What Is a Data Stack and How Does It Impact Analytics?
We hear a lot about organizations undergoing “data modernization” in order to become more data-driven. Essentially what that means is that these organizations have recognized that legacy data tools aren’t very good at solving modern data problems. They’re in the process of moving data out of legacy mainframe databases and, at the same time, replacing […]
Structured vs. Unstructured Data: What’s the Difference?
Structured and unstructured data are both used extensively in data analysis but operate quite differently. Let’s take a closer look at these two data formats to understand just how different structured data and unstructured data are. Structured data vs unstructured data Searchability is often used to differentiate between structured vs unstructured data. Structured data typically […]
Advanced Analytics vs. Business Intelligence: What’s The Difference?
Advanced analytics and business intelligence (BI) have more or less the same objective—use data to drive insights that inform business strategy. So what’s the difference? What is business intelligence? Business intelligence is an umbrella term for software and services that provide comprehensive yet straightforward insights about an organization’s current state. Think routine reporting or dashboarding, […]
Your Guide to the Benefits, Challenges, and Best Practices of Data Governance
Picture this scenario: a group of health insurance analysts want to understand the variation in cost of a medical procedure. However, the data they receive from partnering hospitals is stored in different systems throughout the organization and its accompanying metadata doesn’t match up, making it nearly impossible for users to understand the context of the […]
How to Merge Cells in Google Sheets
Google Sheets has become the spreadsheet tool of choice for many analysts, in part due to its accessibility and collaboration features. Let’s take a closer look at how to perform a common function in Google Sheet: merging cells. More importantly, read on to learn how to merge cells in Google Sheets without losing data. How […]
Leveraging the Six Elements of Excel Formatting
Small formatting adjustments can make all the difference to a Microsoft Excel workbook. A small pop of color here, a change of font there, and suddenly, your workbook is no longer just a sea of rows and columns, but an organized, presentable table of data. Below, we take a closer look at how to format […]
What Is Data Modeling and Why Does It Matter?
Data doesn’t exist in a vacuum; understanding the relational nature of data is key to understanding its value. For example, what good would customer IDs be to a product team if those IDs didn’t coincide with the specific products that customers bought? Or, how would a marketing team conduct pricing analysis without being able to […]
6 Master Data Management Best Practices for an Effective Strategy
What is a Master Data Management Strategy? Master data management strategy (MDM) refers to the governing procedures for entering, aggregating, consolidating, de-duping, standardizing, and maintaining data en masse throughout an organization. By ensuring control and reliability, MDM creates a single source of master data that can be applied and maintained by many different entities throughout […]
Cleaning Dirty Data & Messy Data
The appeal of being a data analyst or data scientist does not come from cleaning messy data. And yet, it’s the activity that often ends up consuming the majority of their total analytic time—on average, 80 percent of it—while just 20 percent is dedicated to visualizing and analyzing data, creating machine learning models, or other […]
Why Analytics Leaders Need to Read Data Preparation for Dummies
There’s a common misperception about data management, and it goes something like this: Consolidating your organization’s data into a centralized analytics environment solves everyone’s problems in finding, accessing, and using data. And when it comes to analytics, you can just run statistical algorithms leveraging high-performance computing engines and voilà! Relevant, accurate, meaningful, and actionable data […]
What is a data dictionary?
A data dictionary is a collection of the names, definitions, and attributes for data elements and models. The data in a data dictionary is the metadata about the database. These elements are then used as part of a database, research project, or information system. These are some of the most common elements used in a […]
Excel Running Slow? We Know. See How Trifacta Can Help
“Excel running slow” is a common complaint for more and more users. Excel’s ubiquity and ease of use are its strengths, but Excel runs slow when tackling large data sets. We’ve said it before: the simple fact is that Excel’s framework for data processing wasn’t made for big data. It’s not just that Excel becomes […]
Trifacta for Marketing Analytics: Eliminating Ad Fraud
This is the fourth post in an ongoing series about how marketers are leveraging Trifacta, authored by Trifacta’s VP of Marketing, Will Davis. It follows previous posts on marketing data onboarding, marketing analytics, and building a 360º view of the customer experience. What is marketing analytics‘ opportunity and challenge in the modern business landscape? Some […]
Standardizing Data: Key to Scaling Analytics in a Digital
To make data useful for collaborative study, modeling, and large-scale analytics, data standardization is a necessary process. Standardizing data—such as matching the terms “Ave vs. Avenue vs. Ave.” to “Ave.”—increases the speed at which data analysts can work. The need for data standardization has grown exponentially as data sources become more and more diverse, regardless […]
Trifacta for Marketers: Paving the Path to a 360º Customer Experience
This is the third post in a series about how marketers are leveraging Trifacta, authored by Trifacta’s VP of Marketing, Zarnaz Arlia, following our first post on onboarding marketing data and our second post on marketing analytics. In this post, we discuss how Trifacta is being used to increase upsell opportunities through customer marketing. The […]
Unpivot Excel Command: Fading Function in Financial Services & Beyond
Most Excel users know their way around a pivot table. A pivot table can quickly summarize basic statistical information (with sums or averages, for example) and display that data in a more meaningful format. But before you can start pivoting your data, you may need to rearrange your data —in other words, you need to […]
Mastering Pricing Optimization with Modern Data Preparation
Rarely does a company correctly price their product on the first try—nor the second, third or fourth try, either. According to a Bain & Company study, a whooping 85% of B2B companies “have significant room for improvement in pricing.” But even if a company does happen to land close to the mark, continuing to inch […]
Trifacta for Marketers: Driving Marketing Analytics
This is the second post in a series about how marketers are leveraging Trifacta, authored by Trifacta’s VP of Marketing, Will Davis, following our first post on onboarding marketing data. In this post, we discuss how Trifacta is being used to prepare data for marketing analytics. When I’m presented with marketing findings, one of the […]