Customers or Competition?

We often ask whether competition can offer a better or cheaper solution than a company we love. But the answer is always: it’s possible.

I think a better question is: Why do a company’s customers choose it?

Remember what Frank posted in his review of AYX’s recent presentation (https://boards.fool.com/notes-alteryx-at-needham-conference-…:slight_smile:

Dean then discussed that companies want a self serve data analytics platform that will be used by both their data analysts (50 million total) and their data scientists (2 million total). The data scientist will be able to create specific customer needed solutions on the Alteryx platform that can be used by their data analysts. The convergence of both the data scientist and the data analyst is very important for the customer and is a big draw for Alteryx.

Alteryx realizes it does not have complete domain expertise for every segment of the customer base. So its customers in specific verticals are helping create solutions that are helping each vertical through digital transformation.

In other words, Alteryx is giving their customers what they want, and the customers like it so much, they’re helping each other – kind of an Alteryx network of customer-collaborators.

I appreciate the “hardcore” data scientists weighing in here, but I see really no comparison between Python or R to Alteryx. AFAIK, the main Alteryx use case is, instead of doing something in Excel once, set it up in Alteryx, and then it’s done forever. When the input data changes/updates, instead of having to re-build your Excel report, Alteryx pulls everything in automatically. That’s not a use case for the “hardcore” data scientist (I mean heck they could acheive that even just using SQL), so I can see why it’s not very interesting to them. But to the rest of us, it’s a game changer.

Probably the “hardcore” data scientists who use Alteryx are just doing so to collaborate with their more plebeian coworkers. If Alteryx can dabble with machine learning use cases (or whatever…I’m not a techie), that’s all green field.

The main thing is that customers want a solution everybody can use. The more it can be compatible with other things a subset of employees want to use, the better.

That’s how I see it.

Bear

53 Likes

Well stated Bear

If Alteryx can dabble with machine learning use cases (or whatever…I’m not a techie), that’s all green field.

You mean like…Feature Labs?

https://www.alteryx.com/press-releases/2019-10-04-alteryx-ac…

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AFAIK, the main Alteryx use case is, instead of doing something in Excel once, set it up in Alteryx, and then it’s done forever. When the input data changes/updates, instead of having to re-build your Excel report, Alteryx pulls everything in automatically.

That’s not one of Alteryx’s advantages over Excel. From https://www.excel-university.com/pull-external-data-into-exc…

Excel supports pulling data from a wide variety of data sources. Examples include web pages, text files such as csv files, SQL, Access, ODBC compliant sources, and more. …The best part of this feature lies in the fact that the External Data range is not static….it can be refreshed. When you click the refresh button, Excel heads out to the data source and pulls back the updated data.

I’m sure there are many advantages of Alteryx over Excel, but they both share the ability to refresh without rebuild.

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https://johntdata.silvrback.com/is-alteryx-vs-excel-a-useful…

Here is an example of a data project that can be done in Excel or Alteryx. In fact it can actually be done much quicker in Excel. 5 minutes to create (a bit more but the author simplified the time downward) vs. 30 minutes in Alteryx.

However, the author went in great detail to explain that if you only needed to run this project 1x or 1x every six months then Excel will still be faster. But if you are running it monthly, much less weekly or daily, Alteryx will save you a heck of a lot of time.

He also goes into the difficulty of programming VBA and the like to try to automate some of these things vs. the ease with Alteryx

HE also goes on to mention many other advantages of using Alteryx vs. Excel even on this more simplified problem of tracking data on post office store hours. Most data projects are not going to be this simple.

Just because something can be done does not mean it can be done as well. For anyone interested in this debate of Excel doing repeatable things vs. Alteryx, this case study, so to speak, explains the advantages of Alteryx over Excel even, as is here, it is a simpler data problem, and one that can be created more quickly using Excel and yet in the end still end up being far less efficient.

Long ago now I remember when an analyst had two new business hires fresh from college. He gave them a problem to work on and let them at it. Two weeks later they had not been able to work out a solution. A complete solution anyways. So they came back to him frustrated. He then gave them the link to the week long free trial for Alteryx.

Two hours later they came back to him with a solution to the problem.

Alteryx does not replace Excel and it is not the end all to all problems, but dang if it is not a superbly powerful tool. A tool that has gone from a nice niche new things with early adopters to now becoming the mainstream tool in corporate America and working on it in Europe and Asia.

So yeah, Excel can do some repeatable things, but as even this simple case study shows, not so much in the end went compared to Alteryx.

Tinker

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Tinker,

When I graduated from college and was assigned data analysis like you described above, I used 13 column accounting paper, a calculator with a paper tape, and pencil. I thought lotus 1-2-3 was the greatest thing ever invented. Excel blew lotus away, partly due to Mr. Gates’s monopolistic tendencies.

Microsoft obviously has the financial firepower to improve Excel IF it wants to. If I owned AYX, SMAR, or anything like it, I’d be watching Microsoft pretty closely. Perhaps Microsoft’s current management has moved on to other things. Just saying.

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Appears to me that Microsoft has had a decade to take on Tableau and yet Tableau still stands ascendant by far even after selling for a distinct premium to Salesforce.

I would not hold my breath anymore than did Shopify investors when Amazon was the direct competition with unlimited resources.

You simply cannot be all things to all people even with unlimited resources. Managing the resources becomes more and more difficult and hyper focus becomes impossible.

Let me know when Microsoft even announces an intention to compete against Alteryx much less has an actual product.

Excel is more similar to Smartsheet than Alteryx and Excel has or even their project management software has not slowed Smartsheets down either.

I’ll concern myself when there is actually real world evidence of even an intention to compete here from Micrososft. And by that time Alteryx may already be a multibillion dollar company.

Current prediction is 2022.

But no, not blind to competitive threats, just realistic about them.

Tinker

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“Appears to me that Microsoft has had a decade to take on Tableau and yet Tableau still stands ascendant by far even after selling for a distinct premium to Salesforce.”

Tinker,

I foresee Tableau facing increased headwinds from MSFT as Power BI is becoming an increasingly competitive product that is being folded into MSFTs enterprise license.

The new Office 365 suite being cloud based purchases free updates and maintenance to PowerBI.

I work at a Fortune 500 and we are casually moving from Tableau to PowerBI. I say casually because there are no longer active internal efforts to promote Tableau and grow users as in the past (training classes, user groups, etc). All that effort has switched to PowerBI.

$500 for a Power BI server seat vs $3,000 for a Tableau Pro license.

PowerBI is more accessible to data analysts as it doesn’t rely as heavily on SQL, it’s table joins provide a far superior experience in terms or ease of use and options.

I’ve stated (unpopularly) before that I thought if MSFT put a concerted effort in place that it had the pieces to try and build data flows like AYX. However, it would require a much improved effort to connect several MSFT apps and build drag and drop tools that interpreted in between.

I’ve not even seen MSFT attempt to promote this. Or even include an example of how it’s possible in training. Just in using their various tools I can see how it’s possible.

But it is not as good as AYX.

In summary, I think salesforce bought tableau, a company facing true competition, and AYX is in a world of its own.

But I think competition is an existing giant such as MSFT leveraging their user base (similar to TEAMS vs Slack)

Just a Fool

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Is Alteryx taking any sales away from Office 365? I doubt it, most Alteryx users probably still use 365. From reviews I read spreadsheets are still better at many tasks particularly if they only need to be done once.

Here is an example of a data project that can be done in Excel or Alteryx. In fact it can actually be done much quicker in Excel. 5 minutes to create (a bit more but the author simplified the time downward) vs. 30 minutes in Alteryx. - Tinker

I thought this was pretty interesting example. I actually downloaded the data myself and conducted the analysis in R. Like Alteryx, it took me about 30 minutes to conduct, much longer than excel.

However, one thing I think the author didn’t go into as depth are issues related to errors, which is also something that makes AYX a much stronger product. It is really hard to check someone’s work in Excel. You have to make sure each formula is correct, each col is correct in the formula, that they correctly applied the formula all cols, and that they included all the correct rows.

While I don’t have as much experience with AYX, it is much easier to see the workflow and check to make sure the correct changes were done. There will always be possibilities for errors, but the easier it is for someone to check the better, especially as tasks become more important.

Here is an example of a nice Excel error on something pretty high stakes: http://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how-…

B

Long AYX

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Excel blew lotus away, partly due to Mr. Gates’s monopolistic tendencies.

Sorry, but IBM had their chance with Lotus and let everything die on the vine. Microsoft certainly executed well with Office and came out the other end the winner.

Lotus Notes was a far superior collaboration tool (email + true collaboration combined) in many regards, but IBM in typical fashion didn’t know how to market it, improve it and sell it. But they sure did use the #@(&* out of it internally (I know from personal experience on the inside way back then).

And don’t kid yourself – if the Lotus suite had been marketed and improved as well as Excel had, you’d be claiming that IBM was the “monopolistic” one.

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We are currently using numerous excel spreadsheets for data assembly and presentation. In addition, we have Alteryx in a few limited seats. By and large, we are moving to O365 products and their PowerBI, and PowerApps products. We use BusinessObjects as well.

Our organization are a bunch of tech luddites as a point of reference.

Microsoft sales teams offered us a 3 year contract for prices. We have been building content and visualization streams in every area of our business under that contract. I suspect we will not be switching when that same sales team monetizes all of the grassroots effort in 2.5 years and we are utterly tied to visualizations, automation in data sequences and presentation tools in use by everyone from the guy sweeping the floors to the top levels of local management.

Our IT department may have the last laugh, however, as they are notorious at holding out until the contract terms have been exceeded. This will have us scrambling for anything to replace that effort in O365.

We have been taking precautions in navigating this organic use case growth, our tools are being tailored around minimizing costs. For example, we build on data tables from sharepoint (free with O365) vs using true database connections (fee for use, each month, each user).

This is a complex space that has many many factors beyond “best tool” or “land and expand”.

One “data” point

Long AYX

3 Likes