Alteryx is MUCH more powerful than Excel as a data transformation engine. There are data transformation and manipulation things that you can do in Alteryx that you cannot do an Excel - but not the other way around. However, this is also what makes Alteryx an order of magnitude more complex than Excel.
Thanks for the review of the differences between Alteryx, Excel and Tableau.
One thing that sems to be missing from the review is the ability for Alteryx to take processes done in Excel and make them vastly easier. Many companies have told us how Alteryx has saved them time versus complex excel spreadsheets. They can analyze data in minutes as opposed to waiting sometimes weeks for their team to generate the information using excel.
Certainly, excel will remain a powerful tool for simple users. But the big businesses pay the bills. If they are seeing the value of using Alteryx, that is the most important item for investors.
I’m sure it is already apparent, but I don’t use the tool and it sounds like you do. However, you point to Alteryx being much more complicated than excel when we have heard how much easier it is from many companies. Maybe I’m missing something and if so, please let me know.
Take this opportunity to thank you for your highly valuable insights and for taking the time to do it.
My question arising is about MSFT’s view of AYX (and DATA). Do you think it now regrets not trying to buy these companies before they were less well-established (and cheap) or do you think it always thought it could/will/ readily develop its own capability in-house to offer as premium subscriptions?
Hey everyone, great discussion here. I work at a company that has much, much smart people than me who work with Alteryx, Tableau, PowerBI, etc all the time.
Both Alteryx and Tableau are important partners for us and demand is high for both.
As was already stated here, there are many projects where Alteryx and Tableau are used together.
Here’s a pretty relatable story of a project my company did with Tropical Smoothie that shows a common application of these capabilities. It’s even got pictures for non-tech folks like me!
“Tropical Smoothie was interested in Tableau for front-end business intelligence due to a recent hire with in-depth experience, but at the time company leaders had little interest in adding more staff to manage databases or making large infrastructure investments. We helped them leverage Alteryx and AWS to build a cloud-based data pipeline that fits seamlessly into existing workflows and doesn’t require additional personnel to run it.”
Here’s how the data flowed from Alteryx into Tableau:
" Data is cleaned, prepped, and automated with Alteryx, which provides a simple drag-and-drop interface for integrating data sources and doesn’t require SQL knowledge. From there, prepped data is automatically transferred to Tableau for visualization."
Great example of how many of these projects go…demand naturally increases over time (Dolla-Based Net Expansion in action:
"Tropical Smoothie’s appetite for data continued to grow. The initial scope of three data sources was expanded to thirteen, and leaders wanted to reach further into their historical data for context. There was a brief concern that these changes would make the initial architecture untenable
The one thing I’d disagree with is ease of use. Excel is wide-spread because spreadsheets in this form predate computing as an induatrial standard. People have learned to use it, but that does not mean it’s easier to use than Alteryx.
Consider the following task - you have an excel sheet with product orders and you want to merge additional list of orders from a comma separated text file (.csv) into it. The date and price columns are in different format and there are more columns in the .csv than in the excel table. Even though this is a somewhat common problem, most normal office workers would not be able to solve it without consulting a local “excel guru”. In Alteryx this would be trivial with very little to no training.
I think the conplex workflows with error handling you refer to would also not be easier (if not impossible) in excel.
I have no personal experience with Alteryx, but based on experience with a similar product and experience with Excel, I think one of the dramatic differences is that often in Excel one combines data from different sources manually. I.e., in your multiple .csv case, one might create a separate workbook for each source file, then manipulate each one to put it in the same form, then cut and paste to put the combined data into one workbook, and then do the intended analysis. Or, having gotten the different datasets into the same workbook, one might link them with lookup logic.
This sort of thing can be reasonably straightforward, i.e., not require an expert user, but it is a one time task. The next time one wants to do the same analysis, one has to go through the same steps again. The first one may provide a template or record of what steps are required and what problems can arise, but the whole thing has to be done again.
By comparison, a rule-based tool like Alteryx, one defines the rules for combining and once that is done one can do a fresh combination at the push of a button. The next day one might have half a dozen new orders and one can still push the button and get a fresh set of combined data.
I wonder whether Tableau might be a potential acquisition target for Alteryx, or maybe vice-versa?
That would be very interesting but I don’t work in that field so can’t judge whether it would be a good idea or not.
Can anyone cast any light on the pros and cons of a potential acquisition?
Cheers, PB.