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Invrea as a Management Tool

invrea.com

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Re: Invrea as a Management Tool

#11

Post by beachstartup »

R_haterade wrote: post #6

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...

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

have you ever had to actually pay for or sell an oracle product? or any other high end enterprise product?

usually you can sell 25% (or less) of the function for 10% of the cost. is that "better"? that depends on who's asking.

Re: Invrea as a Management Tool

#12

Post by yura_invrea »

R_haterade wrote: post #6

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...

To the best of my understanding, they just do _Monte Carlo_ simulation. Our plugin, in addition to just simulation, allow you to do proper statistical inference using Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Sequential Monte Carlo, etc. In other words, our plugin allows you not just define a generative model of some (business) process with some assumptions (guesses), but also to incorporate observations (actuals) you already have.

Re: Invrea as a Management Tool

#13

Post by yura_invrea »

defen wrote: post #7
R_haterade wrote: post #6

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...

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.

And that as well :).

Re: Invrea as a Management Tool

#14

Post by asimuvPR »

yura_invrea wrote: post #10
asimuvPR wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 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…

Thank you.

Re: Invrea as a Management Tool

#15

Post by feral »

mbesto wrote: post #5
feral wrote: post #3

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 beli…

> 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)

Its a totally reasonable decision to target an audience, that I might fall outside.

My primary thrust is neither the 'Actuals' copy on the landing page, nor the 'Actuals' explainer video explain the term. (OP has explained it elsewhere on this page, thanks!)

Secondarily, I wonder whether this should be targeted exclusively to accountancy folks (which I'm not) or also Data Science/ Statsy folks (which I am, and who are increasingly helping high tech companies with their financial modeling).

The latter group is definitely a smaller niche, but might have more of an awareness/interest in what Invrea is doing; maybe not, but if I had to guess, I'd say there's a big customer education challenge targeting accountancy folks.

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