Decision Analysis

Decision analysis is a general phrase describing the broad application of modeling and simulation techniques for the improvement of decision-making. Even if not formally recognized, decision analysis occurs every day in every area of a business.

Unifying People, Analytics, and Systems

The Vanguard System™ is a comprehensive business solution for improving the quality, reliability, and speed of management decisions. It does this by helping you Collaborate with colleagues on important plans, Analyze alternatives using state-of-the-art modeling and simulation techniques, Automate routine decisions using expert system technology, and Improve overall management effectiveness by adding structure to a normally chaotic process.

Business improvement is all about working smarter. Vanguard brings together the people, analytics, and systems required to help your business operate intelligently.

Collaborate

The knowledge your business needs to make decisions effectively is divided between individuals who are spread throughout your organization. The Vanguard System frees you from having to rely on the analysis of a single planner with second-hand knowledge of critical operations. Instead, Vanguard directly involves key individuals in a collaborative planning process.

Vanguard's collaboration abilities go well beyond simple communication strategies like Web conferencing. Rather, Vanguard is based on principles of knowledge capture. Individuals throughout your organization use our innovative model-based approach to describe to the Vanguard System how they make decisions or perform particular tasks. In doing this, users capture knowledge, or know-how, that is specific to your business. The Vanguard System can combine the knowledge captured by many individuals to create a Collective Intelligence that is useful for testing business plans and automating routine operations.

Analyze

Vanguard's powerful modeling and simulation technology allows you to test business alternatives in a virtual world where mistakes are inexpensive. Instead of helping you know only what happens, Vanguard will help you understand why. What's more, Vanguard can help you anticipate future risks and opportunities so that you can act rather than react.

Vanguard combines all of the most powerful and essential quantitative methods in management with features of spreadsheets, artificial intelligence tools, and math applications to produce an advanced business modeling system. Vanguard's specific capabilities include:

• Forecasting: extrapolating historical performance data to aid in planning.
• Monte Carlo Simulation: modeling uncertainty to help manage business risk and simulate complex systems.
• Decision Tree Analysis: choosing the best course of action when future outcomes are uncertain.
• Sensitivity Analysis: determining which assumptions drive your decisions most.
• Optimization: finding the best solution to very complex problems subject to business constraints.
• General Modeling and Problem Solving: tackling logically complex problems and communicating your ideas clearly.
• Data Analysis: pulling valuable information from historical or experimental data.
• Advanced Analytics: building models that push the envelope in state-of-the-art business analysis.
• Application Development: building mission-critical applications based on Vanguard.

Vanguard's layered capabilities architecture

Automate

Many management processes were once considered too complex or too fluid to automate. As a result, routine business planning at most companies involves copying and pasting data between spreadsheets, re-building old models, and a significant amount of gut-feel decision-making. Although this process can work, it is very inefficient and expensive.

Vanguard improves the speed, reliability, and quality of routine decisions by combining its business modeling capabilities with Expert System technology. Instead of having your management team repeat the same analysis monthly, you have people in the team describe how they perform their analysis to the Vanguard System. Then, in effect, the Vanguard System learns the process and can repeat it for you.

You get business automation via an easy-to-use Web interface without the need for an expensive IT development.

Improve

Whether it is knowledge-based collaboration, simulations at 1,500 times the speed of spreadsheets, or advanced Expert Systems technology, each of these Vanguard capabilities is a technological breakthrough in and of itself. However, taken together, Vanguard sets a new benchmark in management systems.

It will improve your company's decision-making by improving the analysis on which these decisions are based.

It will improve the quality of your analysis by encouraging collaboration and the application of state-of-the-art techniques.

And, it will improve your productivity by simplifying the modeling process and encouraging reuse of prior work.

Vanguard has the potential to transform your business by improving management team decisions rather than simply analyzing operational data.

Benefits / Features

• Collaboration: Many individuals simultaneously contribute to a modeling effort. Like building blocks, easily combine their knowledge, assumptions, and historical data into complete models.
• Roll up / Drill down: Roll-up your analysis to see high-level views, or drill down into specific areas of a model for greater detail and understanding.
• Go beyond data: When historical data is scarce, Vanguard knows how to interpret your management estimates, assumptions, and uncertainties.
• Instant Web reports: With a few clicks, Vanguard turns models into interactive Web reports. Access your models anytime from anywhere, fully exercise the models in real time, and distribute your results to everyone who needs them.
• Real-time results: Rest assured you always have the latest results. Vanguard automatically updates your models as changes are made in any component.
• Open and transparent: Models are displayed graphically and use plain English formulas making them easy to communicate to colleagues, management, or clients. Anyone can quickly review assumptions, gain insight into your results, and provide feedback.
• Easy integration: Vanguard integrates directly with your existing business systems such as databases, enterprise applications, and even spreadsheets.
• More...