In today’s fast-moving business environment, financial planning can no longer be reactive. To stay ahead, finance teams must shift from looking backward to anticipating what’s next. This is where a data-driven strategy powered by AI becomes a game-changer: by combining a unified data foundation with intelligent forecasting, finance leaders can make more strategic, forward-looking decisions.

Why Strategy Needs Data: From Hindsight to Foresight

Traditionally, financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams spend huge amounts of time gathering data, cleaning spreadsheets, and consolidating inputs from multiple systems. This retrospective work can create delays and distortions, limiting leadership’s ability to plan proactively. According to Vena, up to 75% of an FP&A team’s work is still spent on data gathering and process administration. Vena Solutions+1

Without a single, reliable source of truth, strategy becomes reactive. But a data-driven approach flips the script: by centralizing and automating data flows, FP&A teams can access real-time (or near real-time) insights that inform scenario planning, forecasting, and decision-making — turning hindsight into foresight.

How Vena’s Unified Data (via Microsoft Fabric) Feeds into AI Agents

Vena’s platform is deeply integrated with Microsoft Fabric, providing six pre-built, secure data connectors to ingest financial and operational data. Vena Solutions+1 For example, Vena supports a Fabric connector for Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations (F&O) — notable because it’s the only FP&A solution offering a pre-built connector for D365 F&O in the Microsoft ecosystem. Vena Solutions+1

These Fabric-based integrations create a unified, secure, and scalable data environment where finance teams no longer have to stitch data together manually. Business Wire+1 Once data is centralized in Fabric, Vena Copilot (its AI-powered assistant) accesses that clean, structured data to run advanced analysis.

Vena Copilot uses agentic AI — meaning multiple specialized AI “agents” run behind the scenes to handle different tasks (analytics, reporting, planning) and the system orchestrates them based on the context of user requests. Vena Solutions+1 By leveraging Vena’s data model (CubeFLEX) plus Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot can perform complex financial analysis, simulate scenarios, and generate actionable insights. Vena Solutions+1

Types of Strategy-Driven Outputs

With this unified data + AI engine in place, FP&A teams can generate a variety of strategic outputs such as:

• Scenario Simulations: Test “what-if” scenarios in seconds — whether it’s changes in sales volume, cost drivers, macroeconomic shifts, or other business levers. Vena’s Analytics Agent can run simulations across different drivers to show how financials would change under various conditions. Vena Solutions+1
• Driver-Based Planning & Predictive Forecasting: Through natural language prompts, users can use Copilot to perform driver-based planning and predictive forecasting. That means linking key business drivers (like customer demand or cost trends) to financial outcomes, and then generating forecasts grounded in historical data and real-world trends. Vena Solutions+1
• Trend Spotting & Variance Analysis: AI agents can detect patterns, seasonality, and variances (e.g., actuals vs. budget) and highlight key insights. The Analytics Agent, for instance, can run variance and trend analysis to surface unexpected shifts or anomalies. Vena Solutions+1
• Ad-hoc, Contextual Reporting: Through the Reporting Agent, users can prompt Copilot to generate custom financial reports (in their language) with drill-down capabilities — and even collaborate in real time via Microsoft Teams and Excel Live. Vena Solutions

Real-World Impact: Better Risk Anticipation, Faster Scenario Responses

The convergence of unified data and AI-powered planning isn’t just theoretical — it delivers real business impact:

• Risk Anticipation: By modeling different future scenarios, finance leaders can anticipate risks before they materialize. This proactive risk management helps companies prepare for downturns or shifts in business conditions.
• Faster Decision-Making: With AI agents handling data retrieval, trend analysis, and reporting, teams can respond more rapidly to strategic questions. For instance, during an executive meeting, a leader can ask Copilot for a live simulation or variance breakdown — without waiting hours or days. Vena Copilot’s Microsoft Teams integration enables just that. Vena Solutions
• Democratized Insights: Because these insights are available in Teams and Excel, non-finance stakeholders (e.g., business unit leaders) can get timely, self-serve financial intelligence — enabling them to contribute meaningfully to planning conversations.

Steps to Embed AI-Powered Insights into Board & Executive Decision-Making

To fully leverage AI-driven insights in strategic planning, finance teams should take the following steps:

1. Establish a Unified Data Foundation
   • Implement Microsoft Fabric integrations (or equivalent) to centralize finance and operations data. Vena’s pre-built Fabric connectors make this easier, especially for systems like Dynamics 365 F&O. Vena Solutions+1
   • Ensure data governance, roles, and security are well defined (permissions, access controls), so data is trusted and reliable.
2. Deploy Vena Copilot with Relevant Agents
   • Activate the Analytics Agent to run scenario simulations, variance analyses, and trend spotting.
   • Use the Reporting Agent for ad-hoc, natural-language reports that executives can call up on demand.
   • If applicable, leverage the Planning Agent (roadmap) to enable predictive forecasts and driver-based planning directly in Excel or Teams. Vena Solutions
3. Integrate Insights into Executive Workflows
   • Use Vena Copilot in Microsoft Teams meetings. Immediately bring up simulations or reports during board reviews or strategy workshops. Vena Solutions
   • Leverage Excel Live in Teams for collaborative modeling. Adjust assumptions on the fly and see how the numbers change.
4. Train and Democratize
   • Educate non-FP&A stakeholders (business leads, department heads) to use Copilot prompts for their own scenario inquiries or report generation.
   • Build a prompt library tailored to your business (using Vena’s prompt bank or your own) so that teams can consistently generate relevant insights.
5. Govern and Iterate
   • Monitor interactions via Vena’s Admin View to understand how Copilot is being used, what prompts are frequent, and where it could be improved. Vena Solutions
   • Continuously refine your AI agents’ training (feedback loops) so they become more accurate and aligned with your business context.

Conclusion

In a world where business dynamics shift rapidly, strategic finance needs more than hindsight — it needs foresight. By unifying data via Microsoft Fabric and leveraging Vena’s agentic AI (Vena Copilot), FP&A teams can transform how they plan, analyze, and collaborate. The result? Smarter decisions, faster responses, and a truly data-driven finance strategy that powers growth and resilience.

Don’t just plan — anticipate. Reach out to Influential Software today to start your journey toward smarter, future-focused finance