Data preparation: Excel or a data preparation solution?

Data preparation with Excel

Excel is an excellent tool for creating spreadsheets, charts and reports. Easy to use, Excel can be used by anyone, and enables experienced users to create advanced analytical functions.

However, Excel has its limitations when it comes to data preparation.

Excel doesn't allow files to be shared easily, and it's not really part of a process of industrialization and data reliability. What's more, using filters is often the only way to find aberrations in a file, which is time-consuming and tedious, and doesn't allow for any industrialization of the process.

Prepare your data with Tale of Data

With Tale of Data, you can immediately explore your data. In fact, the solution scans all your structured data, automatically identifying any that are missing, inconsistent or aberrant (duplicates, triplicates, data entry errors, etc.).

What's more, the software also automatically generates processing documentation ("flows" in Tale of Data), making it easy to transfer the file to anyone in the company. The solution is effectively geared towards "collaboration" and "industrialization" of processing. This is not the case with Excel, which is often in "one shot" mode.

Thanks to this data preparation solution, all your data is standardized so that it can be accessed and understood by all your employees. They will then feel able to spot any superfluous information, identify the origin of a piece of data, etc.

Data cleansing: manual or automatic?

Data cleansing with Excel:

Sorting, deleting and adding are all time-consuming actions, bearing in mind that spelling mistakes can creep in when adding new elements, calculation errors can be inadvertently introduced, and so on.

Clean up your data with Tale of Data:

No manual intervention is required.

• The platform takes care of cleaning up your data. Thanks to the artificial intelligence algorithms embedded in the solution, missing, ill-formed or inconsistent data is automatically identified. In fact, the system does most of the work by scanning all the elements and then editing a data quality audit report.

• Suggestions for corrections can be made to help you improve your dataset.

• You can choose from 100 ready-to-use transformations in just a few clicks to assemble, normalize, rectify or enrich your data.

Data source and import - single or multiple?

Importing data into Excel:

Importing data into Excel is limited. The Excel spreadsheet allows you to import :

• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) files, also known as flat files. These files contain several records (header lines, sales detail lines, invoice or order lines) separated from each other by a specific character (semicolon, pipe(|) or tab). The CSV format is the most popular example.

• Files on SharePoint or OneDrive.

• SQL databases.

It should also be noted that Excel has no function for adding attachments.

Importing data into Tale of Data:

Tale of Data lets you import data from a wide variety of sources, either as read-only or write-only files. These include CSV, Excel, JSON and XML files.

Tale of Data also connects to a wide range of file storage or relational databases, as well as a wide variety of data sources: analytical storage, NoSQL, etc. This enables data to be assembled, prepared and standardized so that it can be used in a format accessible to all trades.

Data sharing: laborious or interactive?

Sharing data in Excel:

One of Excel's major limitations is the difficulty of sharing files with other people in the company. Very often, data is shared by e-mail, which can lead to the creation of multiple versions, erroneous data entry, incomprehensible modifications for some, a lack of interactivity, a waste of time... and so on. If the file owner makes changes to the shared file, other collaborators have to wait for the data to be updated before they can access it.

Sharing an Excel file with another person can therefore :

• Create multiple versions of the file

• Contain incomprehensible modifications

Sharing data on Tale of Data:

Tale of Data lets you work interactively with your data. All collaborators can exchange and work simultaneously and directly on the platform. As the system is centralized, all teams can work together in a dedicated, interactive, visual and secure workspace. Thanks to this space, each user can scroll or filter data in an automated and assisted environment.

Finally, the automatic generation of documentation simplifies work between employees. They save time and can be more productive with up-to-date, reliable data.

Excel or Tale of Data - how to choose?

By capitalizing on data, thanks to a data preparation solution, companies reduce their processing costs and acquire qualitative data in the shortest possible time.

Regardless of the number of manipulations or processes, Tale of Data enables tracking and historization. Every action performed by users is self-documented by the solution: the notion of "data lineage".

That said, Excel remains an excellent tool for light data management tasks. However, its capabilities are rather limited and do not allow you to see, for example, the operations performed to clean up a data set.

Another drawback is that you have to save each version, and once the spreadsheet is closed, there's no way of undoing changes previously made. Excel remains a very good individual office tool.

It is not recommended as a solution for managing and executing complex tasks.

A real data preparation tool will therefore enable:

• audit, adjust and enrich data,

• monitor and control data, and share it with as many people as possible,

• guarantee data quality and reliability for analysis and process automation.