These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Data Blending Alteryx Special Edition by Michael Wessler, OCP & CISSP These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Data Blending For Dummies®, Alteryx Special Edition Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River St. Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. 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ISBN 978-1-119-03766-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-11903764-4 (ebk) Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Publisher’s Acknowledgments Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: Senior Project Editor: Zoë Wykes Project Coordinator: Melissa Cossell Acquisitions Editor: Amy Fandrei Alteryx Contributors: Matt Madden, Editorial Manager: Rev Mengle Bob Laurent, Paul Ross Business Development Representative: Kimberley Schumacker These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Table of Contents Introduction . .1 About This Book ........................................................................ 1 Foolish Assumptions ................................................................. 2 Icons Used in This Book ............................................................ 2 Beyond the Book ........................................................................ 3 Where to Go from Here ............................................................. 3 Chapter 1: The Rise of the Data Analyst . .5 Introducing Today’s Data Analyst ........................................... 6 Supporting the Business Decision Maker ............................... 7 Data Analysis in the Data Blending World .............................. 8 Chapter 2: Understanding Data Blending . .11 Exploring the Wide World of Data ......................................... 12 Accessing Multiple Data Sources ........................................... 14 Accessing the Relevant Data .................................................. 16 Defining Data Blending ............................................................ 18 Differentiating Data Integration from Data Blending ........... 20 Chapter 3: The Building Blocks of Effective Data Blending . .21 Identifying the Components of Data Analysis ...................... 22 Moving through Data Blending .............................................. 23 Data preparation and cleansing ................................... 23 Joining data .................................................................... 24 Automation and repeatability ...................................... 25 Empowering the Analyst and Decision Makers .................... 27 Chapter 4: Using Data Blending in the Real World . 29 Maximizing Business Agility with Better Tools .................... 30 Intuitive workflows ........................................................ 30 Deeper business insight ................................................ 31 Faster access to information ........................................ 31 Implementing Data Blending in Business.............................. 32 Putting the Right Tools in the Hands of the Data Analyst .......................................................................... 32 Using Alteryx Designer ............................................................ 34 These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. iv Data Blending For Dummies, Alteryx Special Edition Chapter 5: Ten Things to Consider with Data Blending . 39 Integrate Predictive Analytics into Your Business .............. 39 Gain Insights Rapidly ............................................................... 40 Augment the Tools You Now Use .......................................... 40 Work behind the Scenes ......................................................... 41 Consider Spatial Analysis ....................................................... 41 Leverage Analytic Apps........................................................... 42 Incorporate Visualization ....................................................... 43 Improve Business Analyst and IT Relations ......................... 43 Drive Down IT Support Costs ................................................. 44 Feed the Downward Stream .................................................... 44 These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Introduction ata analysts support their organization’s decision makers Dby providing the timely information and answers to key business questions needed to drive the business forward. Decisions are only as good as the information they are based on, so data analysts strive to use the best and most complete information possible. Unfortunately, as the amount of data in the world grows exponentially, the time available to identify and combine all the data sources where insight may exist is shrinking. Being successful in business depends on being agile and knowing more than your competitor does; thus, the speed of business is accelerating. Under this pressure and with more work and less time to do it in, the data analyst is indeed in a challenging position. Fortunately, the data analyst can become faster at delivering better information and results — all with less effort and com- plexity. Giving the analyst tools to blend data from multiple data sources ensures that all the relevant data, no matter where it exists, is available to the analyst. Data blending reduces the time to prepare and join data and empowers data analysts to be self-reliant in their job. About This Book Data blending is important because it allows data analysts to access data from all the relevant data sources: Big Data, the cloud, social media, third-party data providers, in-house databases, department data stores, and more. Historically, the challenge of data analysts has been accessing this data and then cleansing and preparing the data for analysis. These stages of access, cleansing, and preparing data are complex and time intensive. Easy-to-use software tools that reduce the burden of this data preparation and turn data blending into an asset greatly empower the data analyst to become more effec- tive and open new opportunities to the business. These materials are © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. 2 Data Blending For Dummies, Alteryx Special Edition The focus of this book is how data blending is used and what it can provide the data analyst working to support business decision