Address Higher Level Business Questions and Sharpen Your Management Focus

LayeredRock Software's Petranomics Analyzer allows project, business and financial managers to gain focus and decision clarity. Whether you have a P&L model, a cost model or some other form of business financial model to manage, they all can have external and company-specific uncertainties that can make modeling and analyzing your business problem challenging. LayeredRock's Petranomics Software allows you to address business uncertainty with business modeling and analysis.

Analysis - Answer Key Business Analysis Questions
1. Focus - Which business assumptions matter? +
2. Big Picture - How does uncertainty impact top outcomes? +
3. Exploration and What-if - How does the plan respond to assumption changes and fluctuations? +
4. Manage / Evaluate Scenarios - Which business scenario or case has higher value? +
5. Risk Reduction - Where should I apply risk mitigation? +
6. Plan-Tuning - How can I align the plan with the latest business intelligence? +
7. Market Events - When market events occur, how will they impact my plan and how can I adjust the plan accordingly? +
8. Comparing Actuals and Re-Forecasting - How can I better analyze my actuals and re-forecast? +
9. Aggregate Sensitivity - Can I calculate and visualize scenarios with aggregate sensitivity for outcomes? +

Find answers to your key business analysis questions with LayeredRock's Petranomics Analyzer's analysis tools. The tools can help guide your focus, evaluate alternatives and provide clarity to your decisions. Examples of key management business decision analysis questions are listed below.

Focus - Which business assumptions matter?

• Solution - Answering the question of which business assumptions matter assures you and your team are heading in the right direction. For example, once the top assumptions are identified, then risk-mitigation can be applied to reduce your exposure on assumptions you can control.

Big Picture - How does uncertainty impact top outcomes?

• Solution - Gain the big picture. Discover how business assumption uncertainty impacts the top business metrics and outcomes from your financial model.

Exploration and What-if - How does the plan respond to assumption changes and fluctuations?

• Solution - Interactively explore how your business plan investment, pro forma or operations plan responds to changing business assumptions. With interactive what-if capabilities, you can vary assumption values dynamically and see the response of the outcomes and business metrics. With this capability, you can understand your model's response to business assumption fluctuations. Obtain answers to what-if questions such as:
  • "What is the impact if the project is delayed?"
  • "If contractors are added to accelerate the product release date will first year profitably be improved?

Manage / Evaluate Scenarios - Which business scenario or case has higher value?

• Solution - With a powerful interactive Scenario Management tool, you can compare multiple scenarios to create and explore your business cases and alternatives. You can define each scenario by changing its business assumption values including the minimum, maximum and expected value, and then observe how the outcomes change. Repeat the process for additional scenarios by duplicating the base case or another scenario, and then modifying it as a new scenario.

  You can also compare the scenarios as part of your analysis. Determine which scenario is best for your objectives or redefine that scenario as the new base case and continue to adjust your plan. Additional workspaces allow exploration of a different set of alternatives or different outcomes.

Risk Reduction - Where should I apply risk mitigation?

• Solution - Guessing where and how much risk mitigation to apply can be very difficult. With LayeredRock Software, you can determine where to apply risk mitigation and understand its potential impact once you know which assumptions matter in your desired scenarios.

Plan-Tuning - How can I align the plan with the latest business intelligence?

• Solution - Once the strategic plan or adjusted operational plan is approved, then it is time to execute. But you may have to factor the latest business intelligence into your final plan. With plan-tuning you can balance the values of assumptions that you can control. For example, you can make trade-offs such as balancing marketing versus sales expense.

Address Market Events - When market events occur, how will they impact my plan and how can I adjust the plan accordingly?

• Solution - As events and opportunities occur in the marketplace, quick planning and analysis tools allow you to react with fast analysis and decisions.

Comparing Actuals and Re-Forecasting - How can I better analyze my actuals and re-forecast?

• Solution - As actuals roll in, you always need to adjust for expenses and revenue using the new forecast. As a result, you can stay on target and react quickly to new information.

Aggregate Sensitivity - Can I calculate and visualize scenarios with aggregate sensitivity for outcomes?

• Solution - Evaluate the full spectrum of your top scenarios and visualize the aggregate sensitivity ranges for your business plan outcomes. 

Modeling - Answer Key Business Planning / Modeling Questions

1. Business Assumptions - How can I better manage my business assumptions in modeling? +
2. Model Equation Organization - How can I manage the model's organization of equations for better manageability and clarity? +
3. Fast Modeling[TM] - How can we keep the modeling at the same pace with the business thinking? +
4. Equations - How can I reduce equation errors in my models? +

Find answers to your key modeling questions with LayeredRock's Petranomics Analyzer's Economic Modeling Tools.

Business Assumptions - How can I better manage my business assumptions in modeling?

• Solution - In typical spreadsheet modeling, your business assumptions are often scattered throughout your business model, which makes it difficult to track, review and manage them. With LayeredRock Software, business assumptions are clearly separated from the business equations.

Model Equation Organization - How can I manage the model's organization of equations for better manageability and clarity?

• Solution - Organizing business equations in a logical manner often makes it difficult to manage the transitional needs of reporting and printing. Now you can organize your equations by grouping them in categories and subcategories, which are independent from your reporting organization requirements. As a result, you can organize your model by area such as Expenses Group and by sub-area, such as Operating Expenses Group. You can also use the same grouping capability to organize multiple models that work together. For example, you can group the income statement, balance sheet and cash statement separately as models or connect them as needed. This same model organization established in the Petranomics Analyzer's Economic Modeler is visible and usable within the analysis and reporting tools.
  
  
• In a similar way, the business assumption can be grouped by categories and subcategories such as Market Related Group and its subcategories of Pricing Group and Volume Group.

Fast Modeling[TM] - How can we keep the modeling at the same pace with the business thinking?

• Solution - Building a plan is an iterative process that involves many rounds of adding details and increasing the model behavior to better match the marketplace and the business. Just when you think you have an adequate level of detail, a new piece of data requires another version of the model that incorporates additional products, channels, regions or better growth indexing.
  
  
• With Petranomics Analyzer's Economic Modeler, you can define assumptions and output with dimensions such as Product, comprised with members such as oil and gas. When these assumptions or outcomes are used by any outcome equations, the dimensions and its members are automatically inherited throughout the downstream uses. You can add a dimension to an assumption or outcome by one or multiple dimensions, thus defining the assumption or outcome as a multi-dimensional array. This dimension-modeling capability is called Fast Modeling.

Equations - How can I reduce equation errors in my models?

• Solution - With classical spreadsheets, equations are complicated with physical cell and sheet locations that make them difficult to write, follow, verify and review. They often contain modeling errors as well. With the Petranomics Analyzer's Economic Modeler, the outcomes and assumptions use names that you define, making them easy to recognize and understand while reducing errors.