the age of the badass analyst - alteryx · the age of the badass analyst | 18 alteryx in action:...

T H E A G E O F T H E B A D A S S A N A LYS T | 1

T H E A G E O F T H EB A D A S S A N A LYS TSeize the day. Explore modern approaches to data analytics that unleash your brilliance.

CO N T E N T SL E T ’ S D I VE I NData Analysts: The Badasses Who Propel Change ...................................04 F I VE CO M M O N D ATA C H A L L E N G E S1) Data Prep Is Where Time Goes to Die .................................................072) Joining Data Shouldn’t Be a Marriage of Inconvenience .....................093) Data You Don’t Have Doesn’t Help You .............................................114) Antiquated Approaches Aren’t Built for Advanced Capabilities ..........135) Still Waiting for Predictive and Prescriptive? .......................................15G E T B A D A S S WI T H A N A LYT I C SA New Day for Analytics ...........................................................................18An Easier Way to Wrangle Data ...............................................................22Use the Right Tools to Get the Right Blend ..............................................25A Shared, Transparent, Environment Helps You Find Data ....................27

Answer with Confidence Using Advanced Analytics ................................29

Geospatial Analytics ........................................................................29 Demographic Data ...........................................................................30 Firmographics and Technographics .................................................30Predictive and Prescriptive Power in Your Hands ....................................33T R A I L B L A Z E R SHealthcare Analytics .................................................................................37Supply Chain Analytics .............................................................................39Tax and Audit Analytics ............................................................................41Government Analytics ...............................................................................43Higher Education Analytics .......................................................................45K E Y TA K E AWAYSExperience the Thrill of Solving................................................................48

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S E C T I O N 1

L E T ’ S D I VE I N


As a data analyst, you provide one of the most needed services in business today,

triggering important decisions with the insights you provide while grappling with

impossible deadlines, high expectations, and IT bottlenecks.

From healthcare to government to higher education, organizations in every sector

need data analysts. Regardless of which industry you work in, collecting data and

compiling your findings into reports that will help the business is a part of the job.

Your organization counts on you to answer the questions they pose with pinpoint

accuracy. It’s vital to get the answers right, because decision-makers use those

answers to make important choices. In your pressure-cooker role, it can be

a challenge just to survive, much less thrive. Do it successfully, and you’ll achieve

badass status.

D ATA A N A LYS T S : B A D A S S E S WH O P R O P E L C H A N G E

17%

2015

T H E N U M B E R O F CO M PA N I E SA P P LY I N G B I G D ATA A N A LYT I C S 1

2017

53%

1 Dresner Advisory Services 2017 Big Data Analytics Study, as reported in Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2017/12/24/53-of-companies-are-adopting-big-data-analytics/#2619693f39a1


S E C T I O N 2

F I VE CO M M O N D ATA C H A L L E N G E S


If my boss only knew how long data prep really takes.“ ”


Even though data prep and blend is only the first step in an analytic process, it’s vital to get right, so that when it’s time to generate insight, data is accurate. That’s why most analysts spend the bulk of their time wrangling data using manual processes, leaving little time for producing reports.

The data you work with exists across multiple file types—SQL databases, CSV, XML, Excel (XLSX) formats, and more. You need to bring together each piece of the data puzzle, but manual processes are not efficient for generating insights. Cleansing data from these formats requires a lot of copy/paste, formulas, or macros unless you happen to know Python, R, Pandas, or Jupyter. If you do, you know that scripting languages are time-intensive and can be error-prone. If you don’t, some degree of manual reconciliation is your only option, and manual data work is mind-numbingly slow, inflexible, and error-prone.

Even if you are familiar with these or other tools, prepping data that can be “dirty” in a number of ways is still slow-going

using traditional data-cleansing methods. Cleansing data isn’t limited to ensuring naming and abbreviation consistency, of

course. You’re bound to encounter other prep and blend hurdles, like:

D ATA P R E P I S WH E R E T I M E G O E S T O D I E

1 ) CO M M O N D ATA P R E P S C E N A R I O S

You can lose significant time when contending with inconsistent field entries across source files. Some fields, such as state abbreviations, phone numbers, and titles, are presented multiple ways, depending on the relevant convention. It’s tedious and time-consuming to reconcile field consistency for entries like “California,” “Calif.,” and “CA,” or differences in phone number formats such as 555-555-1212, (555) 555-1212, and 555.555.1212.

Other examples of inconsistencies in your data you’re likely to encounter:

• 24-hour versus 12-hour time formats

• U.S. date format versus formats from other regions

• Country abbreviations

Even when you’re able to use formulas to reformat this information, it’s still inefficient and tiresome to switch back and forth between multiple spread-sheets and/or databases to get it done. It’s also easy to break your formula and hard to trace back the original source of the formula problem.

• Unit conversions, such as pounds to kilos or feet to yards

• Currency conversions

• Empty spaces

• Unrecognizable characters imported from non-English alphabets

• True/false records that need to become yes/no records (and vice versa)

• Null values that send your advanced analytics into a tailspin

• Records that contain unwanted characters like %, &, and other symbols or punctuation

• Non-identical duplicates, like “Maria Seelos” and “M. Seelos”


Data comes from everywhere; I wish it was easier to use all of it.“ ”


To arrive at a usable answer from cleansed data, you likely have to join multiple

sources of data, such as multiple spreadsheets and databases that are formatted in

a variety of ways.

Reports often require multiple programming languages and approaches to achieve

your goal. From R to Python to SQL, from dplyr to sqldf to data.table, exploring

and applying these solutions eats up time. SQL, R, and Python approaches can

limit your flexibility when you want to use a single solution to:

• Join data that results in more than one or two outputs

• See the fall-out data that flows from all three outputs

• Group records based on two input keys from your data stream

• Produce a dataset that contains every combination of two or more tables

J O I N I N G D ATA S H O U L D N ’ T B E A M A R R I A G E O F I N CO N VE N I E N C E

2 )


Depending on others for data is a drag.“ ”


Before you can even begin to prep data, you have to track it down.

It might be locked in the IT department and take a few days to access, because IT

has many priorities in front of your request. Or, your data might be buried in a

spreadsheet that’s shuttled back and forth over email, or tucked away in a custom

database managed by a single user.

These scenarios leave you dependent on the timelines of others, while your own

project schedule stutters or stalls completely. Deadlines can be missed as a result.

In any case, working with aging data is not ideal.

When internal processes are slow, and reports take days to generate,

you’re not able to deliver your best work.

According to a recent survey, nearly two-thirds of data going through

traditional prep and blend was at least five days old by the time it reached

an analytics database—and therefore, no longer able to meet the guidelines

for fast-paced analytics.3

2 “Achieving Self-Service for Enterprise Data Analysts,” --Alteryx”3 https://www.networkworld.com/article/3213729/data-center/etl-is-slowing-down-real-time-data-analytics.html

D ATA YO U D O N ’ T H AVE D O E S N ’ T H E L P YO U

3 )

6 2 % of data analysts must depend on others within their organization to perform at least some steps in the analytics process. 2


I want to overlay more data sets, but I can’t get there with old solutions.“ ”


Once data is prepped, you’ll want to enrich it, so you can extract as much value as

possible. For example, while it’s good to capture a company’s name and address,

it’s better to augment that information with deeper business insights like industry,

size, and revenue.

The same holds true for geospatial data. With this kind of data, you can pinpoint

where your target customers are located to design better marketing campaigns,

find new retail locations or optimize your supply chain logistics. When it comes to

A N T I Q UAT E D A P P R O A C H E S A R E N ’ T B U I LT F O R A DVA N C E D C A PA B I L I T I E S

customers and prospects, it’s important to know details like age and income.

It’s even better to gain deeper knowledge, including the types of technology,

food, and household products they purchase, to increase your understanding

and inspire new segmentation approaches.

But you can’t get very far with outdated methods like spreadsheets. Often, you’ll

need the help of a specialist and a bit of manual coding to enrich your data—

and that takes time you don’t have.

4 )


I wish I could do advanced analytics on my own.“ ”


More than ever, data analysts are expected to present advanced analytics such as predictive and prescriptive models, including creating decision trees, running A/B tests and logistic regressions, and performing market basket analysis. Many analysts are still focused on descriptive analytics that explain what already happened. They would like to move toward more forecasting and informed scenario-building, but aren’t sure how.

At one time, predictive and prescriptive models needed to be applied by data scientists, but that’s no longer the case. If your advanced analytics are still dependent on others to implement, it’s important to know you have other options.

Now, analysts can be empowered by modern technology. Modern, easy-to-use solutions help analysts sharpen their analytics skills without having to learn code.

of analytics processes will no longer simply discover what happened and why; instead, they will also prescribe what should be done. 4

S T I L L WA I T I N G F O R P R E D I C T I VE A N D P R E S C R I PT I VE ?

5 )

4 Ventana Research Assertions, as cited in Microstrategy Blog: https://www.microstrategy.com/us/resources/blog/bi-trends/12-data-and-analytics-predictions-through-2025

66%BY 2021


S E C T I O N 3

G E T B A D A S S WI T H A N A LYT I C S


C L I C K H E R E T O WAT C H T H E P OWE R O F O U R P L AT F O R M I N 2 M I N U T E S

I feel free.“ ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JezAZjRehd0&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JezAZjRehd0&feature=youtu.be


A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : S O C I A L D ATA I N S E CO N D S

Without Alteryx, it would take countless hours to manually work with the social data in 90-day increments and manipulate the data within Excel to mimic what the Alteryx workflow export does in seconds.

“”JENNIFER JENSEN

Sr. Analyst, McGarry Bowen

When analysts want to unleash their badass analytic brilliance, they do it with Alteryx. Using our platform, you can breeze through data prep to generate better reports in half the time—with the freedom to do so much more.

D R A G , D R O P, D O N E

Alteryx Platform uses a visual, drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to create workflows, locate and join data from multiple, disparate, data sources—including Excel, data warehouses, social media, cloud, big data, and more. These visual workflows make it much easier for anyone, not just data scientists, to quickly understand logical paths that will get to the goal result, even for advanced capabilities like predictive and prescriptive analytics. You can clean your data within the same workflow, saving you hours, and often days or weeks, of frustration. When you’re done with your analysis, you can easily show anyone the steps you took to get to the answer, without having to describe the magic of your solution from memory alone.

A N E W D AY F O R A N A LYT I C S


C H O O S E YO U R L AY E R S , C H O O S E YO U R C H A R T S

Add layers of information to your analytics, drawing from

third-party sources like Experian, DigitalGlobe, and TomTom.

A variety of chart options makes it simple to create and combine

multiple charts into pixel-perfect reports. Or, bring those

interactive charts together in a dashboard where stakeholders

can drill down in the charts to view what’s important to them—

all in a single analytics environment.

A N A LY Z E D ATA I N A N Y I N D U S T R Y

Alteryx flexes to the specialized needs of any data analyst,

across industries. This is because Alteryx works as an entire

platform, not a single-point product. The ability to connect with

multiple tools and data sources, both internal and external,

further extends your capabilities to work across multiple

industries with Alteryx.


WI T H CO D E - F R E E A N D CO D E - F R I E N D LY, I T ’ S YO U R C H O I C E

Data analysts and users who understand the challenge ahead of them—but would rather use clicks than code to solve it—are covered with our code-free platform. Open-source developers will love our graphical user interface, and it’s intuitive enough for any analyst to quickly master.

For data scientists and others who do want to apply their coding skills, Alteryx is code-friendly, making it easy to collaborate with non-coding stakeholders in one transparent solution.

With the Alteryx Platform, you can leverage code that’s been designed specifically for your organization and advance your data analytic skills quickly, while empowering the line of business to use pre-built, repeatable, workflows and templates.

CO D E - F R E E A N D CO D E - F R I E N D LY E XA M P L E S

With our platform, coders and non-coders can:

• Introduce R code into a workflow, so data scientists can collaborate with non-coding stakeholders

• Build a marketing attribution model using Markov chains to create a personal answer engine

• Predict lead conversions or sales using omni-channel marketing data to translate raw data into real value

There are myriad other benefits of using the Alteryx Platform, all driving the same overarching principle: Alteryx frees up your time, so you can turbocharge your insight delivery and race past the competition.


I didn’t realize data cleansing could actually be pain-free.“ ”


A lot of analysts spend the bulk of their time cleansing data. If this is you,

Alteryx offers a welcome change. We flip the script so you can spend the

majority of your time analyzing data instead of preparing it. No more

struggling with manual copy/paste tasks and endless frustrations when

standardizing data. You can create an automated process that pulls data

from multiple sources like spreadsheets, proprietary services, and legacy

databases. Get data from any source and in any structure, whether it’s

on-premises, in the cloud, or scraped from the web. Now that’s the kind

of badass power you need.

Here are descriptions of three popular Alteryx tools for data prep on

the platform:

Data Cleansing Tool Fixes common data quality issues using a variety of parameters

Filter Tool Queries records and splits the data into two outputs: True (where the data meets the specified criteria) and False (where it does not)

Imputation Tool Updates specific values in a numeric data field with another selected value. Useful for replacing NULL values

A N E A S I E R WAY T O WR A N G L E D ATA


A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : U . S . D E PA R T M E N T O F CO M M E R C E / U . S . PAT E N T A N D T R A D E M A R K O F F I C E

We are using Alteryx as an ETL tool, extracting data, scheduled nightly, from the legacy transactional system and loading it into an optimized data model designed specifically to support analytical efforts. Thanks to Alteryx, we are well on our way to being the premier self-service analytics platform in the federal government, managed by the people who know the data best.

JAMES NOSAL Program Analyst, U.S. Dept. of Commerce/U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

“

”


These join tools are like shortcuts around traffic.“ ”


Take advantage of powerful join tools that let you combine all your data, no matter the structure or location. If you prefer to work in Python and R, you can—but you won’t need to. And, our platform lets you iterate as needed—just add a new data source or change your model, run it in Alteryx, and review the outcome—no need to reshape your data for each update.

Instead of manually combining your data, use some of the automated, repeatable tools from Alteryx. We’ve listed a few examples below:

A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : F R O M 2 0 T O 2

I am impressed that it took only two minutes to join. I tried this on a different analytics tool and it took 20 minutes!

ALTERYX COMMUNITY MEMBER

U S E T H E R I G H T T O O L S T O G E T T H E R I G H T B L E N D

Join Tool Combines two inputs based on a commonality between the two tables (similar to an SQL join, while offering the option of creating three outputs resulting from the join)

Make Group Tool Takes data relationships and assembles the data into groups based on those relationships

Append Fields Tool Appends the fields of one small input to every record of another, larger, input. The result is a Cartesian join, in which all records from both inputs are compared

“ ”


It’s pretty awesome to track my data sources in one place.“ ”


With a shared platform, it’s easy to locate, and even rate, data sources, so you won’t have to spend time looking for information. Accessing a common location to find and collaborate on data improves the overall quality of information throughout the organization—and saves you time.

A S H A R E D, T R A N S PA R E N T E N VI R O N M E N T H E L P S YO U F I N D D ATA


Hard questions? Bring ‘em.“ ”


The power of advanced analytics, traditionally the domain of coders and data scientists, is in your hands with Alteryx. Now, you can use logistic regression to determine which customers are most likely to respond to your next marketing campaign. Or, predict how a price change will impact your bottom line with A/B analysis. And that’s just a start.

Alteryx is giving analysts back their day and helping them unleash their analytic brilliance in a way never before possible.

G E O S PAT I A L A N A LYT I C S

Use Alteryx to enrich data with spatial analytics. Add metrics like travel time and physical proximity to reveal potential opportunities. Alteryx geocodes large volumes of data quickly, including demographic, geographic, and household information—again, no coding required.

Location intelligence is invaluable in many scenarios. For example, multiregional companies can better prepare for power outages during weather disruptions with geospatial data that indicates the most vulnerable sites. They can then determine where to position service assets, such as repair crews. Another example is a logistics company that needs to map efficient transportation for a fleet of vehicles. Using geospatial, you can identify the best travel routes. Using past data of actual travel time can help forecast where and when to plan for congestion and other delays.

Geospatial is fast becoming an invaluable component of data enrichment— and Alteryx makes it easy to implement.

A N S WE R WI T H CO N F I D E N C E U S I N G A DVA N C E D A N A LYT I C S


D E M O G R A P H I C D ATA

The better you understand who you’re communicating with, the better your chances of landing

your message. Demographic data is crucial for communicating with a specific audience segment.

And, unlike processes that require you to overlay that information by extracting it from

spreadsheets, Alteryx makes it easy to append the data in a single platform.

Understand more about your customers and prospects beyond their neighborhoods and names.

Whether for sales and marketing, product design or even packaging considerations, visibility into

household income, age, marital status, and even hobbies, adds the laser-focused information

you’ll want to have when segmenting audiences.

F I R M O G R A P H I C S A N D T E C H N O G R A P H I C S

F I R M O G R A P H I C S

At first glance, “firmographics” seems simple: how many offices does the company have?

How many employees? But there’s more to it.

Questions like, what are their yearly sales versus profitability? For packaged products, do they

use discrete manufacturing or process manufacturing? How big is their customer set? Are they

B2C or B2B? Do they lease or buy their equipment? Where are they in their corporate lifecycle?

Firmographic segmentation, like other enriched data, helps you target your audience. If a company

has a bad year, for example, it’s less likely they’ll be interested in updating their office décor across

multiple locations. This type of detail can help prioritize sales efforts and uncover whether some

leads are more likely to pay off.

As with individual customers, when it comes to organizations, the more details you know,

the better your communication.


T E C H N O G R A P H I C S

Technographics tells you what types of hardware and software

companies buy and use to run their businesses. Technographic data can

help you match opportunities to prospects who may be using outdated

solutions or to identify companies that are heavily invested in a competing

product—so you can be more precise when marketing to them.

In addition to listing each company’s tech stack, technographics also tells

you how they acquire technology, including how often they’ve upgraded,

or performed a rip-and-replace of, older systems.

Enriching data with firmographics and technographics using the

Alteryx Platform is easy. You can amend your data with drag-and-drop

functionality, including automated reports, at any time. In a competitive

market, data sets are the “secret sauce” that gives you the edge. Leverage

firmographics and technographics with other data for a truly rounded

view of your audience.


It’s one thing to see the future. Now I can do something about it.“ ”


P R E D I C T I VE A N A LYT I C S

Descriptive analytics can illuminate what’s already happened. Predictive analytics describes what’s likely to happen in the future. Alteryx offers R and Python integration, while more than 40 pre-built tools and macros give data analysts and other users the ability to predict likely scenarios, impacting decision-making and outcomes—without the need to know a single line of code. In addition, Alteryx offers macros for data investigation, predictive modeling, grouping, and time series analysis.

A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : F R O M A M O N T H T O F O U R H O U R S

We use Alteryx Designer for ETL and predictive modeling. Before Alteryx, this project took a month’s time. Today, it takes approximately three to four hours.

P R E D I C T I VE A N D P R E S C R I PT I VE P OWE R I N YO U R H A N D S

ALTAN ATABARUT Analytics Consultant, Ulusal Factoring, TR

“ ”


P R E S C R I PT I VE A N A LYT I C S

While predictive analytics helps you understand what

is likely to happen, prescriptive analytics helps you

consider options for what to do based on that outcome.

Traditionally, this has required complex, error-prone,

spreadsheet models and/or manual coding.

Alteryx gives you simulation and optimization

capabilities in a drag-and-drop interface that’s easy to

use, while also providing transparency and consistency

for future modeling. Our prescriptive analytics utilizes

a range of mathematical models, offers support for

multiple solvers, and includes built-in Monte Carlo

simulation capabilities.

Using these types of advanced analytics, it’s never been

easier to make sound, prescriptive, decisions based on

your data.

BREAK THE BARRIERS TO FASTER INSIGHTS. DOWNLOAD A FREE TRIAL OF ALTERYX DESIGNER TODAY.

https://pages.alteryx.com/trial-designer.html


S E C T I O N 4

T R A I L B L A Z E R S


I can transform analytics in any industry with Alteryx.“ ”


As in other industries, healthcare is undergoing a data analytics

transformation, with analytics relevant to multiple components of

the healthcare landscape.

Beyond privacy and HIPAA considerations, data analytics benefits the

healthcare industry with the ability to compare multiple types of data at

once, including revenue, costs, and patient experience—making it easier

to search relevant metadata and automate reporting. Healthcare

organizations can use analytics to improve patient-specific outcomes,

reduce costs, and maintain regulatory compliance.

Alteryx is ideal for the high security demanded when working with

healthcare data. Data is never stored in our platform—it stays behind your

firewall, maintaining compliance and privacy standards on its journey.

T R A I L B L A Z E R S : H E A LT H C A R E A N A LYT I C S

A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : VE R A D ATA H E L P S R A I S E F U N D S F O R T H E N AT I O N A L C H I L D R E N ’ S C A N C E R S O C I E TY

VeraData, a decision science company, provides analytic services to the National Children’s Cancer Society (NCCS), among other clients. The NCCS was faced with a trend of increased donor acquisition costs, as well as a diminishing set of potential donors—a difficult situation for an organization devoted to helping children with cancer.

VeraData built a donor acquisition model to reduce costs and acquire donors, which required an extensive amount of external information to widen the universe of individuals likely to support the NCCS.

Using Alteryx as a key component of their tool set, VeraData was able to combine decades of client-side and external data to output a blended master analytic database that accounted for full promotional and transactional history, with all the corresponding, individual-level, composite data. The client experienced a 24 percent reduction in cost to acquire a donor and was able to reactivate a much larger volume of potential donors, including donors who had lapsed up to 15 years prior. Their mission would not have been possible without the speed and precision offered by Alteryx.



A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : A M WAY M O N I T O R S S U P P LY C H A I N D A I LY

Alteryx is the engine that is driving our team to new levels. We are automating all of our scorecards from a data perspective. We are able to provide daily insights on the health of our supply chain versus monthly reporting.

Accurately assessing and acting on supply chain data starts with visibility. Starting with the procurement of raw materials, it’s now possible to use analytics along the entire length of your supply chain. From production to distribution, analyze relevant data to ensure partners and customers are satisfied. For example, determining where there will be price volatility, or issues satisfying demand, can greatly reduce supply chain disruption.

Another important goal of supply chain analytics is to improve forecasting and efficiency, to be more responsive to customer needs. Predictive analytics can help anticipate consumer demand, which you can use to identify opportunities to save costs, adjust inventory, and accelerate delivery throughout the supply chain.

Alteryx is perfect to conduct supply chain analytics, allowing you to easily connect to SAP, SQL, production servers, and ERP systems.

T R A I L B L A Z E R S : S U P P LY C H A I N A N A LYT I C S

ADAM RANT Business Systems Analyst, Amway

“”


A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : S H E L L F U L LY AU T O M AT E S WO R K F L OWS

Shell is a world-renowned, global group of energy and petrochemical companies. Since Shell started using Alteryx, internal demand for the Alteryx toolset has grown significantly. Alteryx is now the most popular solution available in the workbench, with 88 percent of Shell lab users across multiple business units regularly making use of it. Among other purposes, Shell uses Alteryx for their downstream lubricants supply chain, including developing a suite of tools that won a Supply Chain Excellence award.

Playing a vital role in providing critical information on inventory, margin, forecast accuracy and blending options, Alteryx has taken previously manual processes built in Excel and R, and transformed them into fully automated, end-to-end, workflows for Shell—making quality data available much faster than previously possible.


With more than 11,000 U.S. tax jurisdictions, tax compliance and audit

readiness are key considerations for every company. Alteryx helps you ensure

sales and use tax compliance, while assisting with tax audit prep. You can also

use Alteryx to research the taxability of items like consumables and purchases.

Tax data can be leveraged for multiple purposes, including:

• Risk management, to identify potential tax issues before an audit

• Error reduction, to highlight anomalies and focus attention on potential high-dollar errors

• Administrative cost reduction, to streamline and automate monthly compliance processes

• Tax strategy improvement, to evaluate tax planning scenarios

Audits can be transformed with analytics as well. You’re not constrained to

only a sample group; you can apply analytics to an entire population, and

schedule financial audits to run at specific intervals. As advanced analytics

supply a higher quality of audit evidence and increased business insights,

auditors can more easily identify business and tax risks.

T R A I L B L A Z E R S : TAX A N D AU D I T A N A LYT I C S


A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : S L A L O M A N D T R I N I TY I N D U S T R I E S CO M P R E S S 5 M O N T H S T O 5 M I N U T E S

Trinity Industries manages hundreds of thousands of rail cars from a fixed asset tax reporting perspective. Their systems weren’t configured to allow them to effectively manage each asset and, as a result, they were forced to use Excel to create reports—not only for company leadership but also for the IRS. The process took more than five months to complete.

Alteryx built several workflows to help Trinity consume reporting data from their accounting system, perform “fuzzy” matching on their asset numbers, and present the data in an appropriate manner, as needed by each stakeholder. Alteryx turned a five-month process into a five-minute process, freeing data analysts to spend time analyzing, rather than slogging through row-level data and vlookup statements.


State and Federal government agencies tend to house multiple sources for the same

types of data, often duplicating efforts across departments. It can be difficult to

determine, with reliable accuracy, specific forecasting factors.

Using a self-service platform solution like Alteryx allows State and Federal government

agencies to work from one version of the truth and bypass the need to manually

compare similar data sets or information sources. The Alteryx platform accommodates

planning, budgeting, and management in one place, allowing leaders to quickly evaluate

performance against budget, so they can build better government outcomes.

T R A I L B L A Z E R S : G OVE R N M E N T A N A LYT I C S


A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : F I F T H J U D I C I A L D I S T R I C T O F P E N N SY LVA N I A R U L E S I N FAVO R O F A LT E R YX

The Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania acts as a data hub to all other departments and organizations within government, sharing data that’s critical in providing services to the people of Allegheny County. The data must be accurate and current, so judges, police officers, workers in the Children, Youth and Family department, and probation officers have reliable information on the bench and in the field.

The 5th District became aware of an urgent need to cleanse and standardize their data, some of which was only available to them in XML format. Notes John Matyasovsky Jr., Database Manager and Systems Analyst for the 5th District, “We needed to consume, parse, and load these data elements into multiple different systems.”

Matyasovsky continues: “We downloaded the free trial of Alteryx, and before the trial expired, we were able to create and deploy an XML parsing process that would have traditionally taken months to complete. Not only was it completed in record time, it was completed by someone who is not a traditional data guru.” Through reallocation of resources, Alteryx has freed up one full-time employee, development times have been halved, and data sharing has increased tremendously between organizations.


When it comes to higher education, analytics creates personalized approaches to

advising and helps estimate how well some students will progress through courses

and majors—adding value to the student experience, increasing retention, and

boosting results for faculty.

Strong data can also improve decision-making at the campus level, including

promoting diversity and inclusion. In 2016, Georgia State University used big data

analytics to increase graduation rates by over 20 percent and close equity gaps for

low-income students and students of color.5

5 https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/30/499200614/how-one-university-used-big-data-to-boost-graduation-rates

T R A I L B L A Z E R S : H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N A N A LYT I C S


A LT E R YX I N A C T I O N : H O N G KO N G P O LY U S I G N I F I C A N T LY S H O R T E N S T H E I R PAT H T O R E S U LT S

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) includes approximately 29,000 students and 5,500 academics and professional staff from Hong Kong and around the world. Anson Wun, Senior Institutional Research Analyst, is part of a team in the Institutional Research and Planning Office (IRPO). Among other initiatives, his team reviews research performance, including income from both public and private sectors, and citations in influential journals.

“We had to deal with 100 different sizable files every month,” Anson says, “and we just reached a point that we couldn’t handle the load.” He estimates that 90 percent of the data files he received from internal departments, as well as external sources, were Excel-based.

Anson started the search for a robust, self-service analytics solution that could easily process this data and would offer simple drag-and-drop functionality, plus on-demand online training and support resources. Additionally, he needed the ability to share work and collaborate with colleagues. He found Alteryx.

“With Alteryx I can now look at more metrics, such as number of publications in top journals, citations impact, or mutual benefits of collaborations.” Anson continues: “We were able to do cross-validation with the assessment results, as well as providing additional insights to departments. I can’t imagine being able to achieve this without a powerful tool like Alteryx.”


S E C T I O N 5

K E Y TA K E AWAYS


E XP E R I E N C E T H E T H R I L L O F S O LVI N G

T H E O L D WAY T H E B A D A S S WAY

Lots of time sunk in data prep and blend

Joining data is complex and slow

Data is siloed in spreadsheets and local databases

Must rely on others for geospatial and other data sets

Predictive and prescriptive analytics require coding

Prep and blend in minutes, not days

Automation and repeatability shrink data join time

Data is easily tracked in one environment

Geospatial, demographic, and more at your fingertips

Advanced and predictive analytics achievable without code


Don’t let outdated tools hold you back. Data analysts are inspired and driven, determined to follow the

clues and connect the dots until the clearest narrative is revealed.

T I M E T O R E L E A S E YO U R I N N E R B A D A S S

A B O U T A LT E R YXRevolutionizing business through data science

and analytics, Alteryx offers an end-to-end

analytics platform that empowers data analysts

and scientists alike to break data barriers,

deliver insights, and experience the thrill of

getting to the answer faster. Organizations all

over the world rely on Alteryx daily to deliver

actionable insights.

+1 888 836 4274www.alteryx.com

©2019 Alteryx, Inc. All rights reserved. Alteryx is a registered trademark

of Alteryx, Inc.

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