One of the major challenges faced by many organizations is the inability to create reports which take into consideration future projections. These projections may be either positive or negative.
For instance, an Oil & Gas company may have been profitable in the recent Quarter, but they foresee a loss of revenue in the next Quarter due to an increased supply of oil by OPEC. So, the company decides to reduce their revenue projections for the next Quarter. To highlight this fact the company will want a report showcasing their loss in revenue projection so that the management can plan their future course of action accordingly.
This is where the Simulate feature from Inforiver Matrix allows us to make these projections with relative ease.
Let us take a example.
Say there is a Product Manager who is analyzing the Revenue data of the top two performing products (Amarilla and Carretera) of the company. He/She believes that the Amarilla product will perform better in the coming Quarter and so accordingly creates a positive Revenue projection for that product.
1) To do this they we use the Simulate feature located under the Insert tab in Inforiver Matrix:
2) When we select the Simulate feature, we can select either Visual Measure or Visual Column option. In our usecase we will select the Visual Column:
3) Next, we will select the value based on which the Simulation column will be created. In our case we would like to see the revenue projection of Amarilla and after selecting the value we will select Create:
4) Now we can click on any cell in the new simulated column, and it will display a small slider icon next to it. Hovering over this icon reveals a slider and by clicking and dragging the slider the value inside the cell changes. It also shows a percentage change as we keep moving the slider to the right or to the left. Both the value and total get updated once we release the slider.
5) Also, when a parent cell is simulated, the change is distributed to the child levels. So, in this case when the percentage of the Row Grand Total of the Simulated column is changed then the resultant change is distributed amongst the child levels:
6) We can even define a simulation percentage by clicking on the pencil icon (edit icon):
7) In addition to this we can also lock specific cells from simulations. Locked cells will not be affected if their parent values are updated. To achieve this, Click on the 'Lock' icon:
8) We can unlock the cell by clicking on the cell:
9) Finally, we can delete Simulations by clicking on the 'Delete' icon:
