Last month, Michael Jarman and Hilary Smart, both previous modelling champions, discussed how to make your operating model work better for you during a live surgery session
Owners of operating models often dread any task relating to them due to the ‘hacks’ hastily added to get them to match reality with the model becoming more and more unwieldy. Model users begin to groan any time a task requiring it comes up underutilizing the potential analysis and insight operating models can offer a business. They are viewing what should be a relatively simple spreadsheet as a black box.
During the 45-minute webinar, Michael and Hilary discuss the most common issues seen in operating models, and the steps to take to ensure your business makes the most of the data available. Thanks to the questions sent by the audience before filming, they could group the most common issues into four main topic areas: Unwinding Historic Balances, Populating Historic Data, Validating Changes and Modelling Multiple Assets.
Unwinding Historic Balances
In an operating model, there is often a discontinuity between what happens in the historic period and what happens in the forecast period. During the first section of the webinar, Hilary talks about potential solutions to unwinding historic balances so that your model reflects reality more astutely.

Populating Historic Data
One of the main reasons people have issues populating historic data into their operating model is a mismatch between the format of the data the model needs and the data that they have. In this section, Michael discusses why this might occur and a few ways to try and mitigate the issue.
Validating Changes

When it comes to validating changes in an operating model, Hilary talks through the different questions to ask when an error comes up, and how to check if the error is relevant.
Modelling Multiple Assets
In the final part of the webinar, Michael discusses the different ways of modelling multiple assets, including what might be best for different portfolios.
Whilst no two models are the same, by discussing what Operis would do when encountering the above problems, this webinar hopefully allows viewers to fix a few of their Operating Model nightmares.
You can watch the entire webinar on-demand using the password:
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If, however, you would like to discuss your operating model problems in more detail and discover how Operis might be able to make your life easier, please do get in touch with either Michael or Hilary.