What-if Analysis

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A What-if Analysis consists of structured brainstorming to determine what can go wrong in a given scenario. It is a way for a company to plug in different scenarios and values to determine a range of possible outcomes.

For example, in the budgeting process, many factors, such as future tax rates, interest rates, inflation rates, employee count, expenses, are variable to the extent that they can deviate from expected values. Also called sensitivity analysis.

Using a spreadsheet, What–If Analysis is the process of changing the values in cells to see how those changes will affect the outcome of formulas on the worksheet.

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