Three days into our journey here at The Data School and every single person is thinking the same thing: How have we never heard of or used Alteryx in our lives before this? You will see this in other DSAU7 blogs covering their excitement for the tool! After learning the basics of Alteryx, it is not hard to see how Alteryx is changing the landscape of data analytics.
As data exponentially increases and organizations gather more (input), the goal is to derive insights from the data (output). However, as we have discovered in our own journey of using Tableau, much of the work comes from the cleaning and prepping of data. So how does a platform like Alteryx make such a difference?
1. Ease of Use
While we all started together with Alteryx, we’ve made some already significant progress in learning the fundamentals and basics of the platform. This has been mostly due to the intuitive and helpful interface of the workflow and the tools (and the great coaching of course!). Everything from the color coding categories to the sample demonstration of workflows makes the experience of learning easier. (TIP: Use F1 while selecting any tool to pull up the help page on Alteryx)
There is a lot of information and tips that makes utilizing the interface and creating new workflows seamless. Inputting data and fundamentally changing it all happens within a couple of clicks and small widgets. This ease of use makes handling huge amounts of different types of data seem manageable. As a result, Alteryx makes deriving meaningful insights from seemingly useless data seem easy and efficient. However, just because it is easy, does not mean that it is basic!
2. Huge Potential
Although Alteryx has a relatively gentle curve to learning it, the scope of what you can do with it is incredibly high. Even with basic workflows and data packs, Alteryx has already changed the way we perceive what we can do with data. With the tools, macros and self-created tools, the skill ceiling is huge. For every simple tool to do a basic task, there is another seemingly more efficient way of achieving the same result.
This has been one of the most satisfying things about learning Alteryx. Because of the endless tools, there is a wide variety of techniques/methods to discover and learn. Every person’s solution to each challenge is slightly different and as we discover more of what Alteryx can do, there is a growing sense of the power of the platform. So Alteryx is easy to use, difficult to master but how does that benefit Data Analysts?
3. Focus on Tangible benefits
At the end of the day the most exciting thing about learning Alteryx is seeing how it can actually impact and benefit companies. Alteryx has been designed specifically to solve the inefficiencies of doing manual spreadsheet work and repetitive tasks. As a result, Alteryx increasing business outcomes through the insights that it can generate. We can all see how Alteryx can exponentially increase time to insights, analyze large and different types of data as well as automate the creation of different outputs. As developing data analysts, having Alteryx in our aresenal