporting, then added workflow and more users once the basics worked. Today every VP and regional manager does their part of the budget in Vena, and the NetSuite data loads every night.

Whether you hire a partner or not, the investment isn't only the software. You're moving your team onto a new platform, so measure your own capacity and plan for it. People need time carved out to learn the system on top of their day jobs.

Simon also started before the pain peaked. Teams that wait until finance can no longer do its job find it hardest to change, because there's no time left to step back.

How do you decide?

Three questions settle it for most teams.

How complex is your structure? One entity and a simple budget can go direct. Multiple entities, eliminations, lenders or a board pack usually need the finance side designed by someone who has done it before.

Who owns the model after go-live? If nobody does, no setup will hold, partner or not. If someone like Simon will own it, they can carry much of the build themselves with support.

Do you have the capacity right now? If your finance lead is also running acquisitions and the close, start small and add more once the first piece works.

If your answers point to going direct, that's a fine outcome. We would rather tell you that on the first call than find out halfway through a build.

The real choice

The choice isn't really partner or no partner. It's how much of the build your own team carries, and whether you redesign the process before you rebuild it. Clareo's finance lead carried a lot, learned the system first, and still got a faster budget in year one.

For more on how we think about Vena, read why we build on Vena. If you want a straight answer on whether you need a partner at all, see whether this fits your team.