What-if Scenario Modeling allows one to look at multiple potential actions and relays the consequences of each. You can predict the results of these actions before committing to taking them. Through What-If Scenario Modeling, you can more holistically view and understand a financial decision and its impact. Since you can fully view and understand this potential impact, you drastically minimize the amount of risk taken on when finalizing such a decision. Rather than exclusively creating a Forecast or Budget based on prior years data, you can create a what-if scenario. Creating this what-if scenario will allow you to look over your potential Budget and adjust before finalizing.
Multiple Versions
To enable What-if Scenario Modeling in Oracle’s Planning & Budgeting Cloud Services (PBCS), you can create multiple versions to compare scenario’s against. For instance, if you would like to see two separate versions for the Budget scenario, you would create Version A and Version B. You can then create reports comparing the same scenario (i.e. Budget, Forecast) in each of these versions, adjusting to seeing various decisions you are considering making. These reports can be created on the web or in Oracle’s SmartView Excel add-in.
Easy Adjustments
The Copy Version function allows for easy adjustments in What-If scenarios. For this, What-If A could be your Best-Case scenario, whereas What-If B could be your Worst-Case scenario. Then choose to either copy the entirety or pieces of your data from one version to the other, while maintaining one scenario. As a result, you can easily change sections of data in your What-If B version, yet not start from the beginning.
What-if scenario modeling within Oracle PBCS allows you to predict possible outcomes with ease. To learn more about the benefits of what-if scenario modeling, download our eBook “Having a Conversation with Data”.
