Competitive Opportunity for Alteryx: Support of Enterprise Dimensions and Conforming

[SeanAdams]

As Alteryx becomes more focussed on the Enterprise - it is important that we build capabilities that support the needs of large-scale BI.

One of these critical needs is dealing with heterogeneous data from different systems that use different IDs for every critical entity / concept (e.g. client; product)

Here's the example:

Problem:

- In any large enterprise - there are several thousand different line-of business systems

- Each of these was probably built at a different time, and uses a different key for specific concepts - like Client & Product

- Most large enterprises that I've worked at do not have a pre-built way of transforming these codes so...

- This means that any downstream analytics finds it almost impossible to give single-view-of-customer or single-view-of-product.

Solution option A:

Reengineer all upstream systems.   Not feasible

Solution option B: 

Expect some reference-data team to fix this by building translations.   More feasible but not fast

Remaining Solution Option:

Just as Kimball talked about - the only real way is to define a set of enterprise dimensions, which are the defined master-list of critical concepts that you need to slice-and-dice by (client; product; currency; shipping method; etc) in a way which is source-system agnostic

Then you need a method in the middle to transform incoming data to use these codes.   This process is called "Conforming"

What would this look like in Alteryx?

Setup

• We would use the connect product to define a new dimension - say "Product".
• Give this a unique ID which is source-system independant; and then add on the attributes that are important for analytics (product type; category; manufacturer; etc)
• Then decide how to handle change (slowly changing dimension or SCD type 0,1,2, etc).   Alteryx should take full responsibility for managing this SCD history; as do many of the competitors
• We then create a list of possible synonym types (within Connect).   For example - a product may have a synonym ID from your supplier; from your ERP system; from your point of sale system.  that's 3 different IDs for any product.
• We then load up the master data - this is painful but necessary

In Use:

• I read in data into alteryx via any input tool
• I bring in a "Conforming" tool off the toolbox (new tool which is needed)
• It asks me which column or columns I wish to conform
• For each - it asks me which synonym type to use
• It then adds a translated column for me to use which ties back to the enterprise dimension - and spits out the errors where the synonym is necessary.

Impact:

In BI in smaller contexts, or quick rapid-fire BI - you don't have to worry about this.   But as soon as you go past a few hundred line-of-business systems and are trying to do enterprise reporting, you really have to take this serious.   This is a HUGE part of every BI persons's role in a large enterprise - and it is painful; slow and not very rewarding.   If we could create this idea of a simple-to-use and high-velocity conforming process - this would absolutely tear the doors off enterprise BI - and no-one else is doing this yet!

+ @AshleyK @BenG @NickJ @ARich @patrick_digan @JoshKushner @samN @Ari_Fuller @Arianna_Fuller 

[adrianloong]

+1,  interesting idea. i can certainly attest to the multitude of source systems that enterprises have, alteryx could be a cost effective way of building a single customer/product view.

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