Five Key Questions to Ask When Traditional Analytics Can’t Keep Up
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Analytics drive key strategic decisions in major corporations every day. However most legacy tools and solutions that help companies make these critical strategic decisions, simply aren’t built to deal with the reality of today’s modern business environment.
Below are some essential questions to ask as you assess the potential benefits and limitations of new strategic analytic platforms for your organization.
Question #1: Does the analytics platform combine the savings and flexibility of cloud services with sophisticated analytics that are useful for decision makers?
A flexible cloud deployment and environment can make analytics more easily accessible and reduce the burden on IT, while at the same time enhancing the user experience. Many BI tools offer cloud-based deployment options, but few also deliver the power of sophisticated analytics.
When evaluating strategic analytic platforms, you should look for a solution that:
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Combines the value of cloud-based services with the power of sophisticated analytics, accessible from any location.
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Facilitates iterative collaboration between business analysts and decision-makers through an engaging and social experience.
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Figure 1: The Alteryx Analytics Gallery
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Alteryx combines the power of cloud computing with the consumerization of sophisticated analytics. It reduces the burden on IT and makes analytics available to anyone, anywhere, in an intuitive, engaging environment. Alteryx does this by empowering analysts to:
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Publish new and updated analytic applications securely without lengthy delays or limits on usage.
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Empower decision makers to consume analytic applications through a highly social experience that is intuitive and engaging.
Question #2: Can you access all the relevant data in order to make the best possible strategic business decisions?
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Figure 2: A Small Sample of Data Sources Accessible with Alteryx Strategic Analytics
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s most business analysts know all too well, data today is never stored in a single location, and is increasingly diverse in structure. As a result, many line-of-business analysts and decision-makers endure long waits as overworked IT personnel labor to integrate and stage various datasets.
When evaluating strategic analytic platforms, you should ensure that the solution can:
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Access, integrate, and cleanse data from all the sources of structured and unstructured data relevant to the business problem, from Big Data and cloud data to local data, corporate data warehouses, and social media.
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Enable data analysts to access any data needed through an easy-to-use tool that doesn’t require IT.
Alteryx Strategic Analytics delivers the ability to incorporate and integrate new sources of data and analytics alongside existing standard sources all from within a single user interface. This ensures the most complete context for strategic decision-making with access to all the data you need regardless of size and type - so business leaders can make the most informed decisions.
Question #3: Can you complete the entire analytical process in a single tool?
Traditional Business Intelligence and analytics force analysts to jump from tool to tool to get from business question to business answer - from ETL and data integration, to analysis, to reporting. Often analysts are required to manually import/export data between tools, wasting valuable time and introducing the risk of manual errors.
When evaluating modern strategic analytic platforms, you should find a solution that enables the line-of-business data analyst to:
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Build, iterate and automate the entire analytical process from a single tool or platform.
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Provide results to business users quickly enough to meet the needs of the organization.
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Figure 3: Build End-to-End Workflows That Include All Steps in the Analytic Process
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Alteryx eliminates the need to jump from tool to tool or to rely on IT to deliver the information you need for analysis or decision-making. Alteryx provides the ability to access, integrate, cleanse, and analyze data in a single platform and workflow, making it easy to integrate and execute all aspects of analysis, regardless of skillset.
Question #4: Does the analytic platform allow you to access and make sense of Big Data?
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Figure 4: Hortonworks is a Commercially Available Distribution of Hadoop, and One of the Key Alteryx Hadoop Partnerships
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Big Data can come from a variety of sources and can be difficult to analyze using traditional methods, keeping valuable information just out of reach of business decision makers. Big Data projects are often the purview of IT teams focused on infrastructure at the expense of game changing insights, keeping Big Data “off-limits” to the majority of decision-makers.
When evaluating strategic analytic platforms, you should look for a solution that:
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Makes all types of data available without long waiting periods for infrastructure build-outs.
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Enables you to access and integrate data from all popular Big Data sources, including Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR.
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Eliminates the need to retrain existing specialists or hire expensive new analysts.
Alteryx closes the gap between the Big Data you have and the value you need with a single platform to access all sources of Big Data and integrate them with any other data source. Alteryx enables you to find the true value hidden away in your Big Data by analyzing it in a complete business context.
Question #5: Are the right type of analytics available for you to make the right decisions?
The emergence of data discovery and visualization tools has become a disruptive, yet positive force in executive suites around the world. However they can lack sophisticated analytic capabilities, which inevitably leaves the business waiting once more for hard-to-find specialists and programmers.
When evaluating strategic analytic platforms, you should look for a solution that:
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Enables a wide range of decision-makers within your enterprise to use statistical, predictive, spatial, and other advanced analytics, without requiring the skills of expensive specialists or data scientists.
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Allows you to quickly and easily deliver sophisticated analytics to decision makers while hiding their complexity.
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Figure 5: Build Robust Workflows -> Make Them Simple to Use by Decision Makers -> Generate Easily Consumable Results
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Alteryx enables everyone in your organization to access powerful analytics usually dependent on data scientists. Alteryx makes it easy for line-of-business analysts to craft sophisticated analytical workflows that incorporate predictive, statistical, and even spatial analytics using pre-built tools, without requiring complex scripting or coding. This enables everyone throughout your organization to realize the value of predictive and location intelligence to make better, more informed business decisions.
Conclusion
Making better use of analytics helps organizations deliver better performance compared to their peers, with up to 1.6X revenue growth and 2.5X increase in stock price.* While most organizations have access to a wide range of analytic tools, these existing solutions do not meet today’s data access, data integration, and accessible analytics requirements.
Alteryx Strategic Analytics delivers a single, integrated solution for each of your analytical requirements, from data access and integration to analysis and reporting. It provides business analysts and decision-makers instant access to all the data and analytics they need, when they need it, in order to drive business value—and enhance your company’s competitive advantage.
* Source: “Outperforming in a data-rich, hyper-connected world,” IBM Center for Applied Insights, 2012.
Alteryx Meets All Five Critical Criteria for a Modern, Strategic Analytic Solution
Figure 6: Comparison of Alteryx to Traditional and Cloud BI Platforms
Additional Resources
• Download Alteryx Project Edition for Free! Not limited by dataset size or type, Alteryx Strategic Analytics Project Edition provides 150+ tools to build a robust analytic workflow to meet the needs of your immediate analytic initiative.
• Watch Our Demos: Data Blending, Predictive Analytics, Tableau Integration, and more!
• Read Big Data Analytics for Dummies – get your complimentary copy
Author: Dipesh Patel, Director of Product Marketing at Alteryx. Dipesh has over 10 years of product marketing and management experience in enterprise software.