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why analytica

Why Analytica

Most Analytica users seem to become enthusiasts. How can you find out whether Analytica is the right tool for you? We invite you to look at some of the pages linked below, depending on your interests:

  • Compare Analytica with spreadsheets
  • Compare Analytica with coding R or Python
  • If you are a consultant or manage consultants, you might look at the page below titled Make Modeling Fast & Fun
  • Or look at using it for managing risk and uncertainty
what is analytica

What is Analytica

Analytica is a decision analysis modeling tool that helps you generate clearer and more justified results.
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spreadsheet

Beyond the spreadsheet

Transcend cumbersome and error-prone spreadsheets. Analytica’s clarity, flexibility, and robust capabilities will advance your work...
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modeling

Visual modeling

Use influence diagrams to layout your decision variables and communicate more effectively. Identify decisions, uncertainties, and objectives to keep...
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risk

Embrace risk & uncertainty

Risk and uncertainty are inevitable. Discover how best to mitigate risks and find robust decisions so that your clients can prosper under...
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no coding

Analytics without coding: beyond R & Python

With languages like R or Python you need to be a programmer—or hire one. Analytica’s simple flow...
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Agility: making modeling fast & fun

As analysts and modelers we often find ourselves spending too much of our lives wrangling spreadsheets or debugging code in Python or R and similar languages. That ends here.
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Introduction videos

Watch and learn! Analytica videos cover a range of topics. You’ll be building your first model in no time.
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Frequently asked questions

By replacing spreadsheets with a clear visual model, you can plan effectively and collaborate based on a shared understanding of any scenario. This clarity also makes it easy to eliminate the errors that are so hard to spot in complex spreadsheets.

  • Forecasting – Yes, it has a range of forecasting functions, regression and more.
  • Uncertainty and risk: Yes with Monte Carlo simulation.
  • Optimization – Yes, both linear and nonlinear programming.
  • Systems dynamics simulation: Yes, models with feedback loops.
  • Decision analysis – Yes.
  • Big data – Yes, it can but it is not the best use case.
  • Analytica software is simpler and faster than spreadsheets.
  • Spreadsheets were a brilliant innovation for replacing accountants’ paper spreadsheets. But, they are poorly suited for serious financial modeling. Empirical studies show that more that over 85% of spreadsheets have errors. Thirty-five years after the release of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet, it’s time for something better.
  • A modeling tool like Analytica that displays entities and lets you directly interact with them is much more intuitive to use. It reduces the need to mentally translate between “inner representations” and the one used by the software. Analytica makes it much easier to write, review, verify, explain, and extend models. It reduces the number of errors by preventing many kinds of errors from being made in the first place, and by making remaining errors easier to detect and fix.

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If you like R or Python, but find it takes a lot of effort to develop and debug programs to address your clients’ needs, you will be delighted by Analytica. The simple declarative language lets you create powerful and transparent models in a quarter of the time.

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Dashboards like Tableau do not have a very powerful backend such as Monte Carlo or Optimization solvers. Those are necessary for solving both risk and highly complex constraint decisions. We bundle those capabilities into our easy to use platform, allowing executives to run their own scenario planning for responding to market changes. Most BI platforms could add Analytica models within their dashboards, with just a bit of extra programming.

Analytica shines when one is dealing with “unprecedented situations” or “high degrees of uncertainty”. While other data tools forecast using “historical data”, Analytica relies far less on historical data and more on probabilistic forecasts.

All Analytica editions run on Windows computers, including Windows 7 to 11, and Windows Server 2012 and later. Each Edition needs at least 1 GB RAM. We recommend 8+ GB RAM to run large models.

EditionsFree trialProfessionalEnterpriseOptimizerCloud Platform (ACP)
Decision Engine (ADE)
Run models, change inputs, compute results.
Create and edit models
up to 101 objects
Influence diagrams
Risk and uncertainty with Monte Carlo

Intelligent Arrays™
Function libraries, including maths, probability distributions, stats, financial, matrix, and more.​
Connect with databases and COM
Huge Arrays up to 100 million elements​
Hide and encrypt sensitive data and algorithms.
Find optimal decision strategies with linear and nonlinear solvers.
Access via web browser
Application Programming Interface (API)
Annual subscription priceFree download$1,000$2,000$4,000See more info$12,000

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  • Analytica is used by analysts, engineers, researchers, scientists, financial advisors, decision makers, law makers, and consultants to help with forecasting, problem solving, planning, and decision making in almost every sector of the economy. Often our users ran into serious limitations with spreadsheets and discovered Analytica as a solution.
  • Here are a few clients that use Analytica:
 

Analytica is being used in a wide variety of industries, wherever there is a need to guide decisions with insights from agile modeling. These are some of the industries with Analytica users:

  • Energy: including electricity, oil, gas, renewables, and energy efficiency.
  • Utilities: including electricity, gas, and telecommunications.
  • Healthcare
  • Pharma
  • Aerospace
  • Education
  • Defense
  • Environment: including climate models, greenhouse gas, lifecycle costing, air quality models.