Overcoming Endless Ad Hoc Requests as a Startup Data Analyst⚡️ (ft. Project Demo)

When I first started out my career as a Data Analyst in a small FinTech SaaS company with only 40 people, I immediately became the heart and lifeline of the business because I was the one with database access who could deliver all of the insights. Without me, it was hard for the company to know in which direction to fly...

Most of my stakeholders (marketing, sales, leadership) weren’t very technical people, and I was constantly in a revolving state of exporting reports from Power BI into Excel because they were most comfortable in a spreadsheet. Even my more technical stakeholders, like Finance, didn’t know SQL and still lived comfortably in Excel for all of their work and analyses which really added to my manual workload.

Sometimes I’d build the coolest dashboards only to get the most dreaded question: “Can you please export this to Excel?”🤦🏽‍♀️

Even when I’d make dashboards that were used frequently, there was always a long, convoluted process to make edits and maintain it. For example, making edits to calculated columns or metrics would require editing the data model and metrics in the desktop app, publishing the dataset online, and then refreshing the entire thing— which sometimes took hours!😵‍💫

As a data analyst in a small, growing company, I firsthand saw so many pain points that startups experience trying to provide accurate and up-to-date data to both technical and non-technical stakeholders-- that can also be easily modified and maintained as business goals and data sources change (which is frequently in the startup world!).

I’ve recently found a really cool spreadsheet tool that I wish I had had access to at the time because it makes it really easy for data analytics and finance to collaborate with different stakeholders in a startup environment— Equals. I even had the privilege to interview🔗 the CEO, Bobby Pinero.

If you’re not familiar with Equals and you work with data in a startup environment, you really should be! Equals is the next-generation spreadsheet🔗 that allows seamless connection to live data sources, functions and pivot table capabilities just like in Excel, and modern dashboard building. The cherry on top🍒 is that you can also schedule refreshes and notifications for stakeholders! I’m going to walk you through how easy it really is to use.

If you can spreadsheet, you can Equals💪🏼

First, sign up for a free trial on the website: CLICK HERE🔗

For real, click there ^^^ and go try it!

Then, create a new workbook and connect to any data source by clicking on connections in the top right. They have integrations with Snowflake, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more!

After connecting to your data source, you have the option to use the SQL editor or the Query Builder. Here's the difference between the 2:

• SQL Editor: allows you to write a query to pull the data into the sheet. Perfect for data analysts and people who have SQL skills.

• Query Builder: allows you to use a click-and-filter interface to pull in the data you need. Since there’s no coding required, this method is best for non-technical users. You can still access the query that is created using this method if needed.

I’m going to use the Query Builder--because we all know I’m a huge SQL fan!😉Here’s the query I’m using to pull in the marketing spend data for Google and Facebook from a sandbox database I have in Snowflake:

And here’s a preview of my output. Notice that we have monthly marketing spend by channel:

Now, let’s make a pivot table so we can summarize the data and see the full picture better. Equals🔗 has ✨pivot tables✨ just in Excel and Google Sheets, so there’s no learning curve here if you’re already familiar with spreadsheets!

Here's a preview of the pivot table. Notice that this is a test sandbox environment, so the data won't look as exciting as real-life data, but let's interpret this as monthly marketing spend, even though the numbers escalate quite quickly.

We can visualize this data in seconds by using the ✨chart✨ feature-- just like in Excel and Google Sheets. I updated the title, axes, colors, and data labels! It was super easy and quick to figure out, which is great because I don't have time to waste as a data analyst at a startup.

This will give our marketing team a high-level picture of our monthly marketing spend by channel for Facebook and Google. It looks like over time, we've been spending more money each month on each channel!

Now let’s say I want to build another chart that focuses only on Facebook. I can easily use my previous query, copy and paste, and edit to only pull in Facebook data.

The data source can also be ✨scheduled✨ to refresh daily, hourly, or weekly at a specified time. This is perfect to do for stakeholders who like recurring reports with the most up-to-date data! I used to have to pull a DAILY report😵‍💫 for a big client, and it was so annoying and time-consuming everyday. This feature of Equals🔗 is a huge selling point for me! My time and energy are so valuable.

A really cool thing about Equals is that you can use the same functions you do in Excel and Google Sheets. The beautiful thing here is that you don’t have to learn any proprietary formulas or rigorous programming languages— you can easily transfer your current spreadsheet skills to Equals.

Here, I created a calculated column (just like I would in Excel) that calculates the % change month-over-month (MoM) in monthly marketing spend. MoM metrics are really common because they provide context to the data— numbers aren’t always useful unless we understand how they’ve changed! This will also update as the data source is refreshed.

Let's visualize the MoM % changes for Facebook marketing spend as well. Notice that each month has a 5% or 10% increase-- this is sample data! A real-world dataset would likely have a more exciting trend. We can put both visualizations into a dashboard on the Dashboard tab. Both of these visualizations are connected to live data sources and will dynamically update as the data refreshes over time.

So now that we have a basic dashboard set up in our Equals🔗 spreadsheet, we can also automate the exporting process. Imagine sending this to your stakeholders automatically in Slack every morning at 9am! You can also send through Email and to Google Slides as well.

And there we have it! A basic dashboard built and automatically refreshed and exported all in a spreadsheet! I truly believe that Equals🔗 is changing the game and making it easier for data analysts and business stakeholders to collaborate together in a fast-moving environment. If you haven’t tried it out yet, you definitely need to take advantage of their free trial: Try it out HERE!🔗

Let me know what you think about Equals

!