Recommendations for Building Real-World models

When designing your own models, it's best to keep a few things in mind from the very beginning, to avoid bigger changes later on. This page collects some tips & tricks from Valsight consultants and customers. If you want to add something, use the "Feedback" section below.

General Model Settings

Make sure you set the horizon to your desired timeframe. Usually the last year, or current year +3 - 5 Years. Extending the horizon, later on, is no problem.
Set a default unit, and a scale size that makes sense for you. In most cases, it is best to start with single digits, as often "per-piece" values need to be displayed as well. You can select the display settings later for each chart individually.

Dimensions

Volume & Per-Volume nodes

Most models have one central Volume driver and multiple values that are multiplied by this volume ("per-volume values").

To use features like weighted average display of the per-volume values, it is mandatory that no per-volume value (prices, cost per piece, etc) has more dimensions or finer levels than the actual volume.

You can then set the per-volume nodes to display the weighted average via aggregation settings.

Data Nodes

Our recommendation is to have no data in the system without at least the Year level. You may explicitly "book" values to specific or all years (see EXPAND and EXPANDSINGLE). Better yet, always include the Year (or month) in the uploaded data files and ROLLFORWARD where needed.

Org-Dimension

All nodes that are used in another submodel should include the Org-Dimension if the model is going to be used for a planning process.

Submodel Structure

See Hands-on Example: Defining Submodels