Alteryx has announced its Analytic Process Automation Platform. The platform unifies the trinity of Analytics, Data Science and Process Automation. It is the next evolutionary step for Alteryx as it looks to bring data applications to a broader audience. The platform consists of the five component steps that make up the Alteryx product portfolio.
- Automating Asset Inputs. The ability to automate the ingestion of data, securely from more than 80 data sources including Amazon, Oracle and Salesforce into Alteryx.
- Data Quality and preparation. Clean, prepare and blend data from multiple sources within the platform to create unified data sets,
- Data Enrichment and Insights. Use existing database tools to bring insights to data sets. Leverage third party datasets such as GIS to bring further insights to data
- Data Science decision Provides the ability to build further data science models quickly to further analyse and draw additional insights from data.
- Automating outcomes. Complete the circle of prescriptive analytics. It provides the tools to write back insights and actions to surface to users to understand or make augmented decisions.
The complete platform provides the ability for trained individuals to make a difference in their organisations. It brings data, process and people together enabling organisation to leverage their most valuable asset, their data.
Solving remarkable problems
Dean Stoecker, co-founder and CEO of Alteryx, commented: “Businesses are looking for transformational outcomes and have a heightened urgency to digitally transform. This requires a new kind of platform with an organizational capacity to make every worker across a company a data worker. The analytics category is fast maturing, and capitalizing on the potential of APA demands a unified platform that makes analytics, data science and process automation accessible to all. Human ingenuity is essential in creating any form of successful automation, and when humans and machines work together as a means of amplifying intelligence, we can solve remarkable problems.”
Companies are already leveraging the platform to deliver significant benefits. Enterprise Times spoke to Brian Millrine, Business Strategy Director, Operational Board, Brookson last year. He was enthusiastic then about the solution noting: “It’s one of the key things I really love about Alteryx. You can automate the mundane to do the creative.”
Brookson has made huge changes and improvements to its operational processes. Millrine commented: “Brookson has transformed into a digital platform providing transactional and professional services to end hirers, recruitment businesses and contractors within the flexible workforce market. For us, Alteryx is our digital transformation platform. Analytic Process Automation drives intelligence in our customer portals and has digitalized many of our key processes. Automating many aspects of financial and tax advice augments our specialist accountants, enabling them to spend more time engaging directly with customers and offering superior 360-degree advice.”
Brookson are not alone
Another, better-known company leveraging Alteryx is Coca Cola. Rod Bates, vice president, decision science and data strategy at The Coca-Cola Company, commented: “Alteryx is a key platform that allows us to tailor products to consumer preferences around the globe. We use it across many of our businesses that allow us to leverage data, automate processes and empower our people to become self-service digital workers.”
Coca-Cola is also participating in a livestream event alongside PwC, IDC and Alteryx at 8:30 a.m. PT on Thursday, May 21. Its title is “Accelerating Digital Transformation in COVID Times: Analytic Automation That Lets Data Speak and People Think,”
APA is the latest step on a journey that Stoecker believes will see the company help to upskill the 54 million data workers around the world (Source: IDC InfoBrief sponsored by Alteryx, The State of Data Science and Analytics (May 2019)). Other companies already leveraging Alteryx include Amazon Services, Bosch, Chevron, IKEA, Netflix, P&G and Shell.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
APA brings together the different components of leveraging data that are often siloed solutions. With one solution, Alteryx is enabling a single human to complete the whole analytics process. It suits different levels of expertise with more than 260 automation building blocks already available in a code-free way. For data scientists looking to extract further insights, the solution is also code friendly. It enables the more skilled to take over from others with little or no handover or duplication of effort.
As John Santaferraro, Research Director, Analytics, Business Intelligence, and Data Management, EMA comments: “Organizations that invest in integrated automation platforms that span analytics, data science, AI, and process automation will extend the reach of their transformation initiatives and build a sustainable competitive advantage.”
The Alteryx APA Platform is a comprehensive and at times, complex solution. It is also not one that can just be dropped into companies and expect results. Organisations need to consider how they implement and what they use it for. To fully leverage the power of the platform, the upskilling of the workforce is also required. These are hurdles that Alteryx offers several initiatives to overcome. It recently launched ADAPT offering free training to people unemployed as a result of COVID-19. By the end of 2021, it will be interesting to see how many certified Alteryx people are in the work pool.
