analytic platform comparison_alteryx_versus_sas_institute

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Analytic Platform Comparison: Alteryx versus SAS Institute Drivers behind customers choosing Alteryx over SAS

for Analytics

October, 2013

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary .............................................................................................. 3

Key Reasons for Choosing and Using Alteryx over Legacy SAS ................................ 3

Other Alteryx Benefits ........................................................................................ 3

Introduction ........................................................................................................ 4

Alteryx Analytics ............................................................................................... 4

The Survey ....................................................................................................... 5

Methodology ........................................................................................................ 5

Interviewees ..................................................................................................... 5

Use Cases ........................................................................................................ 6

Faster Time to Value and Answers to Questions ....................................................... 7

Ability to independently generate required analytics versus requiring specialists ........ 7

Single process for analysis .................................................................................. 7

Faster processing of data and analytics ................................................................ 8

Easier-to-Use Analytics ......................................................................................... 8

Single drag and drop workflow instead of multiple tools ......................................... 8

Intuitive predictive and spatial analytics ............................................................... 8

Easy to iterate and modify analyses without complex coding ................................... 9

Simple process for integrating a full range of data ............................................... 10

Other Alteryx Benefits ......................................................................................... 10

Summary .......................................................................................................... 11

About Alteryx, Inc. ............................................................................................. 12

About Crimson Consulting ................................................................................... 12

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Executive Summary Alteryx commissioned Crimson Consulting to survey a number of their customers to

examine why Alteryx was chosen over SAS Institute for data blending and business

analytics. Here are the findings:

Key Reasons for Choosing and Using Alteryx over Legacy SAS

Faster time to value and answers to business questions through analytics due to the

following factors

Ability to independently generate required analytics versus requiring specialists

Single process for analysis instead of multiple processes

Faster processing of data and analytics

Easier to use analytics capabilities designed for line of business data analysts

Single drag and drop workflow instead of multiple tools

Intuitive advanced analytics for performing predictive and spatial analyses

Easy to iterate and modify analyses without complex coding or outside

intervention

Simple process for integrating a full range of data

Other Alteryx Benefits

All respondents experienced better more personal technical support from Alteryx

than from SAS

Two customers were encouraged that a recent Alteryx change in licensing would

allow them to expand usage for a lower price

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Introduction Big Data and analytics are driving major changes in how organizations are investing and

making decisions. One fundamental shift is that analytics are now being used and

deployed where the biggest and fastest impact can be made - the business unit, e.g.

sales, marketing, operations, etc. This shift to line of business (LOB) analytics

introduces different requirements that are driving disruption in the traditional analytics

market. Some key requirements include:

A new paradigm that puts the power of analytics into the hands of more users,

not just expensive and scarce statistical coders

Independence of line of business leaders and analysts to source and analyze the

specific data they need fast enough for them to be able to take advantage of

opportunities

Solutions that are available for every analyst and decision maker who needs

access

These new requirements have opened the door for emerging analytics vendors to

compete with dominant market players.

Alteryx Analytics

One of these emerging vendors is Alteryx, which is challenging the largest independent

analytics vendor, SAS Institute (SAS), via its Alteryx Analytics solution. They claim to meet the emerging LOB analysis requirements more effectively than the legacy

SAS analytics platform by taking a more streamlined approach, offering a single

platform/single process to conduct analytics compared to what they view as a multi- step, multi-tool approach used by SAS. This following chart shows how Alteryx

differentiates from SAS.

Data Access Prep & Cleansing

DataBlending

Predictive & Spatial Analytics

Production & Output Creation

AppCreation

Alteryx versus Legacy Approach

Legacy SAS Multi-Step, Multiple Tool Approach

Blend Analyze Share

Analytic Coding

Data Integration

Tool

Data Quality Tool

VS.

Pedro

Sticky Note

Unmarked set by Pedro

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The Survey

Alteryx wanted to know whether their perception of how they differentiate from SAS

matched the reasons why customers chose Alteryx instead of continuing or expanding

the use of SAS technology. Accordingly, Alteryx commissioned Crimson Consulting, a

technology marketing consultancy, to survey a select cross-section of Alteryx users to

obtain a view of Alteryx usage and determine how it aligns with current benefit claims.

Methodology The survey was comprised of in-depth interviews of analytic professionals including data

analysts, analytic decision-makers, managers, and / or users at five diverse companies.

All of the analysts interviewed had experience using legacy SAS systems. Four of the

five customers who participated use Alteryx alongside SAS in their current

environments but have selected Alteryx over SAS for specific projects and/or

capabilities; the other analyst stopped using SAS “six months ago.”

Interviewees

The following is a table that lists the interviewee titles and their respective company

type. Their actual names and company names are not listed intentionally, so that the

respondents could speak more freely about their specific analytics use cases.

Interviewee Title Company Description

Statistician and Data Analyst Global media services company

Analyst, Risk Analytics National business services company

Manager, Customer Insights Supply and services organization

Analytics Manager, Worldwide

Development Department Major restaurant chain

Chief Operating Officer (COO) Marketing analytics and modeling firm

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Use Cases

The wide range of company sizes, industry types, and use cases makes the results of

this study widely applicable. Annual sales for interviewee companies ranged from a few

million to multiple billions, and the number of people using analytics solutions within

each company ranged from 4 to over 100. The following table displays the analytics use

cases of each company interviewed.

Company

# People Using

Analytics

Using for selected Dpt. or entire

company

Analytics Products

Used

Usage

Frequency

Analytics Products/

Processes

Global media services company

N/A Both Alteryx, SPSS

Modeler Daily

Data mining and statistical data analysis including spatial data

National business services company

8 Both Alteryx,

SAS Daily

Risk analytics, predictive modeling and risk reporting

Supply and services organization

12 Both Alteryx, Tableau,

SAS Daily

Data extraction, cleansing, blending with additional demographics for predictive modeling,

creating charts for presentations

Major restaurant

chain

100+ Selected

Departments Alteryx,

SAS Daily

Processing different data sources, adding geo-spatial data to modeling, building predictive analytics reports

Marketing analytics and

modeling firm

4 Both Alteryx,

SAS Daily

Building custom

analytics models using blended data and producing results in multiple output formats

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Faster Time to Value and Answers to Questions Time-to-value (TTV) or Time-to-insight (TTI) are fundamental metrics for business

decision-making and decision-support, and thus the overarching metrics for judging

business intelligence (BI) or data analytics solutions designed to support management

decisions.

Among the many benefit claims Crimson tested among interviewees, the following TTV

claims were those that struck the loudest chord among respondents.

Ability to independently generate required analytics versus

requiring specialists

Most respondents stated that with Alteryx they

rarely needed involvement with other

departments to get access to the right data

sources for analysis. Once connected to the CRM

database or enterprise data warehouse, analysts

using Alteryx were largely independent of the

teams maintaining those resources. The result is

a notable improvement in time-to-value. This sentiment was expressed clearly by the

Statistician and Data Analyst at the global media services company, who said, “If I have

to wait for somebody else to go through their usual process versus doing it myself with

Alteryx, it’s the difference between a week’s work and a day’s work.”

Single process for analysis

All but one interviewee believed the single-

process/single-platform nature of Alteryx was a

major advantage against SAS. This was true even

for those who otherwise praised the quality or

completeness of the multiple solutions available

from SAS.

They contrasted the complex nature of SAS

solutions comprising multiple products with the

simplicity of Alteryx. One noted that even though Alteryx and SAS were equally fast for

the data they regularly worked with, not having to leave the Alteryx environment meant

it delivered faster insight. “The real time lag is having to leave SAS for data

preparation; in Alteryx, I’m prepping the data and building the model in one platform.

That’s worth at least a 30 percent improvement in time to value, which is huge.” –

Manager, Customer Insights, supply and services organization.

“If I have to wait for somebody

else to go through their usual

process versus doing it myself with

Alteryx, it’s the difference between

a week’s work and a day’s work.”

“The real time lag is having to

leave SAS for data preparation; in

Alteryx, I’m prepping the data and

building the model in one platform.

That’s worth at least a 30 percent

improvement in time to insight, which is huge.”

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Faster processing of data and analytics

When comparing Alteryx to SAS, a number of

interviewees claimed large speed advantages.

One interviewee said “Alteryx probably cuts our

time by 75% for some of the tasks involving

month-end database operations. A four hour job

in SAS will only take an hour in Alteryx. A 24

hour job in SAS will take four to six hours in

Alteryx.” –Chief Operating Officer, marketing

analytics and modeling firm.

Another interviewee made a similar claim, saying

“…we were taking 32 hours with SAS to produce the score cards from our enterprise

data warehouse for all our end users. With Alteryx, it literally takes me just one

hour.”— Analyst, Risk Analytics, national business services company.

Easier-to-Use Analytics While speed is an obvious and significant driver for increased TTV, ease-of-use was an

equally important key benefit identified by interviewees that indirectly affects TTV

primarily through increased adoption and usage. Respondents suggested that they felt

Alteryx was built with an analyst in mind, instead of an IT department. As such, many

interviewees noted that it took very little time to install, get trained, and be up and

running on Alteryx.

Similar to the last section on speed, Crimson tested many of Alteryx’s benefit claims

that related to ease of use, and the following benefits most resonated with customers.

Single drag and drop workflow instead of multiple tools

All interviewees considered the drag and drop

workflow user interface a particular strength of

Alteryx, and one that specifically stood out in

comparison to legacy SAS, which requires the

use of multiple tools. The manager of customer

insights at the supply and services organization

noted that “Alteryx’s graphical, flow-chart

interface was extremely intuitive because I could

visually find the app or engine I needed to run

and then configure it to do an analysis. I

wouldn’t have been able to do this without IT help in a legacy SAS environment.”

Echoing this sentiment, the Statistician and Data Analyst said, “the graphical interface

of Alteryx borders on being a video game. It’s pretty cool.”

Intuitive predictive and spatial analytics

Participants also universally praised the strengths of Alteryx’s predictive and spatial

tools/capabilities versus SAS.

The Alteryx Analytics product makes it possible to take advantage of R, one of the most

popular statistical languages in the world, without knowing how to program in R.

Alteryx currently supports open source R and has recently announced plans to

integrate the most scalable commercial R platform, Revolution R Enterprise, from

Revolution Analytics. Alteryx provides over 30 pre-built drag-and-drop R macros/tools

“Alteryx probably cuts our

time by 75% for some of

the tasks involving month-

end database operations. A

four hour job in SAS will

only take an hour in Alteryx.

A 24 hour job in SAS will

take four to six hours in Alteryx.”

“Alteryx’s graphical, flow-chart

interface was extremely intuitive

because I could visually find the

app or engine I needed to run and

then configure it to do an analysis.

I wouldn’t have been able to do

this without IT help in a legacy SAS environment.”

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that make it possible to develop predictive models of large datasets without R

programming. This feature further increases Alteryx’s value for in-depth data analysis

and makes predictive analytics much more approachable for data analysts.

An analyst at a national business services company stated that “an increase in comfort

with the R modules or the R tools within Alteryx conspired to make me a more

integrated Alteryx user."

The manager of customer insights said, “if I need to take samples of a dataset or mess

around with random samples for predictive analytics, it is way easier to do in Alteryx

versus SAS because of its ease of using data blending and data manipulation.”

An Analytics Manager from a major restaurant

chain mentioned that “Alteryx is more of a holistic

solution and lets you do more things, across-the-

board better. It gives you the ability to do the

data preparation, data enrichment, predictive analytics output across the board, better

than other products.”

Statistician and Data Analyst at global media services company noted on predictive

analytics that “it is the thing that I do the most and it’s the thing that I really, really

like, they’re (Alteryx) adding tons of stuff and it is really cool.”

Most of the interviewees preferred Alteryx’s deep spatial capabilities and data sets that

collectively offer a major advantage over SAS’s analytics platform products which

provide only the most basic spatial capabilities.

“We don’t even think about SAS when we think of spatial stuff. We use Alteryx.”– COO

of the marketing analytics and modeling firm said.

The respondents using spatial data relied on it

heavily. On average, 70% of their analysis

projects involved spatial data. One respondent

mentioned that his company’s use of spatial data

in their marketing analytics business enabled

them make key profit-driven decisions such as

identifying and profiling the highest potential

customers.

“The person who brought Alteryx into the company won an award for that decision

because the spatial information has saved us so much money.” – Analytics Manager,

Worldwide Development Department, major restaurant chain.

Easy to iterate and modify analyses without complex coding

The process that many analysts go through to get to the specific answer they need

involves repeatedly running the data through an evolving model or approach to process

the data. The faster this evolution can be achieved, especially when business conditions

are changing, the faster the time-to-value.

The ease with which users can repeatedly run

analyses against a data set to see how variables

interact, or modify analyses to solve new

problems, was another universally-acknowledged

strength of Alteryx. In fact, respondents rated

these activities about twice as easy using Alteryx

versus SAS. One customer explained the difference well, saying:

“Alteryx is more of a holistic

solution and lets you do more things, across-the-board better.”

“The person who brought Alteryx

into the company won an award for

that decision because the spatial

information has saved us so much

money.”

The ease with which users can

repeatedly run or modify analyses

was rated about twice as easy with Alteryx as opposed to SAS.

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“For an experienced user, SAS and Alteryx are both fast at iteration, but Alteryx has the

advantage of being self-documenting. Its graphical interface means that every analysis

is a flow-chart that you save, so it’s much easier to rerun or modify flow-charts [versus

SAS] and know that the differences are real, not just artifacts of having done it

differently the last time.” – Analytics Manager, Worldwide Development Department,

major restaurant chain.

These “saved flowcharts” alluded to in the previous quote are part of Alteryx’s drag-

and-drop architecture, that integrates the R language for predictive analysis, that

enables business analysts to drag-and-drop pre-built R macros and run their jobs

without having to use complex coding. Many of those interviewed recognized that this

architecture was a key ingredient to their satisfaction. One summarized this sentiment

well, saying:

“I want things to be as intuitive going forward as they are now, and I know there are

more consultants out there who can work with R than with SAS, which says to me that

we’ll probably have fewer issues with Alteryx down the road.” - Analytics Manager,

Worldwide Development Department, major restaurant chain.

Simple process for integrating a full range of data

Alteryx offers a holistic solution for data blending and enrichment – including access,

integration, cleansing and enrichment as a preparation step for data analysis. Data

sources include: third-party data, spatial data, data from social networks in addition to

standard datasets such as database data, flat files, spreadsheets.

A majority of the interviewees lauded how easy it was to incorporate a wide range of

data types. It was apparent that Alteryx’s strategy of bundling major commercial data

offerings from vendors like Experian and Dun & Bradstreet, as well as spatial data,

made it easier to enrich corporate data than the more complex processes associated

with legacy SAS.

“With SAS, we had to pull in data ourselves from various sources, but most of that now

comes with our professional license with Alteryx…we’ve barely scratched the surface of

what we can access now.” – Analyst, Risk Analytics, national business services

company.

With its latest release of Alteryx Analytics, Alteryx has added social media to the mix.

Only one participant was actively working with social media, and he was already sold.

“Being able to understand social media is critically important in our business.”—

Statistician and Data Analyst, global media services company.

Other Alteryx Benefits Increased speed and ease of use were the most prevalent findings from the customer

survey, but Alteryx also received high marks for technical.

Respondents indicated that technical support documentation was far more intuitive for

Alteryx than for SAS, and customers were extremely satisfied with Alteryx’s personal

technical support. The average turnaround time among respondents for an Alteryx

technical support issue was a little over 3 hours, whereas the average for SAS was a

few days. Part of this is efficient response time is doubtless due to the smaller size of

Alteryx. As noted by one participant, “I feel like it’s so much more personal with

Alteryx.”

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Another reason may be the close connection between technical support and engineering

that enables quick response to user requests. As expressed by one respondent: “I think

it would be worth noting that their technical support is phenomenal in terms of bringing

forward new features that users want. I think this latest release is about half

[customer] requests from the last year.”

Two customers were encouraged that a recent Alteryx change in licensing would allow

them to expand usage for a lower price.

Summary Universally, respondents are impressed with

Alteryx as they explore its capabilities. As noted

above, they appreciate the single platform, single

set of technologies, and single process offered by

Alteryx versus the multiple platforms, complex tools, and lengthy processes required in

legacy SAS systems. In particular, they recognize that this new approach makes it

faster and easier to do analytics in line-of-business environments.

“I don’t think it takes more than an hour or two to be relatively fluent in Alteryx.” -Chief

Operating Officer, marketing analytics and modeling firm.

Furthermore, due to Alteryx’s many advantages, competitive capabilities, and roadmap,

all five respondents expect to increase Alteryx usage and decrease usage of SAS. Once

Alteryx is installed, its use expands, limited only by the inertia of legacy application

familiarity and legacy code investments.

Overall, respondents’ attitudes can be summed up as follows:

“I’ve had a great experience with them [Alteryx] and they really do deliver a single

platform where you can do all of your data extraction, your data cleansing, your data

visualization, and ultimately your model building. So it’s about as close to being the

analyst’s dream platform as I’ve seen in my career.” – Manager, Customer Insights,

supply and service organization.

“So it’s about as close to being the

analyst’s dream platform as I’ve

seen in my career.”

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About Alteryx, Inc. Alteryx is the leader in data blending and advanced analytics software. Alteryx Analytics provides analysts with an intuitive workflow for data blending and advanced analytics that leads to deeper insights in hours, not the weeks typical of traditional approaches. Analysts love the Alteryx analytics platform because they can deliver deeper insights by seamlessly blending internal, third party, and cloud data, and then analyze it using spatial and predictive drag-and-drop tools. This is all done in a single workflow, with no programming required. More than 300 customers, including Experian, Kaiser, Ford, and McDonald’s, and 200,000 + users worldwide rely on Alteryx daily. Visit www.alteryx.com or call 1-888-836-4274.

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