Invrea as a Management Tool
invrea.com
Invrea as a Management Tool
1–10 of 16 posts
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#2Related 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?
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#3I 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.
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#4Related 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?
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.
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#5I 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)
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#6This 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...
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#7This 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.
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#8I 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)
Maybe you could explain or provide a link to the definition? He might know what it is under a different term.
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#9I 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…
feral, thank you very much for your feedback!
>> Just today, making LTV projections, I wanted something like this.
Cool!
>> I have no idea what 'Actuals' means.
This is a way to make an observation. Like OBSERVE in Venture/Anglican (probabilistic programming languages, in Stan it is similar).
We decided to call it ACTUAL, because in accounting and similar fields people often call an observation (known data) an actual.
>> Its frustrating to click a 'Download' CTA and get hit with a webform
If you have already filled the form, I will send you a download link now. If not, please, feel free to fill, and I will send it soon (or tomorrow, we are UK-based).
We just try to track our early users, since it is still very early alpha.
>> "THE SPREADSHEET MODELING TOOL" ...
Good point and useful feedback, thank you! We will discuss it.
Re: Invrea as a Management Tool
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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)
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 try business-(accounting-)related terminology.