Past Analytics Excellence Awards

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Author: Qin Lee, Business Analyst

Company: MSXI

 

Awards Category: Most Unexpected Insight

 

Huge data, large file and multiple applications have been created and saved and shared in a small size of Alteryx file. And now, I can test the script/coding and find the errors. This is the good way to develop the proof of concept for our company.

 

Describe the problem you needed to solve 

We need to go through many applications to get the data and save into one location to share and view.

 

Describe the working solution

We are blending the data sources form SQL, Access Excel and Hadoop, Yes, we are leveraging many parties' data. We are developing the workflows and functions for a concept now. Yes, we are exporting to a visualization tool.

 

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Describe the benefits you have achieved

Collected the data from many locations and saved into a small size of the Alteryx database file and created the workflow and function and developed a search engine and design the proof of concept for approval and launch. Saved time and resolved the problem and increased customer satisfaction. I would like to send my sincere thanks to Mr. Mark Frisch (@MarqueeCrew), who helped us for many days to finish this project.

DSC_0035.JPGAuthor: Erik Miller (@erik_miller), Sr Systems Engineer - Cyber Security Analytics

 

Awards Category: Most Time Saved

 

Describe the problem you needed to solve

My team's story starts from the ground level of analytics: no tools, no resources, no defined data sources. But our Information Security team had an idea: to be able to report out on all of Western Union's Agent Locations (think Kroger grocery stores, mom & pop shops, etc) and the risk they posed by not having certain security measures implemented - look at every PC/terminal they have to determine their individual risks (2.4 million when we started), their fraud history, their transaction limits, etc, etc. and risk-rate every one of those 500,000+ Locations. We completed a proof of concept and realized it was completely unsustainable, requiring over 100+ hours every month to be able to produce, what outwardly looked like, a simple report. We took that process and built it out in Alteryx. And with just a little over 2.5 hours with the tool, we took a process which dominated my time and turned it into a 5 ½ minute layout of time. What's more, we've turned this POC project and turned it into a full-fledged program and department, focused on risk analytics surrounding employee & contractor resource usage (malicious or uneducated insiders), customer web analytics (looking for hackers), and further Agent analytics.

 

Beyond our humble beginnings, there's the constant threat of data breaches, fraud, and malicious insiders in the Information Security world - it's the reality of the work we do. Having the ability to build out an strategic analytics program has been a huge step in the right direction in our industry and company & not an area which many other companies have been able to focus on, which also sets us ahead of the curve.

 

Describe the working solution

We are using Alteryx to assess several data sources - HR data sets for active/terminated employees & contractors, clickstream data from our digital assets and websites, security data from our Netezza system, fraud data, log files from our various security platforms, user behavior data from our UBA (User Behavior Analytics) system, Identity and Access Management attributes/entitlements, system infection logs, installed applications, etc., etc. As I've said in other talks, we don't have a data lake, we have an ocean.

 

We are currently exporting our data to Tableau tde files, Hadoop, and MySQL databases. In addition, we have started looking/experimenting with our Alteryx Server implementation (which I support for our company).

 

Describe the benefits you have achieved

Overall time savings is nearing 150 hours a month, so a massive savings and an ability for our team to stay incredibly lean - no additional FTEs needed to keep taking on more and more data and challenges. We've also been able to give visibility to the security implementations for all of our 500,000+ worldwide locations - something which we didn't have visibility to prior to now, and which helps us drive the business to implement security features where needed - based on logic, numbers, and fraud data, not feelings.

 

We also are able to provide insights into our user base - how are our employees using our assets, what are they doing that's lowering our security posture, how are they getting infected. We're providing insights which can help our company become more secure.

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How much time has your organization saved by using Alteryx workflows?

What has this time savings allowed you to do?

With just our first workflow, we saved over 100 hours per month - so over a full FTE of time has been taken off of my plate. Alter
yx has allowed us to now only save time each month, but keep our team incredibly lean (we only have three people, and that's all we need to churn through massive amounts of security & fraud data each month).

 

So what has this time saving allowed us to do? Many, many things.

 

First, I was promoted to Sr. Systems Engineer - Cyber Security Analytics. With that change in title, also came the opportunity to build out a strategic-focused Information Security Analytics team, focused on looking at all security data throughout the company and identifying areas where we can improve our security program and posture.

 

Second, It's allowed me time to work with other departments to build out their analytics programs and help them learn to use the Alteryx tools in their respective areas.

 

Third, it's allowed my team to work on new, expanding projects with great ease.

Author: Brett Herman ( @brett_hermann ) , Project Manager, Data Visualization In-2CRev-28px-R.png

Company: Cineplex

 

Cineplex Inc. (“Cineplex”) is one of Canada’s leading entertainment companies and operates one of the most modern and fully digitized motion picture theatre circuits in the world. A top-tier Canadian brand, Cineplex operates numerous businesses including theatrical exhibition, food service, amusement gaming, alternative programming (Cineplex Events), Cineplex Media, Cineplex Digital Media, and the online sale of home entertainment content through CineplexStore.com and on apps embedded in various electronic devices. Cineplex is also a joint venture partner in SCENE – Canada’s largest entertainment loyalty program. 

 

Awards Category: Most Time Saved

 

Describe the problem you needed to solve 

Incremental/Uplift Modelling is a popular method of evaluating the success of business initiatives at Cineplex. Its effectiveness at measuring the change in consumer behavior over time creates a high demand to produce this kind of analysis for various departments in the organization. Due to the large amount of requests we receive, the ‘Incremental Lift Model’ was developed to take in user-defined inputs, and output the results within a short period of time.

 

Describe the working solution

Our solution works through a four step process. The first step is for the client to populate the ‘study input form’ in order to define their study parameters and the type of study they want to run.

 

Visual 1: Study Input Form

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The second step is to update/materialize our loyalty data that’s inputted into the model (yxdb format). We do this so that the model doesn’t put stress on our SQL Server databases, and to increase the model’s performance.

 

Visual 2: Update/Materialize Alteryx Input Data

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The third step is the core of the incremental lift modelling. A macro processes one study at a time by pointing to the user defined inputs made in the first step.

 

Visual 3: Study Numbers are selected and passed through the incremental lift macro, and saves the output to SQL.

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The data will then be passed through one of several macros depending on the study type, and filtered down based on the inputs defined by the user in the study input form. All data sources are joined together and lift calculations are made, which are then outputted into a master SQL Table ready to be visualized.

 

Visual 4: Incremental Lift Modelling based on study type selected.

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The results are visualized using a Tableau Dashboard in order to share and communicate the results of the study back to the business clients.

 

Visual 5: Tableau Dashboard to explain to the business how the incremental lift model makes its calculations.

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Describe the benefits you have achieved

The overarching goal of this project was twofold; to minimize the amount of work required to process business requests while maximizing the output generated, and to develop a means of delivering the results in a consistent manner. Both of these goals contribute greatly to our ROI by virtually eliminating all time spent executing requests that come in, and by minimizing time spent meeting with business users to explain how the incremental lift model works and how to interpret the results.

 

Author: Sintyadi Thong ( @MizunashiSinayu ), Pre-Sales Consultant, Karen Kamira & Harry Yusuf

Company: Lightstream Analytics PTE Ltd.

 

LightStream Analytics focuses on performance management, big data, advanced analytics, and innovative visualization through cloud SaaS applications, mobile, and traditional on-site systems. LightStream Analytics is well-positioned to deliver the most advanced products and services by capitalizing on its significant regional presence in Singapore and Indonesia. The combined offices have over 60 employees with deep technical and senior business experience. The company leverages our existing technical support and R&D centers in Indonesia and China to develop solutions which disrupt customary methods of data analysis and give clients access to revolutionary tools for understanding their data.  LightStream Analytics has partnered with more than 100 multinational and local clients to integrate, structure, analyze, and visualize information to measure their business performance and drive enterprise value growth.

 

Awards Category: Most Time Saved

  

Describe the problem you needed to solve 

 

One of our clients tried to implement one of the most Business Intelligence solution to help them grow their business through another company (we can pretty much say our competitor). However, there is one thing which hinders their development of the BI. When usually most companies want to see the date of sales (on which date their agents perform sales), this company would like to see the other way around, they would like to see ‘on which dates their agents do not perform sales activity’. For them this is very important. The BI developers hit a dead-end on this thing, and therefore I came with Alteryx.

 

Describe the working solution

 The BI I previously mentioned is QlikView. Well Qlik can do it, and I can guarantee. But it involves heavy scripting and logic. With heavy scripting it will also mean it requires heavy resources to perform the run (will only be visible when running with low RAM). Alteryx on the other hand can do this easily using drag-and-drop and repeatable workflow, so I feed Alteryx with the actual sales data, perform several left joins, filter, and unique. Alteryx requires no scripting, and to be honest I am not even an IT guy, I know nothing about SQL and programming, but I can create this workflow easily. So we proposed to have Alteryx prepare and blend the data before feeding it to QlikView, therefore it will help to make the data visible before feeding it to QlikView and lessens the burden on QlikView. While the client has not yet confirmed whether they will get Alteryx or not, it is really satisfying and rewarding to solve this problem easily while others had hardships in getting this result.

 

Describe the benefits you have achieved

While I created the workflow in only an hour vs their 2 weeks development for this one case (and in which they failed after 2 weeks), this shows how much of a time savings the client would get if they developed QlikView alongside with Alteryx. Alteryx will help the customers to get results faster and perform an advanced ETL which might be hard to do in traditional SQL language.