Pigment vs Vena (2026)

Data reaches the model through scheduled imports from ERP, CRM, HR, data warehouse, BI, spreadsheet and file storage sources, and the agents work on that model instead of inside the source systems. Agent connectors reach outward to Notion and Slack. An admin switches a connector on, each member signs in with their own account, and each read, write or delete tool is set to always allow, needs approval or blocked. Google Drive is still to come, and a team cannot add an MCP server of its own, so agent action outside Pigment stops at those two products.

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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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In Plan & Build mode the Modeler Agent gathers context, writes a structured action plan and then carries it out across Dimensions, Lists, Metrics, formulas and data imports, asking before it switches to another mode. The Analyst Agent takes a Mission, a task written in plain language, and works through its subtasks.

It sources the data, drills into the drivers, runs its own code against the model's metrics and assembles a report of text and charts. A user can leave an agent working and come back to an unread badge on the chats that have answered. Custom Agents draw on the same analysis and documentation skills, though they cannot schedule Missions.

Sourcekb.pigment.com/docs/configure-and-run-the-modeler-agentread 2026-10-13

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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Saving an Analyst report as a Mission makes it repeatable, and switching on Scheduling sets a start time and a cadence for later runs, with each run's output kept in the report or exported to a text Metric. The Missions tab shows every saved Mission with its run frequency. People also start the agents from the AI sidebar on any Board, from the AI Analysis button beside a Metric, Table or numeric Widget, and from a prompt typed at the top of the Workspace homepage.

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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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Answers come from the customer's live planning model, its Applications, Blocks, Metrics and Boards, and an admin can switch AI data access off on any Block that should stay out of reach. The Analyst prepares itself once per Application on the first question, a setup that takes longer the more Blocks there are.

Custom Agents carry standing knowledge a team supplies, such as process documents, glossaries, FAQs, guidelines and chosen Boards and Metrics, and users can attach spreadsheets, text and images to a chat. When a security admin allows it, the agents also search the web, optionally only on approved domains, and look inside the model first when the answer may be there.

Sourcekb.pigment.com/docs/create-custom-agentsread 2026-10-13

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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Each member keeps a private chat history with the agents, where chats can be pinned, filtered by Application and reopened to carry on from where they stopped. The Modeler remembers which mode was last used in each chat, and a saved Mission keeps an analysis so it can run again. A team that wants an agent to hold on to its conventions writes them into a Custom Agent's instructions, since chats do not build up a memory of their own.

Sourcekb.pigment.com/docs/pigment-agentsread 2026-10-13

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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In Plan & Build mode the Modeler Agent puts its action plan up for validation and waits for a go ahead at each waypoint as it works. Auto accept lets it continue without stopping, except for deletions, which a person confirms every time.

Its changes to the model are permanent and attributed in Application History to the member who ran it, and Ask mode answers without touching anything.

Connector tools set to needs approval make the agent propose a create, edit or delete in Notion or Slack and wait for the member to confirm it, and a web search that might reveal sensitive data asks for approval first.

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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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Sign in runs through SAML 2.0 single sign on with SCIM provisioning for Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or any compliant identity provider, or through Google Login, with multifactor authentication and domain allowlisting on top.

Group based roles and fine grained data access rights decide who can see and change each piece of data, and the agents, Custom Agents and MCP sessions act only within the rights of the member using them, under separate permissions to use agents and to configure them. Pigment holds ISO 27001 certification and SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 reports, audited every year, offers a SOC 3 report, sits at CSA STAR level one and covers GDPR and CCPA.

An independent penetration test summary was refreshed in June 2026, and API keys created since May 2026 follow a structured format that secret scanning tools can catch.

Sourcepigment.com/securityread 2026-10-13

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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The Missions tab shows every Mission the agents have run, and each change the Modeler makes is recorded in Application History against the member who ran it, inside edit histories that go down to the block level. Agent outputs explain how they were reached, with the data and logic behind them, and the Modeler writes up each change as it goes. The Audit Trail API sends login, administration, security and application events to a SIEM, and admins follow AI credit use in near real time on the Plan & Usage and AI credits screens.

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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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Customer data is stored in the region the customer picks, Frankfurt in Germany or Oregon in the United States, on Google Cloud across three independent zones, with backups in multiregional buckets inside the same geography. Buyers who need French or European sovereign hosting can run Pigment on S3NS PREMI3NS, a SecNumCloud 3.2 qualified cloud operated by a Thales subsidiary and shielded from jurisdiction outside Europe. Disaster recovery is rehearsed live once a year against a six hour recovery time and a 24 hour recovery point.

Sourcepigment.com/securityread 2026-10-13

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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The Modeler, Analyst and Documentation Agents come ready to switch on for each Application, and each does its own job. The Modeler builds and maintains models, the Analyst analyzes and reports, and the Documentation Agent answers platform questions from Pigment's knowledge base. Custom Agents come with worked examples for user guidance and for FP&A, workforce and supply chain analysis, and the chat offers a library of suggested prompts. The Analyst comes with ready use cases by role, from monthly expense variance and EBITDA and cash checks to ARR cohorts, hiring gaps and supplier risk.

Sourcekb.pigment.com/docs/pigment-agentsread 2026-10-13

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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The agents run on pretrained models from AI vendors under enterprise agreements with zero data retention, and customer data is never used to train them. Which vendors and models sit behind the agents is not public, and an admin has no setting to pick or switch the model. Claude, ChatGPT or Mistral can reach Pigment through its MCP server, which puts a team's own assistant in front of Pigment data while Pigment's agents stay on Pigment's choice.

Sourcekb.pigment.com/docs/ai-faqread 2026-10-13

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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The public REST API, with a Swagger reference, imports data, exports Metric, Table and List data, returns import configurations and starts data flows, under API keys that carry their owner's access rights, IP allow lists and set rate limits, beside an Audit Logs API.

The Pigment MCP server gives each Workspace its own endpoint and signs people in with their Pigment accounts. Its default tools read and analyze, and advanced mode adds tools that create Applications, build Dimensions, Metrics and Tables, write formulas, design Views and Boards and enter data. Pigment keeps Skills files and plugins for Claude Code and Cursor in a public repository.

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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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A builder previews a Custom Agent and refines it before switching it on for members. Test & Deploy environments stage model changes, the Modeler's included, before they reach a production Application that can be locked, and in managed Applications the Modeler works in Ask mode only. Every answer can be traced to its data and logic. Nothing scores the agents' answers against a test set before rollout.

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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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The agents act inside Pigment's own model and reach Notion and Slack through connectors. Web search returns information to them, and none of them opens a browser, drives another application's screen or works a desktop session for a user.

Sourcekb.pigment.com/docs/pigment-agentsread 2026-10-13

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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