Consideo Modeler for Windows

Consideo's Modeler is the sort of unusual software that turns up from time to time. It's designed to visualize and analyze "connections of arguments, ideas, strategies, projects, and processes." It can model complex, multifactor business strategies, but it's useful to everyone from scientists to students. Among the real-world virtues it claims are the ability to shorten meetings by focusing questions and clarifying arguments. It functions as both a qualitative analysis tool, identifying, tracing, and describing factors and connections ranging from "weak" to "strong," and a quantitative modeler, running simulations based on your data, including imported SQL and Excel data.

Software like Modeler is rare, but this program's capabilities go beyond even the few other graphical analysis tools out there, offering the ability to model everything from meetings to molecules. You can model literally thousands of factors with "subsystems," a level of complexity unimaginable not too long ago. Yet, for all its complexity, a big part of Modeler's appeal is its ability to display complex data in customizable graphical presentations that are easy to grasp and also easy to put to work. The program's attractive interface reflects that capability, bringing clarity to complexity.

The free demo version of Modeler is limited to 20 analysis factors. It leaves behind folders when it's uninstalled. It works in versions of Windows from 95 to 7. There's really nothing else like it out there, but even other process modelers don't offer the kind of power and flexibility this complex but capable tool makes routine.