Past Analytics Excellence Awards

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Author: Andrew Kim, Analyst (@andrewdatakim)

 

Awards Category: Name Your Own - Scaling Your Career with Alteryx

 

Describe the problem you needed to solve 

Deciding on a tool to invest your time in is a problem everyone faces in their career. Learning to blend the tools given to us in college versus what the professional world is actually using are starkly different. I have quickly discovered to have a career that has both the opportunity to start from a company from scratch and the flexibility to work in a Fortune 100 environment requires the knowledge of assets that can scale without a significant investment of time or money.  My background is in Marketing and Finance with most of my work experience in small to midsize companies where every person is required to be/do more for the company to survive.

 

Describe the working solution

I set out to find these tools 3 years ago with the understanding that information drives a business, which lead me to Gartner report. I went through trials of a dozen different options and even had contracted assistance from a developer of one of the software options. Alteryx quickly became my option of choice which greatly contributed to my  previous company's growth from $250k in annual revenue online to $12 million in 2 years. The ability to access multiple data source types, leverage Amazon MWS data and use historical competitive landscape information allowed us to create the perfect dashboards in Tableau to analyze current inventory and buying opportunities that were previously inconceivable.  I was able to save 10,000 labor hours a day in discovering new products. Prior to Alteryx being purchased the average buyer's assistant could run 200 Amazon listings per 8 hour day. After Alteryx we were retrieving over 250,000 listings per run multiple times a day (The math: 250,000/25 listings per hour=10,000 hours per run). The primary customer in this scenario were the buyers for the company. By taking all of the data processed through Alteryx and providing them with Tableau dashboards to conveniently view current and historical product information compared to the previous Excel models we were able to maximize inventory turnover and margins.

 

Describe the benefits you have achieved

Alteryx knowledge allowed me to advance to my current company and position in a Fortune 50 company where I am a Data Analyst/Programmer. I now work heavily with survey data and again Alteryx has proven an indispensable asset even with the change in scale. Its versatility has allowed all of my skills to transfer from operational data to qualitative without skipping a beat. I find Alteryx is an asset that has only increased my passion for data and I am eager to see how I can continue to scale my career with it.