Alteryx Aims to Bypass Data Scientists by “Humanizing” Big Data

You shouldn’t have to be a “scientist” in order to be able to get value out of big data, argues analytics/business intelligence company Alteryx. 

Founded in 1997 by a group including president and CEO, Dean Stoecker, Alteryx received $6 million in investment funding by SAP Ventures in 2011 to deliver business intelligence solutions to Fortune 500, mid-market companies and federal government customers.  In that time, Alteryx has focused its attention on providing solutions to line-of-business decision makers – a group it refers to as “Data Artisans.”

“The Data Artisan is the business professional who is sitting within the line of business who understands the value and the use of data assets both internal to the organization and external,” explains Chief Customer Officer and founding partner, Olivia Duane-Adams in a video explaining the Alteryx concept of the Data Artisan.

Further expanding on the Data Artisan concept (or perhaps, moving away from it towards something a little more relatable), Alteryx recently released a video on “humanizing big data,” where Alteryx explains their mission to make data, analysis, and the consumption of big data accessible and usable by the people who need it most – the business decision makers and analysts, not just specialists.

Alteryx makes the case that in too many cases, the benefits of big data are unrealized due to bottlenecks that occur at the level of the tools, the people, and the processes.   Alteryx aims to bypass these problems by delivering a platform that front-line business decision makers can access and act on without needing to rely on “data scientists” to make sense of the data.

Alteryx explains that many big data analytics tools focus on big data sources that offer only isolated insights.  They say that the Alteryx approach “humanizes” the data by creating context through data blending – combining big data sources such as web activity, social media, or sensor data with other sources of insight, such as an excel customer segmentation file and an ecommerce system.  Once you have created the right data set, Alteryx says their platform then provides the full range of sophisticated analytics tools, including statistical modeling, predictive analytics, and more, including location specific analytics that business decision-makers can take action on.

The end result, says Alteryx, is the “ability to deliver sophisticated analytics without the need for custom big data solutions developed by PHDs.”

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