Alteryx

Alteryx is a business intelligence software and this was my very first impression of it: I clicked 'Try For Free' on the Home page and proceeded to fill in the fields and was about to click enter when a pop-up appeared across the screen with two boxes for to chose from. One which says 'Yes Get My Free Trial' and the other forcefully stating 'No I Reject My Free Trial' and I laughed out loud because not only because it's ironic the website wasn't intelligent enough to see I was about to sign up, and it offered me another opportunity to say No. And the language with the No option is just plain funny! Or very very serious I can't quite tell yet, let's finish signing up for a free trial now to see for ourselves. I hope it's this entertaining though. Unfortunately it's not nearly as entertaining upon logging into your account because it's a very professional software. I like that they provide you a solid overview of the account functionality the moment you login. This points out the use of drag and drop technology which is great this is easily my favorite method of navigation and updating software. It's fast and easy to use. You are able to connect to many different data sources which is great. The extensibility of this BI solution is good. I like that building your workflows is highly visual with quite advanced features yet not overly challenging to implement. And that workflows can operate like macros in that they enable you to accomplish four, five or more items in one sequence that would normally require manual steps so that's great. While you can review your results instantly as well. The educational component you receive initially logging in is really good. It's the strongest I have seen out of about ten similar BI tools up front. This software gives you the most education up front before you even click to close the tutorial pop-up the first time you enter your account. Besides the five basic core aspects of your account they guide you through there are several additional tutorial videos available to view. About a dozen or so specific videos with how to analyze data, create macros and be most effective and efficient using your available features and functionality and I appreciate it.

It's a fairly do it yourself business intelligence software it seems compared to a few others. I actually really enjoy this aspect and using the software because the learning curve if extremely low yet you have a great amount of flexibility in terms of filtering and workflows you can apply to your data. Though some folks are going to prefer a platforms which simply offer you an array of perspectives done for you to choose from. In the business world I personally prefer getting this done so I can help analyze and define how leverage this data to create revenue, but personally it's fun to use this software because you have control and flexibility in a highly visual interface yet that doesn't make it automatically productive. As there is a learning curve however minimal and it does take time to develop your most relevant filtering and discover your most optimal workflows. It's also quite a costly software and this must enter into any consideration as to whether it's worth the long term investment to your business.

This is an incredibly powerful platform with outstanding extensibility. They pretty much any data source you could ever want and the reporting formats are very strong as well. I like how you don't have to be a coder to get the most out of this platform for business intelligence. But at the same time you have immense capabilities. It's a serious investment but if you have a clear plan and the financial means along with big data to analyze you can have a great ROI with the level of analyzing possible you will definitely uncover patterns, trends and opportunities to conserve resources or grow revenue.