The Cutting Edge

Reducing Project Costs and Risks with Oracle Primavera Risk Analysis

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:57:00 GMT

It is a well-known fact that many projects fail to meet some or all of their objectives because some risks were either: underestimated, not quantified or unaccounted for. It is the objective of...

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Modeling Time-Series Forecasts with @RISK

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:06:00 GMT

Making decisions for the future is becoming harder and harder because of the ever increasing sources and rate of uncertainty that can impact the final outcome of a project or investment. Several...

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The Need for Speed: A performance comparison of Crystal Ball, ModelRisk, @RISK and Risk Solver

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:24:00 GMT

A detailed comparison of the top Monte-Carlo Simulation Tools for Microsoft Excel There are very few performance comparisons available when considering the acquisition of an Excel-based Monte...

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Excel Simulation Show-Down Part 3: Correlating Distributions

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:55:00 GMT

Modeling in Excel or with any other tool for that matter is defined as the visual and/or mathematical representation of a set of relationships. Correlation is about defining the strength of a ...

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Copulas Vs. Correlation

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 01:17:00 GMT

Copulas and Rank Order Correlation are two ways to model and/or explain the dependence between 2 or more variables. Historically used in biology and epidemiology, copulas have gained acceptance...

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Excel Simulation Show-Down Part 2: Distribution Fitting

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Sun, 15 May 2011 23:29:00 GMT

One of the cool things about professional Monte-Carlo Simulation tools is that they offer the ability to fit data. Fitting enables a modeler to condensate large data sets into representative...

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Excel Simulation Show-Down: Comparing the top Monte-Carlo Simulation Tools

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Sat, 07 May 2011 01:13:00 GMT

Over the last 3 months, we have seen 3 of the 4 major players in the Excel Monte-Carlo Simulation arena introduce new releases. We hear a lot of talk about which tool is best and the truth is there...

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The Virtual Organization and Information Technology (Part 5/5)

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:38:00 GMT

Organizations seeking to develop a virtual business model must also be in a position to effectively implement it on a business level and on a technological level. (Venkatraman, 1994; Venkatraman &...

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The Virtual Organization and Processes (Part 4/5)

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:26:00 GMT

How should you look at processes when designing a virtual organization? In order to effectively manage activities across organizations' it becomes critical to have certain processes in place to...

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The Virtual Organization and Strategies (Part 3/5)

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:15:00 GMT

This article highlights and discusses Venkatraman and Henderson's take on the various vectors of Virtual Strategy. What is a virtual strategy? What does it cover within the company? Who is affected?...

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The virtual organization – Competencies and Resources (Part 2/5)

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:07:00 GMT

This article covers the competencies, resources and assets that must be developped when making the transition to virtual organizing A variety of authors have generated lists of firm capabilities and...

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Defining the Virtual Organization (Part 1/5)

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:41:00 GMT

Traditional definitions of the Virtual Organization have mostly taken a commodity-based, view of the interactions among partners (Kanter, 1994; Chesborough & Teece, 1996). One of the most notable...

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Overview and objectives of collaboration

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:15:00 GMT

In this blog entry, we look at the ideas and forces shaping modern collaboration. The new success factors are presented as well as diffentent schools of thought regarding collaboration and...

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Using the CB.GetForeStatFN function in your Crystal Ball Models.

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:42:00 GMT

Crystal Ball utlizes several powerful functions and features to extract information and descriptive statistics. We are going to review these techniques and present the CB.GetForeStatFN in...

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Remembering to pick right learning curve

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:19:00 GMT

This post presents 2 popular learning curve methods for estimating how a person or organization benefits from repeat learning. This technique is key for the project risk analyst.

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How to build fast business models in Excel for simulation and optimization

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:14:00 GMT

Overview of techniques to accelerate Excel Models and custom applications.... I have included a few fun user defined functions as examples.Tags: Excel VBA,Simulation,project management,Risk Analysis

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Oracle Crystal Ball’s new features in 11.1.2

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:19:00 GMT

Oracle Crystal Ball has finally released its latest version of its industry leading Monte-Carlo tool. Essentially 3 features were added to the Fusion Edition. Tags: Crystal Ball,EPM

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Collaborative modeling using predictive analytics

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:49:00 GMT

When building models we are often confronted with assumptions that evolve over time. In most cases it is important to capture these changes to keep our model relevant. Over the last decade, Business...

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Building a Risk Analysis Toolset

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Sat, 29 May 2010 14:33:00 GMT

A brief review of Oracle and Microsoft database/application integration with Excel and Crystal Ball for comprehensive modelingTags: Risk Analysis,EPM,Excel

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Optimization Models

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:58:00 GMT

Quick overview of the parts of an optimization model in MS Excel.Tags: Optimization,Simulation,analytics,Risk Analysis

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What is a model?

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:09:00 GMT

When using tools such as Excel, Crystal Ball or ModelRisk, it is very important to be able to translate a mental model to a mathematical one. Let me illustrate, when you think about your business,...

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Sequential Simulations using Crystal Ball VBA

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:10:00 GMT

If your objective is to feed one simulation with the results of another, VBA is the way to go. Working on a client assignment, we took the results from a first simulation to configure the parameters...

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Leveraging the power of Crystal Ball using Excel VBA

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:44:00 GMT

This article provides a highlevel overview of how and why to integrate VBA in Crystal Ball spreadsheet models. Given that Oracle Crystal Ball runs on Excel, it is worth exploring how VBA can create...

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Processes, simulation and networks - Building meaningful analysis

etorkia@crystalballservices.com — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:58:00 GMT

For almost 15 years we have been witnessing a fundamental shift in how we do business, how we live and how we envision the world. Some have referred to this as a Paradigm Shift (Senge, 1991) brought...

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