When senior management sees the capabilities of Polygon Research’s suite of offerings, we understand the temptation to use our platform as a way to reduce costs.
There are lots of different types of analysts: business analysts, data analysts, financial analysts, risk analysts. Those of us who have held some of those titles know that they all have one thing in common: it often feels like you’re doing a lot of work that doesn’t actually involve analysis. Some days, you’d almost welcome the request to go get the boss’s car washed and pick up their dry cleaning.
If you’ve been there, you know. If you haven’t been there, and wonder why every request for information generates a sigh . . . well, now you know.
Think of all the activities your analysts might be engaged in.
Negotiating for resources – whether it’s system resources, financial resources, or even additional headcount. That’s not analysis.
Trying to import over 4,000 individual lender HMDA disclosure files that collectively include tens of millions of rows and billions of individual record values. That’s not analysis.
Explaining to management that you won’t have updated data for months because you need to wait for HMDA data to be released in a single file because you don’t have time to import 4,000+ files. That’s not analysis.
Figuring out why the data doesn’t look right. Okay, that is analysis, but it’s not the good kind.
Waiting for queries to run. That’s not analysis.
Trying to juggle regular reporting duties with unpredictable ad hoc requests that are not always thought out. That’s not analysis.
You know what is analysis? Actually doing analysis. The whole act of getting the resources to ingest data, make it accessible, writing code to extract and manipulate it – that’s not analysis. Insights aren’t being generated, and you’re not even to the point of contributing to the decision making process.
They fire up their browser, and in a few clicks they have the answer to your question. Seeing as that took them a minute or two, they spend a few more minutes digging into some additional questions that you are likely to follow up with. They package everything up, and in minutes you are prepared for your meeting with that one person who questions everything.
Better still, bring them along and have them engage in data exploration live right there in the conference room.
It’s so easy, you might not even ask your analyst for help. Why should they have all the fun?
You owe it to yourself, and to your dedicated analysts, to check out Polygon Research’s offerings for yourself before the 2022 HMDA data release. Email us at info@polygonresearch.com or visit our website (https://www.polygonresearch.com) to get more information and to book a demo of our offerings.