Alteryx aims to be the launchpad for automation breakthroughs. Be it for personal growth, achieving transformative digital outcomes, or rapid innovation, Alteryx converges analytics, data science and process automation to enable users across organizations to make business-altering breakthroughs. Alteryx Designer can be used to automate every analytics step — from data prep to data science. Access any data source or type, then blend via drag-and-drop interface.…
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SAS Enterprise Guide
Score 9.6 out of 10
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SAS Enterprise Guide is a menu-driven, Windows GUI tool for SAS.
Of the software tools I have tried, SAS Enterprise Guide is my preferred choice because of the efficiency of processing, the line-by-line processing, the ease of writing code, and the customer support. SAS appears to have put lots of effort into making SAS Enterprise Guide one …
The best scenario for Alteryx to make the biggest impact is within small-to medium-sized institutions where there isn't a fully established coding/data team in place. While it will ultimately be helpful wherever it is implemented, Alteryx can help these institutions from day 1 and continue lifting that load as you won't have to go back to the same project or workflow every day/week/month.
SAS Enterprise Guide is good at taking various datasets and giving analyst/user ability to do some transformations without substantial amounts of code. Once the data is inside SAS, the memory of it is very efficient. Using SAS for data analysis can be helpful. It will give good statistics for you, and it has a robust set of functions that aid analysis.
Pulling data from multiple disparate data sources.
Allows users to see the data at every step of the workflow to be able to cleanse, analyze, and optimize the data.
Provides an analytics platform that is easy for users of all levels to thrive in whether they are just starting out in their analytics journey or they have a master's degree in Data Science.
I think the most useful aspect of SAS Enterprise Guide is the ability to use a point-and-click interface to create graphics, transform data, and perform statistics. The best part is that SAS Enterprise Guide creates base SAS code from the process, making it easy to reproduce analyses.
SAS Enterprise Guide makes creating summary statistics about as easy as it gets. If one doesn't know proc means or proc tabulate, one can use SAS Enterprise Guide instead.
The time-series forecasting procedures within SAS Enterprise Guide produce fairly good results. SAS Enterprise Guide makes time-series model comparisons relatively straight-forward.
Steeper Learning Curve: Alteryx can have a steep learning curve for users who are new to the platform or have limited experience with data analytics. Enhancements to the user interface and user onboarding resources could help make the learning process more intuitive and accessible to a wider range of users.
Enhanced Data Visualization Capabilities: Alteryx offers basic data visualization capabilities, but there is room for improvement in terms of advanced visualizations and interactive dashboarding features. Adding more sophisticated chart types, interactive widgets, and customization options would enhance the data visualization capabilities within the platform.
Improved Error Handling and Debugging: Alteryx provides error handling mechanisms, but enhancing the error reporting and debugging capabilities would be beneficial. Improved error messages, better visibility into data flow, and debugging tools could help users troubleshoot and resolve issues more efficiently.
SAS Studio has some great examples that can be implemented. Adding a filter to the output datasets for one.
Some issues around having to enter my password every time I open it up. Some people are having this issue and others aren't. SAS admin is at a loss to work out why it's occurring.
We've developed a working partnership with Alteryx. As an enablement suite, we're continuing to innovate and deliver great products with use of Alteryx in our solutions. Alteryx use expands to our global product development teams and is in use in multiple parts of our organization. Alteryx also delivers Experian demographic content to other clients in their product offering. We're highly likely to renew, but that decision is way above my pay grade.
I've found that while some things might take a little longer to create, the flexibility of Alteryx allows you to perform any function needed. I haven't found a use that was not available in Alteryx yet. APIs and XMLs can be created to perform certain functions. In addition, CMD line commands can be sent using Alteryx to perform certain functions as well.
It's not all bad, but I don't believe that an enterprise purchase of SAS is worth the expense considering the widely available set of tools in the data analytics space at the moment. In my company, it's a good tool because others use it. Otherwise, I wouldn't purchase a new set of it because it doesn't have some of the better analytical functions in it.
I use many programs and compared to others, Alteryx virtually never goes down, freezes up or gives an application error. Over a 4 year time period that I have used this program, any of these may have happened 3 times. It is an incredibly stable program that I feel completely confident in.
I have not complaints with the system. there are after events that can be added to flows that send emails with a stack trace for visibility into any errors. Stack traces include Tool IDs at the failure point to help debug. Overall the flows run quickly and once I work my own bugs out they are reliable
Stellar, bar-none. Some of the best support folks of any vendor. The Alteryx Community is the most responsive and supportive. On the rare occasion of a release issue or bug, we've been able to get quick help to solve the core problem. Alteryx does not play the blame game. They genuinely help the users solve their issues or respond to questions
I did not use the technical support of SAS EG. I can say that I have had hard time to find online tutorials or projects for SAS EG. For instance, it is hard to find completed researches or designed algorithms used with SAS EG. Sometimes it just depends on user's skill set and experience with databases and programming.
There is really not much to it (the installation, that is). Once you get it installed, along with any of the add-ons (demographics, R, etc.), you are up and running almost immediately. There is really no additional setup. You can immediately begin blending data, running demographics, performing spatial queries, running predictive analysis, etc. And for many of these functions, the learning curve is quite easy.
I've not worked hands-on with the implementation team, but there were no escalations barring a few hiccups in the deployment due to change in requirement & adoption to our company's remote servers.
Knime is open source and free. It also positions itself a little on machine learning. But the user experience and the features available are far less powerful than Alteryx. I was a former user of Lavastorm (ancestor of Infogix Data360) and got acquainted with the low-code graphical approach thanks to this tool. RapidMiner is the Alteryx for machine learning, but is not at all as tooled as Alteryx for data prep. I also like to use Orange BioLab which is really for machine learning and offers an excellent low-code/graphical user experience... on top of being free.
Why I prefer SAS EG: Data processing speed is much faster than that R Studio. It can load any amount of data and any type of data like structured or unstructured or semi-structured. Its output delivery system by which we have the output in PDF file makes it very comfortable to use and share that file to clients very easily. Inbuilt functions are very powerful and plentiful. Facility of writing macros makes it far away from its competitors.
Individual analysts can quickly generate results using their own copy of Alteryx Designer. But using the Server and developing macros for more complex needs can be time consuming.
Error handling - allows controls to be built into workflows easily and allows them to be isolated and spat into control reports that can be easily reviewed and audited, thanks to the ability to create multiple outputs in one go.
Time-saving - saved huge amounts of time, especially when moving Excel processes into Alteryx.
Product development - allowed my firm to create products that we have been able to market and sell to clients.
Positive (cost): SAS made a bundle that include unlimited usage of SAS/Enterprise Guide with a server solution. That by itself made the company save a lot of money by not having to pay individual licences anymore.
Positive (insight): Data analysts in business units often need to crunch data and they don't have access to ETL tools to do it. Having access to SAS/EG gives them that power.
Positive (time to market): Having the users develop components with SAS/EG allows for easier integration in a production environment (SAS batch job) as no code rework is required.
