ESCAPE YOUR

ENDLESS
DECISION
CYCLES
 Your organizational stakeholders need finan-
cial modeling insights to set strategy and
make the best decisions possible.

Sometimes this comes in the form of bulleted

ideas or strategies that need to be quickly
vetted. Other times organizational leaders
want to understand the financial and opera-
tional implications of projects and initiatives,
including what-if questions and alternative
scenarios.

Results of your analysis are leveraged by

the board, executives, business unit leaders,
banks, and investors to make and justify key
decisions, so the answers need to be quick,
thorough, and credible. Many of the decisions
are financial in nature, and stakeholders need
to have the financial evidence and proof to
demonstrate proper due diligence before
moving to a decision-making stage.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 2

 Building a Bulleted ideas and strategies become expansive
Financial Model scenario questions for you and your team to answer.

So, like many organizations, you and your team leverage
spreadsheet models to vet scenarios, run various initiatives
and assumptions, and provide the board with the insights
they need to decide on a course of action.
Most financial modelers use spreadsheets to model and
analyze stakeholder questions. Spreadsheets start as an
endless sea of empty cells, meaning you must build in logic
for the spreadsheet to become a financial model.
Modeling an income statement is relatively easy, while
balance sheets are hard and cash flow is impossible. CFOs
and their associated teams already have full-time jobs, and
creating detailed financial models to answer specific sce-
narios is often on top of that effort.
To make matters worse, building spreadsheet models is an
ongoing iterative process, without a clear road-map. It is
easy to create overly inclusive and complex spreadsheet
models that collapse upon themselves: not responding, and
crashing. Additionally, spreadsheets are error-prone and
the models are fragile. Changing one cell across the multi-
ple versions and iterations can introduce inconsistencies,
issues, and critical errors.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 3


The more complex the model,
the more versions to manage
and the more likely each
version contains errors
and issues.
Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles
An Inability to
Quickly Adapt
Your organization is evolving, which means there are
always new ideas and questions on the table. Often, your
model may not be able to answer questions fast enough
to keep pace with organizational goals.
As you model each scenario and slowly answer question
sets, new scenarios and what-if questions are posed.
To answer the new questions, you need to decide wheth-
er to modify an existing model (which can be difficult to
re-engage on with knowledge locked into one or a couple
of experts), or create a new model (often propagating the
number of spreadsheets, which adds to synchronization
and maintenance challenges).
Multiple spreadsheet versions are usually the answer, and
this results in significant spreadsheet sprawl, additional
management, and time-intensive maintenance.
4
 Presenting a Static
Financial Story
Utilizing a financial analysis tool that can
quickly adapt to new questions is not the
only challenge

Results need to be distilled down into coherent reports, charts, and dash-
boards to effectively communicate to varied audiences (who sometimes might
not be financially literate).

Visualizations are often difficult to initially generate for a wide breadth of different
scenarios. Today, you likely use PowerPoint for presenting to decision-makers, taking
the different scenario outputs from your spreadsheets and copying these into your pre-
sentations. Once generated, those reports and charts can no longer evolve to answer new
questions, and become tedious to maintain across different presentation versions.

Additionally, different audiences require a different narratives in order to convey insights around
future strategies and initiatives. Defining and producing different outputs is incredibly time consuming
when using standard spreadsheet and presentation cut and paste procedures.

These analyses are static, so you have to distribute different analysis reports to accommodate new updates,
questions, or iterations.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 5

The Decision Process so Far

90% 88% 35%

of surveyed organizations
still use spreadsheets as
the primary tool for finan-
cial modeling.
(Harvard Business Review)
of all spreadsheets con- of spreadsheet users
tain significant errors. admit they are fully aware
(Forbes) that the spreadsheets
they manage contain
errors.
(Deloitte)

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 6

 A Need to
Elevate Credibility
Stakeholders need a single credible version of the truth,
and spreadsheets are not delivering.

As you present to the board, key deci-
sions are being made based on your
modeling, analysis, and insights.
You don’t want to present a scenario
analysis only to discover mid-presen-
tation that numbers are incorrect or
inconsistent. Unfortunately, spread-
sheet-based models often have critical
issues, which are difficult to detect and
fix.
Auditing is only possible through time-in-
tensive cell-by-cell examination. And a
lack of drill-down features in your pre-
sentations means that any auditing has
to be done in advance.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 7


A Lack of
Consensus
Decisions may be delayed or postponed based on the
timeliness and diligence of your analysis and presentation.
Results from modeling, analyzing, and
presenting should lead to consensus
around the best organizational trajectory.
However, due to spreadsheet constraints
and a general lack of data-integrity, most
analysis results lead stakeholders to
diverge around next steps.
Today, it takes a significant amount of
time to create or modify a financial mod-
el. Answering key questions in order to
support decisions for each project and
initiative takes even more time.
Your current models are likely not inte-
Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles
DID YOU KNOW?
72% of senior
executives
think that bad strategic de-
cisions either were about
as frequent as good ones
or were the prevailing
grated with every financial aspect of your norm in their organization.
organization. Most models are incapable
(McKinsey)
of incorporating projects and initiatives
beyond those under direct consideration.
The lack of integration and consideration
might be resulting in “tunnel vision” with
existing spreadsheet models.
Without a full-field view of your organi-
zation’s financial possibilities, you may
28% of senior
executives
said that the quality of
be missing critical opportunities that are strategic decisions in their
simply outside of your current spread- companies were generally
sheet’s scope. good.
(McKinsey)
8
 The endless decision cycle represents the burden of continual modeling,
Your Endless the apprehension around opaque analysis, and the resulting lack of credi-
bility when answering stakeholder questions. Financial models built using
Decision Cycle spreadsheets enable and encourage the endless decision cycle, reducing
organizational adaptability and efficiency.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 9

 ADVANCED
MODELING

Your Modeling Challenges

are Worth Solving
ADVANCED
What is your time worth?
Decrease your burden through advanced modeling. ANALYSIS

What is your confidence worth?

Mitigate your apprehensions with advanced analysis.

ADVANCED
What is your reputation worth?
Boost your credibility with advanced insights. INSIGHTS

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 10

Advanced Modeling through
Effortless Configuration
Purpose-built tools, features, and functions make
it easy to build, modify, maintain high-performance
models.

Customized Design Business Building Blocks

Synario’s intuitive interface and dynamic outputs Object-oriented design creates a structured model-
make it easy to communicate complex scenarios. ing environment to manage relationships and miti-
gate risk.

Friendly Integration Pre-Mapped Accounting

Automated import functionality links with any ac- Built-in financial relationships simplify and speed
counting / budgeting / ERP system, allowing for sim- the development of integrated financial statements.
ple historical data integration. Unlike spreadsheets, there is no elaborate formula
writing or complex relationship management.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 11

Advanced Analysis through
Boundless Exploration
Patented Multiverse Modeling™ powers unlimited
live scenarios, enabling rapid comparative analysis.

Dynamic Comparisons Full-Field View

Live side-by-side projections removes the need for Simultaneous control of all assumptions exponential-
conditional logic or clunky manual or macro driven ly expands the sight lines of any analysis.
processes.

Advanced Version Control Bundled Assumptions

Non-destructive changes to assumptions and formu- User-friendly controls and bundled assumption sets
las facilitate comparative analysis and version drive alternative views of the future.
control.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 12

Advanced Insights through
Dynamic Visualizations
Cloud-enabled Analytical and Presentation modes
dynamically animate analysis to broaden projec-
tions and enhance decision-making.

Audience Specific Interfaces Differential Access

Dynamic presentations allow leaders to craft narra- Tailored user-roles ensure model integrity and em-
tives filled with customized outputs tailored for key power broad adoption.
stakeholders.

Real-time Results Complete Transparency

Updates flow from the analytical engine to reports Unique drill-down functionality traces the assump-
and charts – across all scenarios – at the same time. tions, formulas, and relationships underpinning any
result.

Escape your Vicious Decision Cycles 13