School's out... Time to get to work...

With the 2006 / 2007 school year coming to a close, the task of preparing for next fall begins. This is a time when many of us in the Academic community take a moment to shape our curriculum, choose textbooks, and determine what tools we're going to be teaching next semester.

With that thought in mind, we at the Education Alliance invite you to visit our redesigned web pages, get familiar with the depth of our program and give us your valuable feedback.

In the coming months we plan to introduce new resource materials, host new web seminars, and roll out some exciting new academic programs such as our "Half Day on Campus" series. In the meantime, enjoy the latest issue of our Alliance newsletter and have a great start to your summer.

Warm regards,

Dan Mitzner
Marketing Manager, Crystal Ball Education Alliance
+1-303-626-0130 /education@crystalball.com

Visit Our New Alliance Web Pages

With the recent growth in our Education Alliance program, it quickly became evident that we needed to update our web pages to provide our partners with greater use and value. The new pages are filled with helpful tools and resources for teaching and learning Crystal Ball software, while delivering them in a user-friendly format with plenty of room to grow. Go to Web site.

Introducing Crystal Ball 7.3

Building on more than two decades of experience in the predictive analytics business, Crystal Ball 7.3 offers users new features, efficiency improvements, and superior performance.  New features include:

• Windows Vista™ and Microsoft® Office 2007 Compatibility - Crystal Ball 7.3 is the first release of the software officially supported on both Office 2007 and Windows Vista.  Crystal Ball 7.3 now includes a new Microsoft Excel® 2007 ribbon for easy access to Crystal Ball software's tools and features.  Users will be able to benefit from the new capabilities found in Excel 2007.
  
  

• Scatter Charts - Crystal Ball 7.3 offers users the ability to create scatter charts, which display one set of numerical data along the x-axis and another along the y-axis.  Scatter charts display correlations, linear regression lines, and other relationships between pairs of forecasts and assumptions plotted against each other.  This additional investigative tool provides a visual way to make more informed decisions.

• Ability to start and stop Crystal Ball inside Microsoft Excel - After Excel has started, users can now open and close Crystal Ball manually or automatically, depending on their preferences.

Crystal Ball User Conference

The 2007 Crystal Ball User Conference will take place next week in our beautiful hometown of Denver, Colorado. We are excited to showcase  outstanding case study presentations and workshops led by industry and academic leaders. 

We invite you to participate in interactive sessions and learn how expert modelers are successfully incorporating simulation and Crystal Ball software into their curricula.  Speakers and attendees are coming from schools that include Prague University, University of Phoenix, and Florida International University. For more information, please see our conference brochure and conference schedule.  As a special discount, for every three people that register for the user conference from your school, the fourth is automatically free. 

To register or for more information e-mail or call: Mike Franden, Academic Senior Account Manager, 303-626-0118, or Jill Schnathorst, Academic Account Manager, 303-626-0123.

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Each month we like to take the opportunity to recognize one of our Partners in Education. In doing this we hope to shed some light on the various ways in which Crystal Ball software is being taught and incorporated into university classrooms, textbooks, and continuing education programs.

Alan Gorlick
Professor of Finance - University of Phoenix, Financial Consultant

Alan E. Gorlick is a financial consultant and University of Phoenix faculty member.  He teaches MBA and undergraduate finance, economics, and strategy.  Gorlick has significant executive level and consulting experience in international high tech business, corporate finance, and personal investments.  His expertise includes strategy, marketing & sales, and technology risk & return, as well as using technology to enhance shareholder value, create strategic options or raise total factor productivity.  He has had numerous articles published in several business and technical journals.

His previous experience includes CEO of a venture funded high tech company, COO of a NASDAQ traded high tech firm, and economic development consulting.  He has also taught at Cal Berkeley, University of St. Thomas (MN), Metro State University (MN), and University of South Florida, where he holds seminars in Finance for the Non Financial Manager.

From the Desk of Alan Gorlick: Teaching Risk Analysis

"We teach students that, in financial terms, risk expresses the relationship between an expected outcome and other possible outcomes.  Then we construct a discount rate considering such factors as project risk, company risk, inflation risk, and cost of capital.  Capital budgeting reduces to a spreadsheet exercise comparing discounted future cash flows to known and projected costs, with the implicit assumption that the discount rate and the cash flows are correct.

"Students often ask how we know what those cash flows will be.  The standard response is that they are given.  The much better response, especially in advanced classes, is to express the uncertainty of the inputs supporting those cash flows a well as the resulting probability distribution around the forecast cash flows and the discount rate.  Students appreciate and find they can quickly understand the cumulative probability distribution that Crystal Ball simulation software generates instead of a single-point NPV or IRR. "

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As part of our mission, the Education Alliance is continuously looking for ways to make Crystal Ball software fit seamlessly into your existing curricula. To help make that possible, we offer a robust collection of resources through the Alliance Web pages.

Contribute to the Program

As the Education Alliance continues to flourish, one of our primary goals is to expand the resources and
tools available through our program. With that in mind we turn to you, our experts in the field, to help
provide content and insight that will help us deliver relevant and useful resources. There are many ways
our partners can help us provide the most comprehensive set of resources in the industry, we hope you
find one that works for you.

Professor Kits

To ease the implementation process for Crystal Ball software, we have put together these unique Professor Kits. Each kit is a free set of tools designed to equip professors with everything they need to teach Crystal Ball in their classroom. For more information on available kits or additional academic resources for your course, contact the Crystal Ball Education Alliance .

Invite Us to Your Campus!!

A large part what we do is visiting campuses around the world to present informational seminars on the importance of risk analysis, simulation and Crystal Ball software. Our goal for this program is to help introduce, in a short time, the basic principles of these important processes and how they are put to use by business professionals every day. Our seminars can be customized to fit your specific schedule and program. For more information, contact our Academic Marketing Manager.

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The Education Alliance is continuously engaging authors on the forefront of their field to include Crystal Ball software as part of their textbook content. Beyond the content inclusion, you will also find that many of our Textbook Partners include free short-term Textbook Editions of the software to be used in conjunction with the text.

"I chose to enclose Crystal Ball software in our book because we use it extensively in our courses, plus it is simply great software with a wide range of both theoretical and practical applications covered in our book."

-Jiri Hnilica, Associate Professor Department of Business Economics,
University of Economics, Czech Republic

Business Forecasting, 8e	Commercial Realestate- Analysis and Investments, 2e	Design for Six Sigma Statistics

For a full list of titles visit www.crystalball.com/books.html

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Cash Flow at Risk - Electronic Chip Production
Alan E. Gorlick, Financial Consultant, University of Phoenix

Profitable volume production of electronic circuitry runs the gauntlet of unique technical and marketplace hurdles, all of which involve risk and cost, including: Yield, Die size, Rework, Component pricing, Overhead, Supply chain linkages, and Marketing. Many design firms choose to manage the process in-house, because they believe the costs are deterministic, and within budget. In fact, many of those costs require stochastic models. Single-point analysis fails to value:

• Cash flow at risk over a range of scenarios
• Covariance of cash flows of each new project with existing projects (lack of portfolio effect)
• Opportunity costs of bearing risk for which they don’t have a comparative advantage
• Costs imposed by the capital markets for bearing risks they should hedge Crystal Ball, in concert with experience driven models, quantifies project and total risk, thereby valuing various hedging strategies.
  
  Read Full Article

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As one of our many resources, Web seminars are a fantastic means for learning more about Crystal Ball software, simulation, risk assessment, and predictability. They also serve as a sounding board for those of you looking to distribute information on related topics.

It's important to us to attend all education related conferences throughout the year. Not only does it provide an outlet for meeting new customers, but it gives us a chance to meet in person with many of our existing partners for some quality discussions. Please let us know if you are going to be in attendence at any of the following events. We'd love to meet with you.

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The Crystal Ball User Group (CBUG) is a Yahoo!® online forum where Crystal Ball users can discuss issues and methods related to Crystal Ball software. You can visit CBUG and register to become a member through the Crystal Ball Web site.

Latest topics: Tolerance analysis for MMC dimension Linking two simulations New CB 7.3 Sensitivity Data - Extracting versus Charts > Click here to visit CBUG and register to become a member

PLEASE NOTE: You have several message delivery options when you join, including whether or not to receive single or digest e-mails. You can also opt not to receive any e-mails and simply log onto the site every so often to view discussion.

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Mike Franden
Senior Account Manager- Education Alliance
800.289.2550 (toll free in US) / 303-626-0118
mfranden@crystalball.com

Newsletter Archive

All previous issues of Tomorrow's Forecast and the Education Alliance Newsletter are available in our newsletter archive.

> Click here to visit the archive