The Biggest Problems In Data Analytics And How To Overcome Them

A Cybit Business Intelligence expert explains how data analysts can move away from laborious data prep to instead spend time gathering meaningful insight.

Common Problems with Data Analytics

In my experience, even with advanced data analytics solutions that reduce time to insight drastically, there are still many problems that plague data analysts. I’ve seen companies stuck in a rut of not being able to move forward because their analysts can’t provide decision makers with real-time data, or worse, they have no access at all because useful data is locked in disparate systems.

The Biggest Problems in Today’s Industry

I think the problem is that most of a data analyst’s day is spent manually preparing different datasets, each of which has been manually cleaned and prepared by others using platforms such as Excel and SQL. All of this eats into the time for meaningful analysis and data interrogation, and ultimately proves a major hurdle to gaining meaningful insight.

Data analysts often can only shape data in basic ways that don’t lead to driving business change; there is a real lack of advanced analytics that businesses need. I understand that supporting multiple business areas can be overwhelming in the face of all of these issues and yet the sheer amount of data is increasing as well as demand.

What Data Analysts Can Do

What businesses need is a solution that can offer not just a way around these problems, but that can take analytics to the next level and effortlessly reveal deeper insights, in less time. For every company we’ve worked with, we have architected completely bespoke solutions that can incorporate a wide variety of different tools, platforms and services. No two solutions are quite the same. Because the solution is designed around whatever specific problems the company are facing, we can use any number of combinations of platforms that each have their own benefits and functions to deliver a comprehensive solution, for example, Qlik and Alteryx or Microsoft Power BI and Alteryx.

Consider a Combination of Platforms

Generally, I know that Microsoft Power BI and Qlik are more familiar to most people than Alteryx, however, Alteryx acts as an important connector between your raw data and the visualisation platform. It is an intuitive and intelligent tool that can blend, cleanse and analyse all data sources within a business, as well as augmenting with external market data and ad hoc sources. All in a visual, script-free user interface.

Once Cybit has optimised your systems initially, Alteryx is a self-service tool that uses drag and drop workflows to output data into Microsoft Power BI’s clear visualisations or Qlik’s intuitive dashboards for deep dive data discoveries and interrogation. This gives businesses real-time information that is actionable, meaningful and can lead to data-driven decision making. Once we have armed analysts with the skills they need going forward, Cybit is always present in the background to provide any additional support if required.

Alteryx, when paired with a high-end visualisation tool like Qlik or Microsoft Power BI, really is a data analyst’s best friend – saving them time, effort and a lot of headaches when dealing with disparate data sources and incompatible formats.

How Can Cybit Help You?

Technology should fit your business, your business shouldn’t have to fit your technology, and we are experts in shaping these platforms in exactly the right way to suit your existing business model. Data analysts should be empowered to do their job in the best way possible, analysing data to unearth valuable insight for the benefit of the company, and my team of Business Intelligence experts at Cybit can assist you with that. We can adapt bespoke platforms so that extraction, preparation and visualisation is optimised to meet your needs for self-service analytics and data-driven decision making that promotes real growth and progress.