Work smarter, not harder, and don't be a data monkey

Note: The following is a guest post by data analyst David Murphy.

Throughout my career as an analyst, I’ve often found myself copying and pasting data, building reports, maintaining them, and emailing them out to a myriad of stakeholders—something I came to affectionately call data-monkey work.

I seek to reduce or remove this kind of work during my career, via streaming or automating as much of the reporting processes as I can. It's all so I can actually spend time doing what I’m hard to do as an analyst: ANALYSE!

It might seem obvious, but I’ve seen, time and again, companies hire brilliant people only to have them spend a great deal of their time being a data monkey. So I’ve created this video to raise awareness and persuade analysts and their superiors to take a step back and see if they could benefit from report automation.

The time saved should be compelling enough, but you should also factor in the extra value an analyst can create with the new time as well. That additional insight, those five extra minutes talking to a client, or that new idea could have a massive impact to your bottom line.

If you’d like to work out that value quickly and communicate it easily, I have you covered. Use the calculator below to work out the time and monetary value your reporting efficiencies can provide. Just enter in four values and you have your answer! (For more details on the calculator, click here.)

Let me know if you have similar challenges in the comments below. Or maybe you didn’t even realise this was a problem affecting you. Either way, if I can help further, I’ll try my best to do so.

For more tips, ideas, and vizzes by David, visit his Tableau Public profile page and his blog, Datasaurus Rex. You can also connect with him on Twitter @Datasaurus_Rex.