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Scenario Modelling - Pain Points & Challenges

Pain Points

Manual Scenario Creation

  • Duplicating forecasts for each scenario is time-consuming - Teams must copy entire forecast structures and manually adjust values

  • Source: Personio (2025-10-21)

  • No way to apply systematic percentage adjustments - Can't easily say "reduce all collections by 5%" across the forecast while preserving underlying weekly patterns

  • Source: Personio (2025-10-21, 2025-12-04)

Scenario Maintenance

  • Keeping multiple scenarios in sync - When base forecast changes, all scenario versions need manual updates
  • Source: Personio (2025-10-21)

Investment Decision Uncertainty

  • Making overly conservative investment decisions due to lack of forward visibility - Without clear forecast data, teams default to shorter-term, lower-yield investments

  • Source: Personio (2026-01-28)

  • Investment decisions based on guesswork - Rolling basis decisions without structured scenario plans

  • Source: Personio (2026-01-28)

Seasonality Adjustments

  • Seasonal patterns not easily adjustable - When teams know January will have a revenue spike (e.g., yearly subscribers), they can't easily adjust the system forecast

  • Source: Personio (2025-12-04)

  • Blanket adjustments destroy patterns - Adding flat amounts (e.g., +2M per week) loses the intra-month collection patterns (front-loaded vs back-loaded)

  • Source: Personio (2025-12-04)

Tool Limitations

  • TMS inflexibility drives Excel usage - If tool isn't easy for quick scenarios, people go back to Excel
  • Source: ON (2024-11-19) - "If the tool is not flexible or intuitive to make scenarios or adjustments, you end up doing it in Excel. And I think that's the worst that can happen to a TMS."

Rolling Forecast vs Fixed Scenarios

  • Rolling forecast re-baselines to actuals, wiping out scenario comparison - Once actuals update, you can't compare against the original scenario baseline. "Would be nice to see what you said was your best case, your baseline, and your worst case, and then with the actuals laid on top."
  • Source: ON (2026-02-18) - Jennifer (Palm) raised, Amanda/Rodrigo validated

New Entity/Market Scenarios

  • Cannot forecast for entities with no historical data - Fast-growing companies opening in new countries have no baseline for ML forecasting. "It's hard to actually forecast for something that you have never experienced."
  • Source: ON (2026-02-18) - Amanda/Rodrigo, discussing Swedish store opening scenario

Scenario Analysis Outside the System

  • All scenario analysis done in spreadsheets, immediately stale - "As soon as you shut that spreadsheet, it's out of date. It will never be looked at or used again."

  • Source: Personio (2026-02-18) - Tom

  • No visibility into model assumptions before layering scenarios - Hard to know if a trend is already factored in, risking double-counting

  • Source: Personio (2026-02-18) - Tom distinguishes "nudging the forecast" from "scenario analysis"