Anaplan vs Vena (2026)

Data reaches Anaplan through Anaplan Data Orchestrator, which connects, transforms and loads data from source systems into planning models, and through CloudWorks for cloud storage, a prebuilt Informatica connector, a command line utility for on premises jobs and transactional and bulk APIs. The agents work on that data inside Anaplan.

Analyst writes updates back to the live planning model within the user's permissions, CoModeler edits import data sources and creates list import actions, and the role based agents start Anaplan workflows. None of them posts a change into an ERP, CRM or HR system on its own.

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Source data comes into Vena's central database through prebuilt native integrations, Microsoft Fabric connections and open import APIs, with export APIs for an extra fee, and Vena sits inside Microsoft Excel, Teams, Power BI, PowerPoint and Dynamics 365 Business Central. The agents work on that data in Vena and in the workbook.

The Planning Agent writes driver based budgets into Excel templates, the Reporting Agent builds reports and charts with drill down, and changes made through Vena MCP in Excel can be written back to forecasts and scenarios. None of them changes a record in an ERP, CRM or HR system.

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Anaplan Workflow breaks a planning process into tasks, approvals and handoffs with owners and deadlines, and ties them to data updates run by Data Orchestrator. Workflow Agent builds those flows from a typed or spoken description, a document or a whiteboard image, adjusts them as the process changes and flags bottlenecks with fixes such as adding a reviewer. The role based agents for finance, sales, supply chain and workforce share one calculation and data foundation, so each one works with the plans of the other functions in view.

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A visual workflow builder maps a whole process, from budget input through review, approval, upload and distribution, automates report sends and task reminders and notifies each person when their step comes up, and the same builder runs compensation planning and financial close management. Inside a single request the Analytics Agent breaks a variance, trend, comparison or ranking question into several steps, shows each one and asks when context is missing, and the Planning Agent turns one plain language request into a structured, driver based budget aligned to the CubeFLEX model.

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Workflow launches tasks by itself when a threshold is crossed, a condition is met or an upstream change lands in the model, and any task can run on a schedule. Data updates triggered by Data Orchestrator feed the same process. The role based agents watch performance continuously and send alerts when they spot a deviation or a risk, so the finance agent can surface a variance before anyone asks. People also reach the agents by typing or speaking a question inside their Anaplan applications, on desktop or mobile.

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People reach Vena AI in Excel, in the web app and in Microsoft Teams, where it can sit in a meeting as a private chat, and anyone in the business with a Vena AI license can ask the Reporting Agent for a report. Recurring work runs through skills and scheduled automations in the customer's own AI tools connected by Vena MCP, which can send proactive alerts and repeat an analysis on Vena data. Vena's own agents start when someone asks, and none of them wakes on a new close, a data load or a threshold.

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Agents answer from the customer's live planning models, modules and lists, and Anaplan's data ontology ties them to the business context of finance, supply chain, sales and workforce planning. Analyst queries across every model behind an application, works from a synced copy of the data that honors selective access, and reads extra context admins add in the notes of any line item.

The calculation engine computes the numbers, so each figure in an answer comes from the model, and Analyst shows the source data behind it. CoPlanner works from key data points in the application's models, refreshed on a regular cadence, so its answers can lag the latest change to a plan.

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Vena AI reads the live CubeFLEX model the team already maintains, with no extra setup, and inherits its data, application and per user permissions.

Vena Omega, the context engine underneath, adds each company's operating model, fiscal calendar, chart of accounts, entity structure, cost centers, historical performance, KPIs and terminology, industry considerations and seasonality, and the stage and dependencies of the planning and close cycle.

Answers drill down to the data behind each number, and the calculations stay deterministic on the governed model while the language model reasons over them.

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CoModeler knows the current state of the model and remembers the last few prompts of the conversation, which survives a page refresh, an accidental close or signing in again, but conversations are not saved from one session to the next. Analyst carries follow up questions within a session and keeps no chat history once the session ends or the user moves to another page. What lasts beyond that is the planning model itself, the workflow history and the audit trail, all of which belong to the application.

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The Analytics Agent, in open beta, builds context about each user's role, preferences and business from what people share with it. Admins save organization wide context, each user can add personal instructions and preferences that carry into later conversations, and Vena Omega tunes the depth, framing and format of an answer to the user's role and permissions. How long that context lasts, and how a user reviews or clears it, is left open.

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CoModeler lays out a step by step build plan with annotations and dependencies and executes no change without the builder's explicit confirmation, though a builder who opens a prompt with Approve skips the plan and lets it build at once, and Anaplan steers CoModeler toward development environments.

Analyst writes back to a live plan only within the permissions the user already holds, and Anaplan Workflow routes submissions to assigned approvers with deadlines and notifications. Agent Studio keeps every agent inside the platform's existing roles, so an agent cannot reach data or actions its user could not.

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Budgets move through Vena workflows with review and approval steps and a notice to each approver in turn. The Analytics Agent shows how it reached an answer, flags missing context or uncertainty and asks before it fills a gap, and the user can correct a GL account, period or assumption and rerun. Every output is the customer's to review under Vena's AI terms, and agent output itself has no approval step of its own before it lands in a workbook.

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Anaplan holds SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 reports and ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701 and, since September 2026, 42001 certificates, and its trust center adds CSA STAR Level 1, Cyber Essentials, ENS, TX-RAMP and TRUSTe.

Sign in runs through SAML 2.0 single sign on, with OAuth for APIs and integrations, role based access control, central identity management and IP allow lists, and only users with the AI Admin role can open Agent Studio. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, a bring your own key add on puts the key in the customer's hands, and customer data, model structures and metadata never train a foundation model. Every agent and every AI Gateway request runs under the user's existing Anaplan permissions.

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Deloitte performs Vena's annual SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II audits, both available on request, and a SOC 3 report is public. Vena is a Cloud Security Alliance Trusted Cloud Provider and takes part in TRUSTe's privacy certification program.

Customers can turn on SAML 2.0 single sign on, multifactor authentication and IP restrictions, and role based access sets per user permissions on sensitive data, which the agents inherit.

Each customer gets its own database instance, data is encrypted at rest with AES 256 under keys held in AWS Key Management Service and in transit with TLS 1.2 or higher, and Vena staff reach production only through federated sign in with MFA and a VPN.

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Workflow keeps timestamped audit trails and flow chart reports of tasks, approvals and progress, and the platform sends audit events to a customer's SIEM for alerting. Every change CoModeler makes lands in model history under the user who directed it, marked AI assisted, and Analyst and CoPlanner show the source data, model and timestamp behind each answer. AI Gateway records every tool call an outside assistant makes, with a timestamp and usage details, and throttles heavy use, and Agent Studio shows AI credits, interactions and usage per user.

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Audit trails record every document, spreadsheet, budget, report, template and cell level change with date, time and user, with version histories and rollback. Admins get a view of every question put to Vena AI and every response, and answers marked wrong can be audited. The Analytics Agent shows the steps and logic behind each answer so a user can inspect what it used, and visual workflow tracking shows where each step of a process stands.

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Anaplan runs as its own cloud service, with in country data centers that keep customer data local for residency rules, among them AWS hosted locations in Singapore and the UAE and data centers in Indonesia, India and Australia. The Singapore center keeps data inside Singapore for public sector and financial services clients. The platform is also sold through AWS Marketplace. There is no customer hosted or on premises edition.

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Vena Hubs run in AWS or Azure data centers in Canada, the United States or the EU, and each customer chooses its hub region to meet residency rules and keep transfers fast. Nightly backups go to Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage across several regions in the same geography, so data stays in that geography, and current data is always stored redundantly. Vena AI runs on Azure OpenAI Service, and Vena does not promise that its AI features are available in every region. There is no edition a customer can host itself.

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Prebuilt role based agents cover financial planning and consolidation, revenue performance management, supply chain planning and workforce planning, each embedded in the matching Anaplan application.

Agent Studio switches on ready Analyst configurations, Finance Analyst, Supply Chain Analyst, Sales Analyst and Workforce Analyst, for an application, and CoModeler and Workflow Agent arrive as ready agents for building models and processes.

Packaged applications such as Integrated Financial Planning, Demand Planning, Territory and Quota Planning and Operational Workforce Planning give each agent a ready model to work in.

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Three agents are ready for different jobs. The Planning Agent drafts driver based budgets and forecasts in Excel from plain language, aligned to the CubeFLEX model. The Reporting Agent lets anyone in the business request ad hoc reports and charts with drill down, which teams edit together in Excel Live inside Teams.

The Analytics Agent, in open beta with general availability expected later in October 2026, works through variance, trend, comparison and ranking questions in steps. A Scenario Agent for modeling cost, pricing, M&A and timing decisions across entities is announced and not yet available.

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Anaplan pairs a language model's reasoning with its own deterministic calculation engine, so the arithmetic in an answer is computed by Anaplan, not by the model, which also keeps token use down. A customer has no say in which model runs the agents, and the provider is not named. The Claude, Gemini and Copilot connections through AI Gateway are outside assistants reading Anaplan data, not a choice of model for Anaplan's own agents.

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Vena AI runs on OpenAI models through Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, under Microsoft's code of conduct for that service, combined with the CubeFLEX model, and customer data is never used to train public models. A customer cannot move its agents to another provider or model. Claude Cowork, ChatGPT Work and other assistants can work with Vena data through Vena MCP, but those are the customer's own tools, not a choice of model for Vena's agents.

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Transactional and bulk APIs extend the platform for integration work, with OAuth that a customer sets to its own authentication and access policies. AI Gateway adds a supported MCP interface with permissions, rate limits and audit, through which outside assistants and agents query planning data. Access through the gateway starts read only, so an outside agent can look up a forecast but cannot change a model, a formula or a plan through it.

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Open platform APIs move data into Vena, with import APIs included in every plan and export APIs for an extra fee. Vena MCP gives supported AI tools such as Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work read access to ledger, transaction and operational data under Vena's permissions, and changes made through it in Excel can be written back to forecasts and scenarios. Vena's AI terms bar calling its AI features by any route other than the ones Vena provides, and the MCP endpoint and full tool list are not public.

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CoModeler finds error prone formulas, redundant structures and slow spots in a customer's planning model, then documents each formula in plain language, and Workflow Agent studies how long tasks take to suggest a faster flow. Both of those check the customer's own model and process. A team has no way to test how an agent answers or acts before rolling it out to planners.

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The Complete plan adds a sandbox environment to test, refine and validate new features and data sets before end users see them. Users give feedback on responses as they arrive, wrong answers can be audited, and admins can write natural language rules for phrases the AI misreads, while the Analytics Agent lets a user fix an input and rerun an analysis. None of this scores agent answers against a test set, so a team judges agent quality by checking results itself.

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Everything the agents do happens inside Anaplan, through its models, workflows and data connections. Data from other systems arrives through Data Orchestrator, CloudWorks and the APIs, and none of the agents clicks through another application on a user's behalf.

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The agents work inside Vena's model and the Excel, Teams and Power BI surfaces Vena connects to, and data from other systems arrives through integrations and APIs. None of them takes over another application's screen for a user.

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