Quality of Life Improvements to Mosaic’s Operating Model
We heard your feedback loud and clear that there is a desire for more control over Mosaic’s manual operating model builder – particularly when advancing your models past the first-round bid and into full diligence.
December’s development effort centered around bringing a laundry list of “quality of life” improvements to the operating model that were directly requested by you – our awesome power users.
Let’s take a look at which of your great ideas made it to primetime!
1. Drive Each Period’s Values However You Want. Mosaic’s row “drivers” are great for quick forecasting. For more nuanced cases, we heard that you want full control of which values are input as currency amounts vs. percentages (e.g., y/y growth %, sequential growth, or % margin). This can now be achieved by double clicking into the relevant field – in the example below, consider a case where we want to lock in the 2025 value because we feel confident about management’s budget, but we want to assume a growth rate for 2026 and beyond:
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2. Enhanced Formula Builder with Tab Autocomplete. When building more complicated operating models with dozens of lines, users often got lost in Mosaic’s letter-based row references. We now allow users to type the relevant line item within Mosaic’s formula builder (with “tab” autocompletion) for a more natural formula-defining experience:
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3. Sticky Period Headers. Again, for very large operating models with dozens of lines, users wanted to have the period references (e.g., FY2025E, FY2026E… etc.) frozen to the top of the page for quick reference as shown below:
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4. Drivers Selected in the Mosaic App are Reflected in the Excel Download. Mosaic’s Excel downloader has been dynamic for quite some time – however, we had simplifying rules for immaterial assumptions like transaction fees, etc. The Excel download will now match your selected driver in the Application (e.g., Transaction Fees % of TEV vs. amount, operating model drivers as described in #1 above, etc.):
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5. Moving Detail Enhancements to the Body of the OpModel. Detail enabling switches for EBITDA Adjustments, One-Time Costs, and NWC Balance vs. Change switches have been moved to their respective rows in the body of the operating model builder for better visibility and a more natural modeling flow:
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6. Units Transposer Now Available by Row. Users have been able to apply a model-wide transposition for some time (i.e., multiplying or dividing the model values by a factor of 1,000 – for example, to quickly change source data presented in thousands to be stated in millions). Now this functionality can be applied on an individual row basis as well to support situations where underlying data sources are disparate and presented in different units:
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7. Defaults Can Be Set for Operating Model Row Drivers. Mosaic’s operating model builder is now set to hardcodes by default to support the most common use case of copying / pasting a source model into Mosaic (e.g., Management Case forecast or an Excel model that is being checked for accuracy). To the extent you would prefer to start each new operating model with a different set of drivers, these can be easily configured in your defaults (under “Profile”):
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8. Restart Operating Model. If you want a clean slate quickly, use our new operating model restart button to throw it all away and start over!
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Let us know what you think 📣
Mosaic has been built over the years by the collective intelligence of the private equity industry - specifically, by you, our users - through your thoughtful product feedback.
Your feedback is instrumental in helping us build a product that you'll continue to love far into the future. Please reach out if there is anything we can do to make your Mosaic experience even better.
That's all for now! Shoot us a note at support@mosaic.pe if you can think of anything else you'd like to see in Mosaic!