What is a good replacement for models built using IFPS?
Montreal, December 5, 2000
Hubert Deneault, Hydro-Quebec, wrote
"First, I want to thank you for offering a service like
dssresources.com. It is very helpful and very much appreciated."
"Here is our problem."
"For a number of years now, we have been using IFPS, a financial
planning package first developed by EXECUCOM, in Austin, and later
merged into COMSHARE. Over these years, we have developed a few quite
large models, which are linked together though not dynamically. There
are mainly 3 such models, the largest containing more than 1500
variables(rows) and approximately 80 columns (time periods)." ...
"You probably guessed it we are looking for a replacement, i.e.
something that will:"
"do what IFPS does in a more friendly and a more modern environment
preferably be based on WINDOWS and VISUAL BASIC, and be able to talk to
an OLAP application like Hyperion ESSBASE, or something similar."
"Can you, or anybody out there, help?"
Dear Mr. Deneault--
You mention a number of requirements for a new software package. Based
on what you have told me I think you need to try the simplest solution,
which is to use Microsoft Excel 2000. This solution is easy to overlook
and it does have some limitations. You indicated the largest model
contains more than 1500 variables (rows) and approximately 80 columns
(time periods). In Microsoft Excel 2000 there are 256 columns and you
can have 65,536 rows. So it should handle the data set.
With the built-in functions and add-ins I think you can develop a wide
variety of planning models. Excel 2000 is a more friendly and more
modern environment and you can work with OLAP and post results as Web
documents.
I checked Paul Gray's 1996 book Visual IFPS/PLUS for Business and there
will be some issues that need to be addressed in working with
simultaneous equations.
Perhaps we'll get some feedback on this or other alternatives.