Translating Technology to Success Anatomy of a...

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Translating Technology to Success

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AT A GLANCE

Solution Selected

Alteryx data blending and

advanced analytics

software

Solution Requirements

Ability to handle large

volumes of data from

disparate sources

Clear upfront

demonstration of ROI

Allow individual analyst

to control analytic process

Selection Criteria

Highest ROI and fastest

time to value

Business analyst

empowerment

Superior geospatial and

data blending capabilities

Choosing Alteryx for Faster Data Blending and

Advanced Analytics

What You Need To Know

Traditionally, IT departments have primarily been responsible for sourcing analytical software

tools and carrying out complex data analysis for their organizations. As companies push for

improved operational insight, they demand greater amounts of data analysis. As a result, IT

departments increasingly find themselves struggling to keep up with the volume of incoming

requests. A new set of software tools built specifically to empower data analysts in

line-of-business teams offer an important opportunity to address this concern. They provide the

benefits of data analysis without placing burdens on the IT department. These tools also provide

a level of data accessibility to a broader user population, enabling organizations to perform

complex analysis without specialized data scientists or formally-trained statisticians. In this

way, value can be achieved as business decision makers are able to circumvent what has, in

many organizations, become an IT bottleneck.

Alteryx, a data blending and advanced analytics software platform, has emerged as a powerful

solution for empowering data analysts. This approach overcomes the traditional analytics

obstacle where access to data and analysis tools is confined to centralized departments. By

allowing individual analysts to blend data from many sources to prepare and analyze it in ways

that they previously could not, it allows analysts to take requests that previously took hours or

days and complete them in minutes.

Blue Hill’s research examines the opportunities available for organizations to overcome

obstacles in their analytics processes that have become commonplace when following legacy

approaches. This report profiles the experiences of three organizations that sought to enhance

their analytical capabilities while avoiding traditional inefficiencies. Each participant ultimately

chose Alteryx over other competitive offerings as the best solution to meet their specific needs

within the context of their businesses.

About the Participants

The participants in this study represent a range of sizes and organizational complexities, from

small businesses to multinational firms. Each participant had encountered a common business

need: to gain enhanced analytical capabilities for vast quantities of data from many, often

disparate, sources. The participants included Southern States Cooperative (Southern States), a

provider of agricultural products and related services; Demographic Consulting, a leading

advisor to companies seeking to expand into China; and one of the largest multinational medical

device and pharmaceutical companies who wished to remain anonymous for the study.

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Solution Requirements

Across the three profiled companies, Blue Hill identified three common requirements that

shaped each organization’s solution selection. Specifically, they all required: (1) the ability to

combine large amounts of data from disparate sources; (2) proven value before committing to

an overbearing implementation; and (3) ownership of the analytical process by data analysts.

Large amounts of data from disparate sources: Each

organization needed their analysts to derive meaning from

combining multiple sources of data. This task was not

inconsequential, as it is important to understand the

volume of data that each organization was analyzing. Often,

these data sets had millions of data points, especially in the

cases of transaction logs and third party sources.

Demographic Consulting, based on their need to analyze

Chinese census data, provides a relevant example. They

needed a solution that was able to handle raw data with

billions of data points. This task was made even more

difficult, as dealing with Chinese census data required them

to first extensively ‘clean’ the data before it could be used

for analysis.

Implementation with clear ROI: Because data initiatives

were critical to operations, participants did not want to

become tied to one particular solution without demonstrable business value. As such, each

Alteryx customer sought to avoid implementation cycles requiring long consultant engagements,

high levels of customization, or other costly additions.

Analyst ownership of the analytical process: The data initiatives studied required a flexible

approach to analysis. In order to get more timely analysis, it had to be performed by those

closest to the questions being asked. In a traditional analytical environment, IT often becomes a

bottleneck, as they cannot keep up with the multitude of requests being submitted to them.

Participants required a solution that offered a decentralized and efficient approach to analysis

that permitted analysts to perform their analyses independently, without IT involvement.

Solution Evaluation and Selection

With these requirements in mind, the profiled organizations collectively evaluated Alteryx,

MicroStrategy, IBM SPSS, and SAS. Blue Hill identifies three common evaluation factors that

drove their purchasing decisions. These factors are: return on investment and time to value;

potential to empower individual data analysts; and data blending and geospatial capabilities.

CONNECTING DISPARATE

SOURCES

Southern States Cooperative

actively uses data from a

multitude of third-party data

sources such as Experian,

Farm Market ID, and Esri.

These sources provide a wide

array of information

important to their operations

including financial,

demographic, weather, and

population information.

Southern States needed a

solution that allowed them to

combine all these data sources

in conjunction with

transaction logs and financial

forecasts for initiatives such

as prospecting new store

locations. Locations had to be

chosen on geographic and

demographic information

within the context of expected

financial performance.

“Alteryx has actually driven my

business. We are able to process huge

amounts of geographic, census, and

satellite data better than what many

much larger companies can do. I

wouldn’t even attempt population

updates for Chinese data without

Alteryx.”

Susan Haynie

President

Demographic Consulting




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Return on investment and time to business value: The Alteryx licensing and implementation

model was a prominent differentiator for the profiled organizations. Alteryx offers licenses on

an individual user basis and is designed to be deployed on a single analyst’s computer. This

differs sharply from the other vendors evaluated, which more closely follow a traditional legacy

enterprise deployment. Subject organizations concluded that

these solutions thus required much larger and more involved

implementations.

At the time of publication a single license of Alteryx costs

$3,995 per year, or $12,995 per year when including spatial

analytics data. Compared to the other solutions under

evaluation, this allowed the participants a lower risk

opportunity to try and experiment with a proof of concept

without making a large financial investment.

Participants cited that a compelling factor in choosing Alteryx

was that it does not require users to know a coding language

to perform complex analysis. It was generally cited by the

participants to be the most intuitive solution to use. This was

a key advantage for Alteryx, as users recognized the

opportunity to avoid a lengthy onboarding process just to

learn the ‘language’ of the solution.

Ultimately, the participants found that Alteryx provided the

fastest opportunity to begin running the analytical processes that they needed. Because it

resulted in faster and less involved implementations, and thus lower opportunity cost, Alteryx

presented the lowest total cost of ownership associated with both licensing and training users.

They concluded that even if all of the considered solutions performed equally, Alteryx would

have the potential for the highest return on investment based on its total cost of ownership.

Data analyst empowerment: Participants cited Alteryx’s ‘analyst first’ design as another

distinguishing characteristic. They noted that other solutions considered were more

representative of legacy analytics applications that do not place design emphasis on individual

data analysts. Here, Alteryx’s comparative ease of use and accessibility (in that it does not

require users to know code) set the solution apart. Alteryx presents a single tool to combine and

perform analysis of all the necessary data sources in one platform. The common thread in these

narratives is that Alteryx was chosen because it allowed the participants to answer business

questions the most efficiently out of the evaluated solutions.

Superior data blending and geospatial capabilities: Alteryx’s data blending and geospatial

capabilities were crucial in the decision process for the study participants as well. They found

that Alteryx provided the easiest and most intuitive interface for the organizations to clean,

blend, and structure data from Hadoop, existing data warehouses, Microsoft Excel, and other

“When we were evaluating all of the

solutions. Alteryx separated itself

because they were so confident in

their ability to deliver. Other vendors

charged us just to set up and build

models. Alteryx let us take a deep dive

into their functionality; we felt more

like a partner than a software buyer.”

Fred Jezouit

VP Finance & Treasurer

Southern States Cooperative




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third party sources. This ease of use meant that participants did not need formally trained

statisticians or analysts with deep expertise in coding or predictive modeling.

Along with ease of use, the participants’ experiences were consistent in viewing Alteryx as

providing the most robust data blending and geospatial capabilities. They stated that in these

areas, Alteryx was superior in handling the quantities and differing sources of data required.

Workflows seen as complicated and time consuming in other solutions were significantly easier

to design in the Alteryx software.

This point was highlighted well in the case of Demographic Consulting, given the company’s

heavy dealing with census and geographic distribution. To accomplish these initiatives,

Demographic Consulting required software that excelled in dealing with vast quantities of this

type of data efficiently.

It is of note that study participants highlighted Alteryx’s dashboarding and visualization

capabilities as comparatively weaker than those of other vendors, particularly MicroStrategy.

Rather than use Alteryx’s native visualization capabilities, organizations had the opportunity to

output directly to data discovery solutions such as Qlik or Tableau. Given the nature of the

analytics initiatives the study participants were undertaking, this was not viewed as a critical

decision factor. Further, the selection of Alteryx was not a function of IBM SPSS’s or SAS’s

limitations in advanced analytics. On the contrary, participants cited impressive and robust

functionality in modeling and predictive capabilities for both solutions. Rather, the decision to

use Alteryx hinged on the ability to deliver the functionality the participants required more

easily, more inexpensively, and more efficiently than competing software solutions.

Figure 1: Overview of Alteryx Data Blending Process Flow




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Reported Impact of the Solution

Participants reported that value resulting from their implementation of Alteryx manifested in

three areas: time and opportunity cost savings, the ability to perform analysis that could not

previously be done, and the chance to engage with new business opportunities.

Figure 2: Highlights Reported

Southern States

Cooperative Demographic Consulting

Large medical device and pharmaceutical provider

Time & Opportunity Cost Savings

Ability to automatically combine

and package data relevant to

annual store audits saves an

estimated 1,000 man-hours each

year.

Geospatial prowess of Alteryx

allows for efficiencies in

performing census and

demographic analysis over other

solutions.

Efficiency gains for blending

data and building models

produces a significant time

saving in data analysis

operations.

New Analysis Capability

Capability to consolidate

customer information across

multiple store locations to create

a unified understanding of

customer base.

The capacity to combine vast

amounts of Chinese census data

with satellite imagery allows for

a new level of complex data

blending.

Alteryx allows advanced

modeling capabilities to be made

accessible to line-of-business

analysts. Additionally Alteryx

allows for multiple models to be

run in parallel which helps better

identify the relative performance

of each model.

New Business Opportunities

Ability to more effectively target

customers has lead to expanded

success in marketing campaigns

driving new revenue

opportunities.

Robustness of analytical

capabilities enables

Demographic Consulting to bid

and take on more complex

projects than competitors.

Not Applicable

Southern States represents a prime example of the cost and time savings that Alteryx has

helped to achieve; they estimate that they save approximately 1,000 hours annually on their

internal auditing process. Prior to purchasing Alteryx, their external auditor would run queries

on individual stores and send raw data back to headquarters, which typically took multiple

days. However, using Alteryx, Southern States has been able to shrink this time from days to

minutes. They report that the current process involves only inputting a date range for each

store location. Alteryx automatically packages the information and emails the documentation

to each individual store upon the auditors’ arrival.

Demographic Consulting reported substantial value gains from developing new processes from

their use of Alteryx as well. These stemmed from the fact that Alteryx gave them the

opportunity to perform analysis on a level of complexity at or above some of their larger




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competitors. In performing analysis on Chinese census data, Alteryx has proven to be a

valuable tool. Demographic Consulting states that they can perform their analysis without the

latency encountered with many other geospatial analytic solutions. Further, they note that

because of the new analytical capabilities that Alteryx provides, they are able to

bid on contracts and new business opportunities that require a highly complex

degree of analysis.

The multinational medical device and pharmaceutical company benefited from

Alteryx through its ability to provide a new level of accessibility to data analysts.

Alteryx provided advanced modeling and data blending capabilities that provided

a more efficient solution to their work, a benefit that manifests on a daily basis.

In light of the value derived from Alteryx, two participants have reported an

expansion of the use of Alteryx throughout the organization beyond just its

original intended use case. In the case of Southern States, the company has

expanded the number of ‘power users’ in its organization from two to eighteen

user seats. Prior to Alteryx, it did not have a business analytics team. Now they

utilize a multitude of users across the organization to promote a decentralized

analytics process throughout the company.

Blue Hill Analysis

The ultimate value of a technology investment results from its impact on three main areas:

line-of-business performance, IT support and burdens, and financial health. Blue Hill analyzed

the value recognized from Alteryx through the lens of these three core perspectives.

Line-of-business performance: Alteryx provided value to the study participants in a number

of ways that directly affect line-of-business stakeholders. Perhaps most importantly,

participants reported that Alteryx allowed them to take on analytical processes that they could

not before. Further, Alteryx represents a single platform to blend together and analyze multiple

data sources from throughout the organization without the need for the data analyst to submit

requests to the IT department. For the participants in this study, this represents an enormous

opportunity for time savings. They highlighted that Alteryx allows for complex questions to be

answered by those employees closest to the data in question. For line-of-business executives

this means that they can receive analysis faster and more easily perform iterative explorations

of data. The net impact of Alteryx has proven to be better results, faster. This has implications

in not only efficiency gains, but the chance to identify cost optimizing and revenue generating

opportunities as well.

IT support and burdens: For IT stakeholders, the value lies within Alteryx’s ability to offload

a burdensome backlog of business analysis requests. While some IT executives may equate

being bypassed in the analytics process with diminished organizational importance, the

elimination of requests should be viewed as an opportunity to pursue new value-adding

activities. Participants stated that the IT department was able to avoid continuously filling

“The issue isn’t necessarily about price,

although Alteryx is very accessible with

its licensing, we get so much value out

of it that even if it was the same price

we would go with Alteryx over SPSS and

SAS regardless.”

Susan Haynie

President

Demographic Consulting




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617.624.3600

[email protected]

@BlueHillBoston

requests for one-off and recurring analyses. In this sense, the implementations allow IT to shift

away from reactively managing line-of-business requests to proactively laying the groundwork

for future initiatives to help the organization grow.

Financial impact: The time savings outlined throughout the study should be considered when

evaluating the potential financial benefits associated with reallocating resources. Participants

demonstrated a significant positive ROI through their experiences with Alteryx. This resulted

from a multitude of areas including saving time, better data-driven decision-making, and the

opportunity to take on and win new projects that they could not before. The participants also

found Alteryx’s pricing structure favorable, as it represented a low-risk opportunity to prove

business value without being locked into financially burdensome contracts.

Summary

The organizations studied in this research all faced challenges associated with analyzing

tremendous amounts of data from multiple sources. Further, they required a solution that

would enable their individual analysts to perform business-critical analytics without needing

the continued support of IT. As they navigated the solution selection process, they ultimately

chose Alteryx to best meet their needs for both data blending and advanced analytics. They

came to this decision based not only on the robustness of its analytical capabilities, but also

because it empowered their line-of-business teams to get the answers they needed faster, and

perform analyses that were previously beyond their means. Ultimately, this came alongside a

pricing structure that provided a low-risk point of entry to internally show a proof of concept

and left open the potential for significant ROI.

Blue Hill Research is the only industry analyst firm with a success-based methodology. Based on the Path to Success, Blue Hill Research provides unique and differentiated guidance to translate corporate technology investments into success for the three key stakeholders: the technologist, the financial buyer, and the line of business executive.

Unless otherwise noted, the contents of this publication are copyrighted by Blue Hill Research and may not be hosted, archived, transmitted or reproduced, in any form or by any means without prior permission from Blue Hill Research.

Author: James Haight, Research Analyst, [email protected]

Published: September 2014





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