Modeling and Simulation
Web-based Collaborative Modeling
for Enterprise Simulation and Planning
The Vanguard System™ is the first business
analytics application to support modeling and simulation
on an enterprise scale.
Vanguard is used to improve 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. It has the power to satisfy the demands of
a professional modeling group, and the simplicity to
satisfy the needs of individuals throughout an
organization who make daily operational decisions.
Business Modeling
Modeling and simulation is an essential process in
modern business management. Models allow you to test
ideas in a virtual world where mistakes are inexpensive.
They also provide a framework for comparing competing
alternatives. And, they help you to clarify the potential
risks and rewards of pursuing actions.
What's more, modeling is pervasive. Every time someone
in your organization builds a spreadsheet to "run
the numbers", they are building a model.
Companies invest significantly in this activity, and they
invest even more by shaping company strategy around the
results that models generate. Because of this importance,
there are advantages in treating modeling as an
enterprise-wide, strategic initiative.
Enterprise Simulation
Applying modeling techniques on an enterprise scale is
frequently called Enterprise Simulation (ES). It has two
distinct objectives:
- Provide a top-down view of a business enterprise
to support strategic decision-making.
- Enable a wide spectrum of individuals in an
enterprise to apply modeling techniques to
routine decisions.
Until now, no tools have existed that could satisfy
these objectives. Business Intelligence (BI) and similar
historical reporting systems help monitor business
operations, but they cannot help you evaluate new ideas
for which there is no history. Spreadsheets, the default
modeling tool when there is no coordinated modeling
effort, are flexible but lack scalability, a
collaborative nature, and a means of publishing for
widespread use.
The Vanguard System is unique in its ability to
satisfy ES objectives. It can cut the cost of building
business models by simplifying model structures and
encouraging reuse of prior work. It can improve the
accuracy of models by allowing you to divide the modeling
task between individuals with specific domain knowledge.
And, the Vanguard System can encourage use of modeling
for routine decisions by making models as easy to use as
a Web site.
Users with varying levels of skills
can all contribute
to a high-level modeling effort.
Collaborative Modeling
Collaborative modeling allows many individuals in your
company to contribute to a joint modeling effort in a way
that risks and opportunities throughout your organization
are captured and rolled up in real-time without any loss
of detail.
Vanguard’s unique component-based modeling
technology allows you to build large-scale, distributed
models by linking together smaller, component models that
are built independently. Users can model facets of a
business in a way that is most useful to them and the
system ensures that these models will work as components
in a collaborative model. The intricate complexities of
getting all of the component models to work together when
they are built by people in different countries using
different currencies, different time scales, different
update schedules, etc., are all handled automatically by
the Vanguard System.
The Vanguard System has the
capacity to handle extremely large collaborative models
including a whole company simulation.
Web-based Knowledge Portal
Models can be shared with others and applied at all
levels of an organization by publishing them to the
Vanguard System’s Wiki-style Knowledge Portal. Here,
models take on two new characteristics: they are
simultaneously Web applications that any individual with
a Web browser can use; and, they are components that
anyone can link to in their model. Users don't need to
know anything about modeling, and modelers don't need to
know anything about how to build Web applications.
If you are a Web-based user, the Knowledge Portal
becomes a resource where you can find pre-built models to
use in your work. Since the models are completely open
and transparent, you can see all underlying assumptions
and suggest improvements. Plus, users who have some
modeling skills can even update the models themselves
without fear that they will break something. This open
update architecture is based on the Wiki style of
Knowledge Management.
The real benefit the Knowledge Portal provides goes
beyond making specialized decision-support models
available to all employees; the real benefit is that
these models are automatically converted into components
that you can use as the basis for other, higher-level
models. This means that you don't have to start from
scratch when you build new models.
For example, users in Operations will not have to
forecast sales as part of their production-planning model
because they can link to a sales forecast model
maintained by Marketing. Similarly, an inventory-planning
model can get its basic input by linking to the newly
created production planning model.
Modelers build on prior work by
linking to component models in the Knowledge Portal.
This sort of collaborative modeling is less structured
than a top-down company simulation in that these models
grow from the bottom-up in an organic manner. However,
these models are no less real-time and robust than
top-down models.
Enterprise-Class Abilities
The Vanguard System is an enterprise-class simulation
platform. This means it has the analytic power to handle
the most demanding types of analysis, the capacity to
handle enterprise-scale models, and the structure
required to allow many individuals to work together in
the business planning process.
Benefits / Features
- Collaboration: Many individuals
simultaneously contribute to an analysis effort.
Like building blocks, easily combine their
knowledge, assumptions, and historical data into
complete models.
- Scalable: A small group or many
departments, Vanguard supports planning and
analysis activities of any size.
- 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.
- 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.
- Reusable model library: You do
not have to re-invent the wheel with each new
planning and analysis effort. Simply search your
model library to find similar or related models
that you can update, specialize, or link to in
real time.
- Easy integration: Vanguard
integrates directly with your existing business
systems such as databases, enterprise
applications, and even spreadsheets.
- More...
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