The one thing that is consistent and never changes is the aspect of change itself. As the data analytics industry has evolved as the industry has grown. As a matter of fact, the growth of the industry has spawned inquiry into new services within the analytics domain. Risk analytics is one such area. As the name suggests, risk analytics can be applied across industries and across different data sets. After all, as the name suggests, the aim is to identify potential risks among various future or current options is to ultimately evaluate the best choices out of the many that may be available.
As the field of inquiry evolves, the tools may also evolve or existing tools need to be used slightly differently. Originally tools like MS Excel and SQL were decent placeholders to provide insights. Although these tools are just as relevant, they are not complete solutions in them. More powerful tools have become available like the ACL Audit Command Language. It provides some advantages over the traditional tools.
1. Easier User Interface – The Audit Command Language was designed to allow the end-user to be able to work with the data sets and see live changes. The tools and graphical user interface are laid out in a way to enable exactly this goal. For instance, the users can make changes to the table to create fields in existing tables and create new tables in the project itself and export these changes into report ready formats.
2. Logs – In the domain of risk analytics, it is not just important to be able to create new tables with data but also to keep track of them. It in these domains, it is expected that all data transformations are kept track of in case there is a need to go back to verify or rectify the approach.
3. Automation with accuracy – Tools which are designed like the Audit Command Language, allow for a focussed approach to work on data of a particular project. This allows for focus and data integrity. Additionally, a properly designed workflow in the tool allows for a degree of automation and accuracy which is not available in the traditional tools that were being used.
Investment in the traditional tools is something of a necessity as they provide certain familiarity as they have been around for a long time and have served well. They will be around as core technologies for a long time. However, tools like the Audit Command Language and SAS have some clear advantages which can no longer be ignored as the results of inquiries in the field of risk analytics become more and more relevant in today’s world and shape our choices of the future.