Business Analysis

How to effectively collect, process, analyze and present data

  1. Modeling market adoption in Excel with a simplified s-curve
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  4. Sensitivity analysis - Tornado Charts in Excel, only 5 steps, with no add-ins

3 Comments to “Business Analysis”  

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    At 10:35 am on October 27, 2008
    Neda Esfan Says:

    Hi Juan,
    I desperatly need your help. I have been searching the internet for hours and finally saw your website.
    I am helping my brother in his business and he needs to create an s curve in excel to predict his cost.
    He basically needs a formula to create an s curve for the following problem. For example if he wants to pay $15/hr to someone for walking up to 10 dogs but he will pay $17/hr if they walk 15 dogs and finally $20/hr if they walk 20 dogs.
    Any ideas how to write the formula in excel and make a s-curve chart?
    My gratitude and million thanks in advance.
    Neda

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    At 12:28 pm on October 27, 2008
    Juan Carlos Méndez-García Says:

    @Neda
    Thanks for the message. For the problem you mention I’d personally use simply a step formulation just as you described ($15@1-10, $17@11-15, $20@16-20) if anything else because it is easier to communicate to the walkers. In Excel this would be just a simple =IF(AND(numdog>0,numdog< =10),15,IF(numdog<=15),17,...))

    If you still would like to use an s-curve for the problem, you could use the technique described in this previous post: http://jcandkimmita.info/jc/2007/04/business/modeling-market-adoption-in-excel-with-a-simplified-s-curve/

    You would set the saturation to $5 (the difference between the low pay range and the high pay range), the start of fast growth around 7 or 8 (dogs walked) and the takeover parameter would not mean time, but dogs walked, and I would set it around 15 or 16. In the original curve the horizontal axis is time since introduction, and in your usage would be dogs walked. Finally, you would add $10 (the low pay range) to the formula result.

    Happy modeling!

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    At 11:01 am on October 29, 2008
    Neda Esfan Says:

    Thank you so much. That was a huge help.
    Regards
    Neda

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