Design and BuildSenior decision-makers often report that models that are presented to them as decision-support tools are sub-optimal; most often, the commercial drivers, the available sensitivities, and the logic structures in the models do not align with their own thought-processes or the needs of the specific decision situation.

There can be many reasons why such situations arise. In some cases, resource constraints mean that legacy models have become outdated and do not adequately  reflect new circumstances. In others, the responsibility for forecasting and planning models has been given to staff who are otherwise devoted to accounting activities, and the models may sometimes end up being excessively detailed or inflexible  – “precisely wrong, rather than approximately right”. Further, in many organisations, a modelling expert has no formal career path, with staff implictly incentivised to move into different roles over time; this may result in limited investment or pro-active work in areas which may improve the models over the long-term, such as major model updates or rebuilds.

Michael’s services in the model-building  area are aimed at providing modelling and analytic support to senior decision-makers, particularly for major transanctions and for complex business planning and decision-making. This also includes situations where there are major future uncertainties. His expertise is to specify and conduct analysis and to build models which:

  • Appropriately support decision-making, and are designed and structured to address the relevant key issues
  • Have outputs, scenarios and sensitivity possibilities which align with the mind-set of senior decision-makers, built around the drivers of strategic, commercial, operational and financial value
  • Are as simple as possible, but no simpler – with high value-added in the right areas
  • Are transparent, and are easy to understand and share
  • Allow confidence to be gained that the right factors have been considered and the correct analysis undertaken, and that as far as possible all relevant factors are included in the analysis

Every engagement is customised according to a client’s needs and context, and is appropriately integrated with the client’s processes. Where appropriate, in addition to model building, there would typically be activities relating to the decision context and purpose, a requirements specification, frequent interactions during the model building process, the developments of drafts and prototypes, kick-off and hand-over workshops and the creation of relevant project documentation.

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