Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Reflections on 2020: Olivia (Libby) Duane Adams, co-founder, Alteryx
Every year, we feature the year end reflections of founders, CEOs, investors, and others in Southern California's high tech community. We'll be posting these throughout the next two weeks. Today, we have Olivia (Libby) Duane Adams, co-founder and chief advocacy officer at Alteryx (www.alteryx.com) who is based in Irvine. You will be able to get to all of these posts on our 2020 reflections here. Are you a founder, CEO, or investor who would like to participate? Contact our editors for details.
What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?
The biggest news of the year for us was in unveiling our enhanced analytic process automation (APA) platform, which unifies analytics, data science and business process automation in one, end-to-end platform. By bringing data, processes and people together in a converged approach, the Alteryx APA Platform enables high-impact business outcomes and rapid upskilling of people across the organization. Designed to put automation in the hands of all data workers—from line-of-business users to skilled analysts and data scientists—the human-centered platform transforms how businesses leverage their data assets, optimize their processes and upskill human talent to generate workforce efficiencies, top-line growth and optimize costs. Analytics and data in 2020 have become household words. Every news station and source has been talking about the analytics of COVID, recovery and vaccine distribution. Analytic process automation platforms are organizing what were once patchwork point solutions that cost customers time and resources, bringing streamlined processes and the human back to the center of problem solving. Over the last 10 years or so, businesses have used disconnected point tools to do different parts of the analytic process. From the diagnostic, to the data science to the predictive aspects of the analytic continuum, all of those have historically been different tools, which shows outcomes and negatively impacts the organization due to the need for manual processes and specialized skillsets for each user who is using these point solutions. This also requires hand-offs to happen, which also creates greater risk and a cause for concern about data integrity. With APA and Alteryx, you are unifying the analytic process – data science and business and analytic process automation in one end-to-end platform that is helping to accelerate digital transformation of every organization. In addition to that, we announced strategic partnerships with PwC, Adobe, UiPath, ABBYY, a major product update by introducing Analytics Hub and Intelligence Suite and also announced the hiring of a new CEO, Mark Anderson.
It’s been a tough year for many due to the pandemic; how have you or your company adapted to the business environment?
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we announced a new program, Advancing Data and Analytics Potential Together (ADAPT). ADAPT, the newest pillar of our corporate social responsibility initiative, Alteryx for Good (AFG). Through the ADAPT program, new graduates and unemployed data workers are granted access to 125 hours of free data science and analytics learning courses, an Alteryx Designer license, a community of thousands of Alteryx users and 1:1 virtual support from Alteryx associates. As of Q3 end, over 11,000 people enrolled in the ADAPT program across 135 countries and 76 ADAPT graduates completed the program in full. Our ability to immediately transition to a complete virtual learning environment to enable anyone to either reskill for their career path or build a completely new career path with ADAPT shows the importance of analytics and data science in the world today. The ADAPT program was intentionally designed for new graduates or unemployed individuals who want to skill up in this data economy. By granting them access to 125 hours of free data science and analytics learning courses, along with Alteryx Designer licenses and a community of tens of thousands of Alteryx users globally, they are now empowered to own their career path. The ability to step into this analytics community gives them exposure to those Alteryx users around the world who are seeing success living an analytics career, and these individuals who are part of the ADAPT program have access to these people to get real world advice, as well as real world use cases and success stories. Together, they are building analytic success.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
Don’t sell out the human. Without the passion and desire and willingness of everyone in the Southern California community and beyond, we wouldn’t have figured out how we were going to function in a very abrupt and new working environment. It was human ingenuity that brought amazing change and improvisation, to every work environment and probably to just about every work process, because in that abrupt start of COVID in mid-March, everyone had to stop what they were doing and be able to think differently about their business. It’s that human ingenuity that allows us to make those quick pivots that we made. At Alteryx, our belief that any business problem can be solved when you put the human in the center of that problem and provide them the opportunity to change, modify or fix whatever that process at hand is to ensure that it works successfully.
What are you most looking forward to in the technology world in 2021?
Data and analytics are now household words. This is one of the benefits of COVID-19 in 2020. The ability to understand information is now done through data and analytics. One of the things I’m looking forward to next year is the continued expansion by every business in Southern California to continue to embrace data as the asset that it is and begin to understand and continue to scale the value that data, when used in analytic processes, can drive for organizations, through the insights that can be gained from it. I believe that in 2021 and beyond, analytics will only continue to grow as data grow richer and become easier to work with and more accessible. Data science is no longer reserved for Global 2000 companies. Data science is now available to any and every size business in Southern California.
Olivia Duane Adams (Libby) is the chief advocacy officer (CAO) and co-founder of Alteryx, and one of only a handful of female founders to take a technology company public, along with her founding counterparts, Dean Stoecker and Ned Harding. Libby’s vision and leadership in the creation of the world’s leading data science and analytics community is a key factor in the company’s 23+ year success. Under Libby’s leadership, the Alteryx Community has grown both on- and offline, serving as an incubator for the workforce of the future and empowering women in business via the Alteryx Women of Analytics initiative. Before co-founding Alteryx, Libby held various sales, customer, and marketing roles at Strategic Mapping, Donnelley, and VNU Business Media. Libby earned a bachelor’s degree from Castleton University in Vermont and is an active member of the university’s alumni association.