Micro- and Macro-Scenario Analysis in Financial Modeling

For an organization to grow, it must take on risk. Understanding the overarching risks as well as the ramifications associated with maintaining and growing a business is the foundation of scenario analysis.

Every growth opportunity is weighed against the financial health of an organization. Whether that opportunity is a small cash purchase or a large capital initiative, each opportunity is ideally vetted in proportion to its growth potential.

Scenario Questions

When considering large capital projects or initiatives, organizations need to construct potential scenarios around how those opportunities could play out. Finance professionals should consider asking questions such as:

In answering any of the above questions, financial scenarios can easily grow beyond best, worst, and expected cases. Many organizations that use spreadsheets for this type of financial modeling will quickly find themselves with hundreds of versions and a host of unanswered questions.

Scenario Analysis and Billiards

Scenario analysis is best performed when you have a full-field view of an organization’s financial health. Without the ability to view each aspect of a business, whether internal or external, a given project or initiative may be executed in a way that is harmful to the business. Similar to billiards, if a player cannot see every shot available to them, they may attempt a shot that places them at a disadvantage for the rest of the game.

Independent of any financial modeler’s skill, performing complex scenario analysis across a business’s entire set of financial statements for a large capital project is virtually impossible in spreadsheets. Scenario analysis inside of spreadsheet applications like Excel takes a much more basic form.

When analyzing a capital initiative scenario inside of spreadsheets, most modelers don’t model the full set of outputs required to properly analyze their project. This disaggregated view is not optimal and limits the depth of an organization’s scenario analysis. Modeling the cascading ramifications of a large capital initiative across an entire organization, including cash flow, is incredibly difficult inside of spreadsheet-based financial models. See how Stetson University uncovered cascading ramifications inside of their financial model in Modeling Vs Budgeting: Organizational Interdependency.

Micro- and Macro-Scenario Analysis

Projects and initiatives do not happen in isolation. There are always external economic factors that affect large-scale business decisions. For example, credit ratings, bond pricings, and looming recessions all affect the viability of capital projects, initiatives, and purchases. Scenario-based financial models must incorporate external and internal conditions to maintain relevancy to an organization’s financial future.

Scenario analysis is best defined as the process of stress-testing a business’s finances over a series of macro- and micro-scenarios. Macro-scenarios incorporate both external and internal factors which impact an organization as a whole into one overarching financial scenario. For example, a macro-scenario for the construction of a new warehouse might include:

Micro-scenarios are also important when creating a long-term financial model. They examine the individual operations within an organization and the impacts of their own internal and external variables on them in one overarching financial scenario as well. For example, the general hiring of new staff can change depending on the completion time of the new warehouse, training costs, employee turnover rate, and a host of additional factors.

Dynamic Comparisons: The Difference Between What if Questions and Scenario Analysis

Let’s say the previous business wants to identify three different ideal financial scenarios out of all the possibilities available to them. It is vitally important that the three different scenarios are fully vetted, and the strategic impact calculated prior to submitting the proposal to the board.

To establish credibility in a boardroom, the analysis of both the ideal scenarios and the derivation of those scenarios must be reliable. Comparing scenarios and visualizing differences is a key factor in creating insightful dialogue around strategic directions.

The ability to compare scenarios quickly is a requirement when performing scenario analysis. Without a tool that can dynamically compare scenario outputs, scenario analysis becomes static answers to what-if questions.

Synario allows users to update their macro and micro scenarios in real-time. This expedites communication and the entire decision-making process by removing the need for a constant back-and-forth between spreadsheets and presentations.

Conclusion – Businesses Need Powerful Scenario Analysis

Understanding how a project or initiative will continuously interact with other business processes is the key to a fully comprehensive financial model. Insightful long-term scenario analysis requires the isolation of micro-scenarios and the stress-testing of macro-scenarios. Once various ideal trajectories are identified, they must be compared against each other on both the micro- and macro-scale to understand effects on overall business health.

To get the most accurate view of a business’s financial future, its financial models need to isolate, analyze, and compare micro- and macro-scenarios.