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Abducting the Algorithm: Decision Inc. Partners with Alteryx

Analytics and predictive analytics are about to go plug-and-play with Decision Inc.

For any organisation functioning in the modern world, data has become the ultimate weapon of mass engagement. It can transform production, product design, customer relationships and that very clichéd, yet consistently essential, bottom line. Analysing and interpreting data and managing data sets and predictive analytics has become an art form, one which Decision Inc. has recognised as valuable to clients and in need of a transformation from complex to a cinch.

“We saw a growing need within our clients for predictive analytics and forecasting tools that enabled business users to progress their analytics and business intelligence journeys.” explains Nick Bell, CEO, Decision Inc. “There is a significant shift taking place in the market from descriptive analytics into the world of predictive and prescriptive analytics. We realized the need to provide our clients with a technology that we believed would give them this capability.”

Rousseau Kluever, Engagement Manager, Decision Inc. explains “We realised there is a gap for analysts to have self-service data for analytics and Alteryx is an excellent tool for doing just this. Alteryx allows for the blending of different data sources together to produce even richer data sets along with advanced analytics in a very simple, easy to use interface. We felt that developing a partnership with them allowed us to introduce a powerful tool to market which fits neatly within our clients and business.”

Alteryx is a simplified ETL tool to Extract, Transform and Load data and is aimed at business users and analysts. The interface is graphical, visual and intuitive and allows users to drag and drop information so as to build work and data flows relevant to their specific requirements. Traditionally, this level of data management and control was left to the technical specialist and was a tedious and lengthy task.

“What we see today is analysts across a variety of organisations bringing data sets together to produce new data sets in a process which is lengthy and usually done by a specialist technical expert down in IT,” adds Kluever. “However despite all the time spent, they often don’t get the results they need, making it a potentially frustrating endeavour with little reward. Alteryx changes that, taking data analysis out of the IT department and handing control to the analysts themselves.”

Alongside an intuitive interface and drag and drop functionality, Alteryx also abducts the algorithm, neatly packaging it in its interface which does all the work. Users no longer need to know, understand, read or write in the R language of the complex algorithm to do what they need.

“Analysts can do predictive analytics without knowing what code is required, they just set the algorithm and Alteryx does the work for you,” concludes Kluever. “And there is an even bigger benefit to our clients who use QlikView and Tableau – Alteryx integrates perfectly. They can now gain access to self-service analytics or predictive analytics. This complementary fit widens our product range considerably, allowing us to offer clients even deeper solutions going forward.”

For further information on Alteryx, go to www.decisioninc.co.za/alteryx/