User Guide Overview

This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know to become proficient with Bear Decisions and start going home on time!

Whether you're a planner, an economist, a manager, an executive or just an Excel power user, this guide will help you master a better way to do scenario planning and analysis within your existing Excel workflows, and help you make better decisions.

What's Covered

Bear Decisions transforms your existing Excel models into powerful scenario analysis tools by systematically testing different combinations of your decisions and uncertainties using the existing Excel formulas as an engine. It aggregates the results, helps you analyze, gain insight and the appropriate understanding to enable you to communicate the findings effectively.

• Inputs — Define the interactions with your workbook.
  • Decision Areas — Choices you control
  • Uncertainty Areas — External factors you don't control, but could impact results
  • Variables — Where each area connects to cells in Excel
  • Alternative Values — Different alternative inputs per variable
  • Tracked Results — Key outputs and optional goals to compare against
• Calculation — Generate the combinations of decisions and uncertainties.
• Strategies & Timings — Selection of the objectives, specifying the timing for decisions and uncertainties, and any custom overrides for the decisions.
• Probabilities & Signals — Probability of each case occuring, specification of conditional dependencies or overrides, and the quality of signals received.
• Dashboard & Visualizations — Mechanics of the dashboard, including adjusting the layout, different types of visualizations, grouping, transformations, and views.
• Analyze Workflow & Interpreting Results — Guidelines on performing the interactive analysis, helping you avoid misreads, identify key drivers and generate insights.
• Communication — Guidelines on how to communicate the results to stakeholders, including crafting narratives and framing the recommendations.
• Best Practices — Learn techniques for creating accurate, reliable analyses that drive better results: frame decisions, ensure modeling discipline, and incorporate validation.
• Settings & Configuration — Configuration of the add-in, including NPV rates, macro mode, logging, and preferences, plus how to export the data for other tools.
• Automatic Macro Execution — How to enable the automated execution of VBA macros during calculations.

Working iteratively

Scenario analysis rarely follows a pure linear progression. Adjustment of probabilities and strategies are expected through the analysis process. Early on, your uncertainties are rarely fully nailed down, and that is normal. Part of the work is to try likelihoods, see which risks actually move the outcomes you care about, and adjust both the model and the assumptions until the picture is clear enough to decide. You can return to the Probabilities tab or rerun calculations whenever your judgment or data changes.

Bear Decisions and Excel

The add-in is built to extend what you already have in Excel, not replace it:

• Keep your models: Works directly with the spreadsheets you've already built and invested your time in
• Add-in integration: Initialize from the Excel ribbon, then interact from the task pane or dashboard
• Scenario generation: Automatically test hundreds of combinations of your decisions and uncertainties
• Back-population: Push a chosen scenario's input values back into the sheet for detailed analysis
• Dashboards: Explore options and aggregated results while the workbook stays the source of truth

Next Steps

Continue to Inputs to define areas, variables, and tracked results—or jump to an Example Analysis first if you prefer a walkthrough.