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Engine Works

Under the hood of Alteryx: tips, tricks and how-tos.
MeganDibble
Alteryx Community Team
Alteryx Community Team

You discover that your company has purchased some Alteryx licenses and think, “Cool! … Now what?” Maybe you’ve heard Alteryx can streamline your data processes and reduce your workload. But what kinds of tasks should you look for to use Alteryx?

 

This article will cover some common criteria for Alteryx Designer use cases at the beginning of your company’s Alteryx implementation.

 

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Recurring Manual Data Tasks

 

Do you have tedious, recurring spreadsheet tasks? Manually downloading data, copying and pasting, and updating pivot tables… these efforts take valuable time out of your workday. For any of these processes, moving the work into Alteryx will cost you some time upfront but will save you lots of time in the long run, as your hours of data wrangling will shift to a press of a button once you have an Alteryx workflow up and running.

 

If you’re used to working in Excel, check out this Alteryx & Excel Guide to see how functionality translates across the tools and how you can use them together for analytics automation.

 

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Source: Getty Images (licensed)

 

Data Exceeds Current Capacity

 

If you’ve had an Excel workbook crash due to the volume of data, or you conduct analyses with a subset of your data because the full dataset is too large, Alteryx is a helpful tool to expand your analysis capacity. There’s no limit to the amount of data that Alteryx can process—the only challenge you’ll face is speed, which depends on your machine's processing power.  

 

To start analyzing your full datasets, you can connect directly to databases or bring in multiple spreadsheets in Alteryx. This Connecting to Data Guide lets you learn more about all the data connection possibilities.

 

Need for Error Proofing

 

Some data processes, especially in finance organizations, drive major monetary decisions. The cost of errors is high—look at some examples of spreadsheet error consequences in this blog.

 

If you rely on spreadsheets for high-risk processes, this is a great chance to transition the work to Alteryx. In workflows, you can set up error-proofing checks (see this webinar series for more), and you can see the data transformations more clearly—no hidden cells!

 

Another question to ask yourself: if you went on vacation, would everyone still get the data they need? Or are you the sole provider of a spreadsheet, report, or dashboard input? Alteryx workflows help establish standard processes that anyone can run, so there isn’t a single point of failure for your process. Even better, if you have Alteryx Server, you can schedule your workflows, set up email alerts for your team, and take your vacation in peace.

 

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Source: Shutterstock (licensed)

 

Auditability Concerns

 

Audits can be daunting, and ensuring your data processes are well-governed is a high priority. If you have data processes that you know will be audited, these could be great Alteryx use cases!

 

We have a great blog article on Alteryx workflow governance best practices. And if you prefer to listen instead of read, we also have a podcast episode on this topic: How a governance strategy can help ensure a smooth vacation.

 

Desire For Analytics Autonomy

 

Have you found yourself in a situation where you really need some data but have to rely on an expert outside of your team to pull it for you? Or maybe you have some analytics experience, and you need to build an algorithm, but depending on the data science team will cause delays? Dependencies like these can slow down critical analyses. Transitioning these kinds of tasks can be larger-scope projects, but using Alteryx to empower your teams to pull, analyze, and even model data themselves can result in massive productivity gains.

 

Here’s what this boils down to: Alteryx can help you democratize data and insights at your company and empower your teams. To get a sense of the how and why of data democratization, check out these podcast episodes:

 

Conclusion

 

The Alteryx Use Case Navigator is a great resource for more use case ideas. You can even filter by department, industry, and technology to find the use cases that are most applicable to your role and organization.

 

If you think you have a good use case, reach out to your account team for help with delivering the value Alteryx can provide. And once you get started working on your project, don’t forget that you have the support of the whole Alteryx Community when you get stuck! You can ask questions and get the answers you need in our discussion forums.

 

Finally, here's a one-page summary of the topics discussed in this article for future reference:

 

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If you're not new to Alteryx, we would love to hear what your first Alteryx use case was in the comments!

 

Special thanks to Nick Cornwell (@Nick-C) for his collaboration on this article.

Megan Dibble
Sr. Content Manager

Hi, I'm Megan! I am a Sr. Content Manager at Alteryx. I work to make sure our blogs and podcast have high quality, helpful, and engaging content. As a data analyst turned writer, I am passionate about making analytics & data science accessible (and fun) for all. If there is content that you think the community is missing, feel free to message me--I would love to hear about it.

Hi, I'm Megan! I am a Sr. Content Manager at Alteryx. I work to make sure our blogs and podcast have high quality, helpful, and engaging content. As a data analyst turned writer, I am passionate about making analytics & data science accessible (and fun) for all. If there is content that you think the community is missing, feel free to message me--I would love to hear about it.