When Anna Ries interviewed with Jones Lange LaSalle (JLL), a corporate real estate firm, she came with questions of her own. One of them — what is a problem your team is stuck on right now that I could help you solve? — turned out to be serendipitous.
She asked the question to get a better feel for the role. Little did she know, shortly after Anna was hired as a Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, the big problem the team was stuck on was now hers.
She was up for the challenge.
The problem was described to her as consistent and unpredictable data refresh failures on a work order dashboard at one of JLL’s clients. It was a significant pain point that affected reporting in Tableau used by almost everyone on the account on a daily basis.
Solving with Alteryx
Anna was brand new to Alteryx but felt it was the most stable environment to recreate the data source. She connected the Tableau workbook to the new data source and then published the Alteryx workflow to the service to automate the refresh process.
The result? An average of 3-5 failures weekly have been reduced to zero in the ten months since Anna solved the problem with Alteryx. She says the solution saves her and the account team immeasurable time and tens of thousands of dollars.
The analytics sweet spot
Anna had two immediate takeaways from her experience solving this time-consuming and costly analytics pain point. First, how easy it was to use Alteryx as a beginner on the platform. Second, the value of JLL’s comprehensive analytics upskilling program, which includes growth in Alteryx.
“The combination of those factors allowed me to quickly solve the problem and completely optimize the environment,” said Anna. Now, Alteryx is Anna’s first choice for transforming data, which she does every single day.
It turns out, the same combination of JLL and Alteryx is accelerating Anna’s career development in a way she could not have imagined. “I’m at the one-year mark at JLL and I feel like I’m at the top of my field,” Anna says. “I feel like I’m in the elite realm of professionals just given the amount of training I’ve had.”
Finding a place to grow
Anna’s journey to JLL was no accident. She proactively sought them out after learning about the company’s commitment to career development and hearing firsthand from JLL employees at a Tableau conference.
“I learned that JLL is where people go to become the best versions of themselves,” said Anna.
“When they are talking about the credentialed employees they have and the number of people who are at the top of their field, I thought that’s what I want.”
Achieving a supportive and integrated analytics culture was the vision of Paul Chapman, JLL’s Global Director of BI and Performance Management. “It was important for me to be able to help with career development and progression for our analysts and data engineers and give them opportunities to grow and blossom across the organization,” said Paul.
“They let me do my own thing and they trust me to do my job really well, in my own style, which is what I love,” said Anna. “I like being authentic and I like the ability to think about things in different ways because no problem is the same.”
Upskilling in data science
With the support of her team and company to grow in her career, Anna recently upskilled in data science with the Data Science Learning Path offered by Alteryx. The self-guided training curriculum enables Alteryx users to learn new skills and dive into new analytics techniques. Anna says it took her just 10 days to build a comprehensive model, and she is now in a data science role doing higher-caliber analysis and predictive analytics at JLL.
Anna is also a member of the Alteryx Innovator Program, a network of customers and partners who go above and beyond with the Alteryx platform and are passionate about sharing their knowledge.
As for her future, Anna would love to use her analytics skills and ability to look at problems in a unique way to solve some of the bigger problems in our world and her community. Whatever that role looks like, she hopes it involves using Alteryx to find the answers.