
Invrea as a Management Tool - yura_invrea
https://invrea.com/blog/accounting_predictions.php
======
feral
I really think businesses would benefit from using tools like this to do their
planning.

Just today, making LTV projections, I wanted something like this. I considered
making a model in Bugs/Stan or Python or something, because my spreadsheet is
just giving me point estimates, and there's a lot of variability. But that's a
lot of work. Something like this would be great.

Feedback, meant constructively, because I believe in what you're building
towards:

I have no idea what 'Actuals' means.

It took me a while to figure out 'does this do what I want, or not?' \- maybe
you're trying to make it less 'statsy/scary' to business users - but I wonder
if you should make sure you don't consequentially miss people who actually
know what they are looking for.

Its frustrating to click a 'Download' CTA and get hit with a webform - you've
got my attention now, but I've no idea whether this is a real thing or a
painted door - I don't want to queue, its not an exclusive social network, its
a tool I might take a chance on learning - so I'll be bouncing away, even
though I might be in your target audience. Maybe I'm just busy :)

"THE SPREADSHEET MODELING TOOL" \- doesn't help me - all spreadsheets are
modeling tools. 'Statistical' or 'advanced' or 'probabilistic' would let me
know this is what I'm looking for here; again, I get there's a tradeoff with
scaring away non-sophisticated users - but I'd bias towards getting people who
know what they are looking for signed up.

~~~
mbesto
> I have no idea what 'Actuals' means.

You're probably not the audience for a tool like this if you're asking this
question. (no offense)

~~~
asimuvPR
Maybe you could explain or provide a link to the definition? He might know
what it is under a different term.

~~~
yura_invrea
This is a term used in accounting and so on. Firstly, there is a company
budget plan, and then each month (or week, or so on), _actuals_ are being
incorporated to the plan.

See, here, e.g., under the Noun section:
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/actual](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/actual)

Usually we call it an observation, and it is exactly OBSERVE command in
probabilistic programming languages like Venture/Anglican, but in our plugin
we have decided to try business-(accounting-)related terminology.

~~~
asimuvPR
Thank you.

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rgovind
Related question. Similar to Verilog/VHDL simulations, do large companies like
Walmart etc run 100s of financial scenarios in the form of code/nightly
regressions rather than dealing with excel spreadsheets? Can CFOs learn
anything from simulations?

~~~
mbesto
Large corps run financial scenarios usually in quarters (or sometimes
monthly). You'd rarely see a CFO looking at a nightly simulation because you
can't really make decisions at the level of a CFO that would affect the bottom
line in the timespan of a day. While the types of tools to do more
sophisticated planning models are getting better, the issue is generally not
the tool or the planning model, but getting the data in, on time, and in a
clean format.

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R_haterade
This appears to do exactly the same thing as Oracle's Crystal Ball add-in:
Monte Carlo Simulation for business forecasting.

The only difference I can see is the incorporation of a more sophisticated
process for getting estimators.

Can somebody explain to me how this is better than Crystal Ball? Or am I
missing the point?

[http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/bus-
int/crystal...](http://www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/bus-
int/crystalball/index.html)

~~~
defen
My first guess would be that the Oracle product costs "as much as you are
possibly capable of paying, provided it's at least 7 figures" and this thing
is less than that.

~~~
yura_invrea
And that as well :).

------
yura_invrea
For those of you who have questions on what our plugin does, here is a
friendly introduction to Bayesian inference and how that fits to Invrea
Scenarios:
[https://invrea.com/blog/bayes_tutorial.php](https://invrea.com/blog/bayes_tutorial.php)

