Before you leave your home in the morning, you probably ask yourself a few questions:
- What is the weather going to be like today?
- Is traffic going to slow my commute to work?
- Should I bring a coat?
To get the answers to these questions, you can watch your local newscast on TV or check your weather & traffic apps on your phone. Either way, you want to be prepared in case you encounter inclement conditions and/or gridlock. Your ultimate decision of what to wear and what time to leave is based on a forecast. Forecasts help people plan for the future.
The power of forecasting goes well beyond getting to work on time. In fact, businesses of all sizes create financial forecasts to better prepare for the days, months and years ahead. Financial results, agricultural yields and energy production levels can vary greatly depending on conditions that may or may not be within your control. Companies want to know how to prepare for these conditions by building robust forecasting models. The best way to prepare is to have a reliable forecasting software running your model calculations.
Organizations make business decisions based on the forecast models they create. The software that constructs these models needs to be reliable and trustworthy. A multi-dimensional calculation engine allows modelers the ability to react in real time with greater precision. In Quantrix, you can create a new matrix that incudes all your assumptions about the future and link it back to your main model with ease. Further, with just ‘one click’ you are able to add new scenarios into your model to ask those critically important ‘what-if’ questions.
Whether you are looking one week or ten years down the road, to properly forecast scenarios, you need access to existing data. Today, data comes in a variety of forms and from a slew of sources. Therefore, it is crucial that your software can import data from just about anywhere. Quantrix allows users to pull data from an existing relational database, another Quantrix matrix, Salesforce, a text file or an XML source. Once your data is in Quantrix, you can run your calculations with natural language formulas, which increase your model’s accuracy. The ability to audit your models and formulas with the built-in dependency inspector feature is critically important when creating an accurate picture of the future.
As the forecast model takes shape, key decision makers will want to be able to view the results. Qloud, the Quantrix online environment, promotes sharing and collaboration of models. Management can view and/or edit the results of the model immediately in an easy-to-use web-based format.
Quantrix software truly brings new insights and power to the forecasting activities in your organization.
Click Here to see a real-world forecast application of Quantrix software. Or click here to check out some sample Quantrix models.
Mike Salisbury, Director
