Getting Access to Spreadsheet Models for Managers

Spreadsheet Models for Managers

Demonstration

• Narrative
• Excel Example: 2000-4 or 2007+

Think of a system as a complex business process, such as the process that handles a new hire. Now, in most companies, this process isn't controlled by a single department. For example, the HR department handles some of it — badging, sign-up for retirement plans, health plan enrollment, etc. And some of the process is handled by the hiring manager's department — request for office door nameplate, phone request, etc. And other processes are triggered by all these processes — telephone installation, furniture moves, and so on. It's all pretty complex, but in terms of person-hours, it's possible to compute the hours expended each day in support of the hiring process for the first year. One hopes that it trails off to zero before the first month ends. It might not, but in most organizations, it probably does. This curve we're imagining is the base response — the response of the system to a single hire.

To compute the load resulting from a hiring stream — two hires today, one tomorrow, 13 the next, and so on — you just add up scaled copies of the base response, delayed appropriately for each start date.

Adding up those scaled and delayed copies of the base response gives the same result as convolving the hiring stream with the base response.