This document summarizes the findings of a survey conducted by Crimson Consulting on behalf of Alteryx to understand why some customers chose Alteryx over SAS for their analytics needs. Key findings included: 1) Customers reported that Alteryx provided faster time to value and answers to business questions through its single workflow approach and ability for analysts to independently generate required analytics without needing specialists, as opposed to SAS's multiple tools approach. 2) Customers also found Alteryx easier to use for line of business analysts through its single drag-and-drop interface and intuitive advanced analytics, compared to multiple separate tools in SAS. 3) Additional benefits of Alteryx reported were better technical support compared to

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Analytic Platform Comparison:
Alteryx versus SAS Institute
Drivers behind customers choosing Alteryx over SAS
for Analytics
October, 2013

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary..............................................................................................3
Key Reasons for Choosing and Using Alteryx over Legacy SAS ................................3
Other Alteryx Benefits........................................................................................3
Introduction ........................................................................................................4
Alteryx Analytics...............................................................................................4
The Survey.......................................................................................................5
Methodology........................................................................................................5
Interviewees.....................................................................................................5
Use Cases ........................................................................................................6
Faster Time to Value and Answers to Questions .......................................................7
Ability to independently generate required analytics versus requiring specialists........7
Single process for analysis..................................................................................7
Faster processing of data and analytics ................................................................8
Easier-to-Use Analytics .........................................................................................8
Single drag and drop workflow instead of multiple tools .........................................8
Intuitive predictive and spatial analytics ...............................................................8
Easy to iterate and modify analyses without complex coding...................................9
Simple process for integrating a full range of data ...............................................10
Other Alteryx Benefits.........................................................................................10
Summary ..........................................................................................................11
About Alteryx, Inc. .............................................................................................12
About Crimson Consulting ...................................................................................12

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Executive Summary
Alteryx commissioned Crimson Consulting to survey a number of their customers to
examine why Alteryx was chosen over SAS Institute for data blending and business
analytics. Here are the findings:
Key Reasons for Choosing and Using Alteryx over Legacy SAS
Faster time to value and answers to business questions through analytics due to the
following factors
 Ability to independently generate required analytics versus requiring specialists
 Single process for analysis instead of multiple processes
 Faster processing of data and analytics
Easier to use analytics capabilities designed for line of business data analysts
 Single drag and drop workflow instead of multiple tools
 Intuitive advanced analytics for performing predictive and spatial analyses
 Easy to iterate and modify analyses without complex coding or outside
intervention
 Simple process for integrating a full range of data
Other Alteryx Benefits
 All respondents experienced better more personal technical support from Alteryx
than from SAS
 Two customers were encouraged that a recent Alteryx change in licensing would
allow them to expand usage for a lower price

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Introduction
Big Data and analytics are driving major changes in how organizations are investing and
making decisions. One fundamental shift is that analytics are now being used and
deployed where the biggest and fastest impact can be made - the business unit, e.g.
sales, marketing, operations, etc. This shift to line of business (LOB) analytics
introduces different requirements that are driving disruption in the traditional analytics
market. Some key requirements include:
 A new paradigm that puts the power of analytics into the hands of more users,
not just expensive and scarce statistical coders
 Independence of line of business leaders and analysts to source and analyze the
specific data they need fast enough for them to be able to take advantage of
opportunities
 Solutions that are available for every analyst and decision maker who needs
access
These new requirements have opened the door for emerging analytics vendors to
compete with dominant market players.
Alteryx Analytics
One of these emerging vendors is Alteryx, which is challenging the largest independent
analytics vendor, SAS Institute (SAS), via its Alteryx Analytics solution. They
claim to meet the emerging LOB analysis requirements more effectively than the legacy
SAS analytics platform by taking a more streamlined approach, offering a single
platform/single process to conduct analytics compared to what they view as a multi-
step, multi-tool approach used by SAS. This following chart shows how Alteryx
differentiates from SAS.
Data Access Prep
& Cleansing
Data
Blending
Predictive &
Spatial Analytics
Production &
Output Creation
App
Creation
Alteryx versus LegacyApproach
Legacy SAS Multi-Step, Multiple Tool Approach
Blend Analyze Share
Analytic
Coding
Data
Integration
Tool
DataQuality
Tool
VS.

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The Survey
Alteryx wanted to know whether their perception of how they differentiate from SAS
matched the reasons why customers chose Alteryx instead of continuing or expanding
the use of SAS technology. Accordingly, Alteryx commissioned Crimson Consulting, a
technology marketing consultancy, to survey a select cross-section of Alteryx users to
obtain a view of Alteryx usage and determine how it aligns with current benefit claims.
Methodology
The survey was comprised of in-depth interviews of analytic professionals including data
analysts, analytic decision-makers, managers, and / or users at five diverse companies.
All of the analysts interviewed had experience using legacy SAS systems. Four of the
five customers who participated use Alteryx alongside SAS in their current
environments but have selected Alteryx over SAS for specific projects and/or
capabilities; the other analyst stopped using SAS “six months ago.”
Interviewees
The following is a table that lists the interviewee titles and their respective company
type. Their actual names and company names are not listed intentionally, so that the
respondents could speak more freely about their specific analytics use cases.
Interviewee Title Company Description
Statistician and Data Analyst Global media services company
Analyst, Risk Analytics National business services company
Manager, Customer Insights Supply and services organization
Analytics Manager, Worldwide
Development Department
Major restaurant chain
Chief Operating Officer (COO) Marketing analytics and modeling firm

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Use Cases
The wide range of company sizes, industry types, and use cases makes the results of
this study widely applicable. Annual sales for interviewee companies ranged from a few
million to multiple billions, and the number of people using analytics solutions within
each company ranged from 4 to over 100. The following table displays the analytics use
cases of each company interviewed.
Company
# People
Using
Analytics
Using for
selected
Dpt. or
entire
company
Analytics
Products
Used
Usage
Frequency
Analytics
Products/
Processes
Global media
services
company
N/A Both
Alteryx,
SPSS
Modeler
Daily
Data mining and
statistical data
analysis including
spatial data
National
business
services
company
8 Both
Alteryx,
SAS
Daily
Risk analytics,
predictive modeling
and risk reporting
Supply and
services
organization
12 Both
Alteryx,
Tableau,
SAS
Daily
Data extraction,
cleansing, blending
with additional
demographics for
predictive modeling,
creating charts for
presentations
Major
restaurant
chain
100+
Selected
Departments
Alteryx,
SAS
Daily
Processing different
data sources, adding
geo-spatial data to
modeling, building
predictive analytics
reports
Marketing
analytics and
modeling firm
4 Both
Alteryx,
SAS
Daily
Building custom
analytics models using
blended data and
producing results in
multiple output
formats

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Faster Time to Value and Answers to
Questions
Time-to-value (TTV) or Time-to-insight (TTI) are fundamental metrics for business
decision-making and decision-support, and thus the overarching metrics for judging
business intelligence (BI) or data analytics solutions designed to support management
decisions.
Among the many benefit claims Crimson tested among interviewees, the following TTV
claims were those that struck the loudest chord among respondents.
Ability to independently generate required analytics versus
requiring specialists
Most respondents stated that with Alteryx they
rarely needed involvement with other
departments to get access to the right data
sources for analysis. Once connected to the CRM
database or enterprise data warehouse, analysts
using Alteryx were largely independent of the
teams maintaining those resources. The result is
a notable improvement in time-to-value. This sentiment was expressed clearly by the
Statistician and Data Analyst at the global media services company, who said, “If I have
to wait for somebody else to go through their usual process versus doing it myself with
Alteryx, it’s the difference between a week’s work and a day’s work.”
Single process for analysis
All but one interviewee believed the single-
process/single-platform nature of Alteryx was a
major advantage against SAS. This was true even
for those who otherwise praised the quality or
completeness of the multiple solutions available
from SAS.
They contrasted the complex nature of SAS
solutions comprising multiple products with the
simplicity of Alteryx. One noted that even though Alteryx and SAS were equally fast for
the data they regularly worked with, not having to leave the Alteryx environment meant
it delivered faster insight. “The real time lag is having to leave SAS for data
preparation; in Alteryx, I’m prepping the data and building the model in one platform.
That’s worth at least a 30 percent improvement in time to value, which is huge.” –
Manager, Customer Insights, supply and services organization.
“If I have to wait for somebody
else to go through their usual
process versus doing it myself with
Alteryx, it’s the difference between
a week’s work and a day’s work.”
“The real time lag is having to
leave SAS for data preparation; in
Alteryx, I’m prepping the data and
building the model in one platform.
That’s worth at least a 30 percent
improvement in time to insight,
which is huge.”

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Faster processing of data and analytics
When comparing Alteryx to SAS, a number of
interviewees claimed large speed advantages.
One interviewee said “Alteryx probably cuts our
time by 75% for some of the tasks involving
month-end database operations. A four hour job
in SAS will only take an hour in Alteryx. A 24
hour job in SAS will take four to six hours in
Alteryx.” –Chief Operating Officer, marketing
analytics and modeling firm.
Another interviewee made a similar claim, saying
“…we were taking 32 hours with SAS to produce the score cards from our enterprise
data warehouse for all our end users. With Alteryx, it literally takes me just one
hour.”— Analyst, Risk Analytics, national business services company.
Easier-to-Use Analytics
While speed is an obvious and significant driver for increased TTV, ease-of-use was an
equally important key benefit identified by interviewees that indirectly affects TTV
primarily through increased adoption and usage. Respondents suggested that they felt
Alteryx was built with an analyst in mind, instead of an IT department. As such, many
interviewees noted that it took very little time to install, get trained, and be up and
running on Alteryx.
Similar to the last section on speed, Crimson tested many of Alteryx’s benefit claims
that related to ease of use, and the following benefits most resonated with customers.
Single drag and drop workflow instead of multiple tools
All interviewees considered the drag and drop
workflow user interface a particular strength of
Alteryx, and one that specifically stood out in
comparison to legacy SAS, which requires the
use of multiple tools. The manager of customer
insights at the supply and services organization
noted that “Alteryx’s graphical, flow-chart
interface was extremely intuitive because I could
visually find the app or engine I needed to run
and then configure it to do an analysis. I
wouldn’t have been able to do this without IT help in a legacy SAS environment.”
Echoing this sentiment, the Statistician and Data Analyst said, “the graphical interface
of Alteryx borders on being a video game. It’s pretty cool.”
Intuitive predictive and spatial analytics
Participants also universally praised the strengths of Alteryx’s predictive and spatial
tools/capabilities versus SAS.
The Alteryx Analytics product makes it possible to take advantage of R, one of the most
popular statistical languages in the world, without knowing how to program in R.
Alteryx currently supports open source R and has recently announced plans to
integrate the most scalable commercial R platform, Revolution R Enterprise, from
Revolution Analytics. Alteryx provides over 30 pre-built drag-and-drop R macros/tools
“Alteryx probably cuts our
time by 75% for some of
the tasks involving month-
end database operations. A
four hour job in SAS will
only take an hour in Alteryx.
A 24 hour job in SAS will
take four to six hours in
Alteryx.”
“Alteryx’s graphical, flow-chart
interface was extremely intuitive
because I could visually find the
app or engine I needed to run and
then configure it to do an analysis.
I wouldn’t have been able to do
this without IT help in a legacy SAS
environment.”

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that make it possible to develop predictive models of large datasets without R
programming. This feature further increases Alteryx’s value for in-depth data analysis
and makes predictive analytics much more approachable for data analysts.
An analyst at a national business services company stated that “an increase in comfort
with the R modules or the R tools within Alteryx conspired to make me a more
integrated Alteryx user."
The manager of customer insights said, “if I need to take samples of a dataset or mess
around with random samples for predictive analytics, it is way easier to do in Alteryx
versus SAS because of its ease of using data blending and data manipulation.”
An Analytics Manager from a major restaurant
chain mentioned that “Alteryx is more of a holistic
solution and lets you do more things, across-the-
board better. It gives you the ability to do the
data preparation, data enrichment, predictive analytics output across the board, better
than other products.”
Statistician and Data Analyst at global media services company noted on predictive
analytics that “it is the thing that I do the most and it’s the thing that I really, really
like, they’re (Alteryx) adding tons of stuff and it is really cool.”
Most of the interviewees preferred Alteryx’s deep spatial capabilities and data sets that
collectively offer a major advantage over SAS’s analytics platform products which
provide only the most basic spatial capabilities.
“We don’t even think about SAS when we think of spatial stuff. We use Alteryx.”– COO
of the marketing analytics and modeling firm said.
The respondents using spatial data relied on it
heavily. On average, 70% of their analysis
projects involved spatial data. One respondent
mentioned that his company’s use of spatial data
in their marketing analytics business enabled
them make key profit-driven decisions such as
identifying and profiling the highest potential
customers.
“The person who brought Alteryx into the company won an award for that decision
because the spatial information has saved us so much money.” – Analytics Manager,
Worldwide Development Department, major restaurant chain.
Easy to iterate and modify analyses without complex coding
The process that many analysts go through to get to the specific answer they need
involves repeatedly running the data through an evolving model or approach to process
the data. The faster this evolution can be achieved, especially when business conditions
are changing, the faster the time-to-value.
The ease with which users can repeatedly run
analyses against a data set to see how variables
interact, or modify analyses to solve new
problems, was another universally-acknowledged
strength of Alteryx. In fact, respondents rated
these activities about twice as easy using Alteryx
versus SAS. One customer explained the difference well, saying:
“Alteryx is more of a holistic
solution and lets you do more
things, across-the-board better.”
“The person who brought Alteryx
into the company won an award for
that decision because the spatial
information has saved us so much
money.”
The ease with which users can
repeatedly run or modify analyses
was rated about twice as easy with
Alteryx as opposed to SAS.

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“For an experienced user, SAS and Alteryx are both fast at iteration, but Alteryx has the
advantage of being self-documenting. Its graphical interface means that every analysis
is a flow-chart that you save, so it’s much easier to rerun or modify flow-charts [versus
SAS] and know that the differences are real, not just artifacts of having done it
differently the last time.” – Analytics Manager, Worldwide Development Department,
major restaurant chain.
These “saved flowcharts” alluded to in the previous quote are part of Alteryx’s drag-
and-drop architecture, that integrates the R language for predictive analysis, that
enables business analysts to drag-and-drop pre-built R macros and run their jobs
without having to use complex coding. Many of those interviewed recognized that this
architecture was a key ingredient to their satisfaction. One summarized this sentiment
well, saying:
“I want things to be as intuitive going forward as they are now, and I know there are
more consultants out there who can work with R than with SAS, which says to me that
we’ll probably have fewer issues with Alteryx down the road.” - Analytics Manager,
Worldwide Development Department, major restaurant chain.
Simple process for integrating a full range of data
Alteryx offers a holistic solution for data blending and enrichment – including access,
integration, cleansing and enrichment as a preparation step for data analysis. Data
sources include: third-party data, spatial data, data from social networks in addition to
standard datasets such as database data, flat files, spreadsheets.
A majority of the interviewees lauded how easy it was to incorporate a wide range of
data types. It was apparent that Alteryx’s strategy of bundling major commercial data
offerings from vendors like Experian and Dun & Bradstreet, as well as spatial data,
made it easier to enrich corporate data than the more complex processes associated
with legacy SAS.
“With SAS, we had to pull in data ourselves from various sources, but most of that now
comes with our professional license with Alteryx…we’ve barely scratched the surface of
what we can access now.” – Analyst, Risk Analytics, national business services
company.
With its latest release of Alteryx Analytics, Alteryx has added social media to the mix.
Only one participant was actively working with social media, and he was already sold.
“Being able to understand social media is critically important in our business.”—
Statistician and Data Analyst, global media services company.
Other Alteryx Benefits
Increased speed and ease of use were the most prevalent findings from the customer
survey, but Alteryx also received high marks for technical.
Respondents indicated that technical support documentation was far more intuitive for
Alteryx than for SAS, and customers were extremely satisfied with Alteryx’s personal
technical support. The average turnaround time among respondents for an Alteryx
technical support issue was a little over 3 hours, whereas the average for SAS was a
few days. Part of this is efficient response time is doubtless due to the smaller size of
Alteryx. As noted by one participant, “I feel like it’s so much more personal with
Alteryx.”

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Another reason may be the close connection between technical support and engineering
that enables quick response to user requests. As expressed by one respondent: “I think
it would be worth noting that their technical support is phenomenal in terms of bringing
forward new features that users want. I think this latest release is about half
[customer] requests from the last year.”
Two customers were encouraged that a recent Alteryx change in licensing would allow
them to expand usage for a lower price.
Summary
Universally, respondents are impressed with
Alteryx as they explore its capabilities. As noted
above, they appreciate the single platform, single
set of technologies, and single process offered by
Alteryx versus the multiple platforms, complex tools, and lengthy processes required in
legacy SAS systems. In particular, they recognize that this new approach makes it
faster and easier to do analytics in line-of-business environments.
“I don’t think it takes more than an hour or two to be relatively fluent in Alteryx.” -Chief
Operating Officer, marketing analytics and modeling firm.
Furthermore, due to Alteryx’s many advantages, competitive capabilities, and roadmap,
all five respondents expect to increase Alteryx usage and decrease usage of SAS. Once
Alteryx is installed, its use expands, limited only by the inertia of legacy application
familiarity and legacy code investments.
Overall, respondents’ attitudes can be summed up as follows:
“I’ve had a great experience with them [Alteryx] and they really do deliver a single
platform where you can do all of your data extraction, your data cleansing, your data
visualization, and ultimately your model building. So it’s about as close to being the
analyst’s dream platform as I’ve seen in my career.” – Manager, Customer Insights,
supply and service organization.
“So it’s about as close to being the
analyst’s dream platform as I’ve
seen in my career.”

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About Alteryx, Inc.
Alteryx is the leader in data blending and advanced analytics software. Alteryx
Analytics provides analysts with an intuitive workflow for data blending and advanced
analytics that leads to deeper insights in hours, not the weeks typical of traditional
approaches. Analysts love the Alteryx analytics platform because they can deliver
deeper insights by seamlessly blending internal, third party, and cloud data, and then
analyze it using spatial and predictive drag-and-drop tools. This is all done in a single
workflow, with no programming required. More than 300 customers, including
Experian, Kaiser, Ford, and McDonald’s, and 200,000 + users worldwide rely on Alteryx
daily. Visit www.alteryx.com or call 1-888-836-4274.
About Crimson Consulting
We help executives achieve market leadership
Crimson Consulting is a premier full-service technology marketing firm that integrates
all aspects of marketing from strategy to execution to measurable results for clients in
product marketing, partner marketing and corporate marketing.
Our clients include Adobe, Cisco, eBay, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft,
Oracle, SAP, Seagate, Symantec and Verizon among others. We are experts in the
marketing of technology solutions.