The PRQL: Back to the Basics: The Importance of Solid Reporting and Analytics

Eric Dodds 00:00
Welcome to the Data Stack Show, PRQL. This is a short bonus episode where we preview the upcoming show. You’ll get to meet our guest and hear about the topics we’re going to cover. If they’re interesting to you. You can catch the full length show when it drops on Wednesday. Welcome back to the data stack show. We have a little bit of a special episode for you today. We’re recording us straight to the computer without internet because we had severe weather in the southeast, and it’s caused a pretty big mess for a lot of people, for a lot of people in the southeast, including us here in Greenville, our hearts go out to everyone who’s been affected by this. There are lots of people without power. There are lots of people, especially in western North Carolina, who are in danger. So definitely send your care and help out in any way that you can. So today, you get John and I alone, and I got to pick the subject, which is reporting in analytics. I love talking about this, and I can’t wait to hear all your thoughts, because you’ve done this for a long time. But when I say reporting in analytics, John, What topic do you want to most hit?

John Wessel 01:12
Yeah, I’m excited about this topic, but first, our thoughts and prayers are with those and especially we’re in the western North Carolina area, which is just 45 minutes from us. Yeah. So if you’re listening in that area, our thoughts and prayers are with you for sure. So in the reporting and analytics that man, that that topic, it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit out of vogue, I would say, like, if you look back 10 years ago, reporting analyst, fairly popular job title, data analyst. Now, like you’re saying, like data engineer, or data scientist or analytics engineer, analytics engineer, of course, yeah, we got Yeah, with DBT coalesce around the corner here, analytics engineer. So I think reporting in some ways, has taken a back seat from a like, high level view. But practically, almost every business has some kind of reporting going on. Sure. I going on, sure. And in I think it’s as far as the topic Reporting Analytics, like that whole space, like how you run your business, like, in my mind, like that is typically off of reports or some kind of reporting adjacent thing, yep. And then you get into what I might call studies, more like engineering studies or data science type work. That might be how you make your business better. A lot of times I think of that as more of an ad hoc type thing

Eric Dodds 02:30
We need to do. We should get into definitions for all these. Yes, okay, yeah, we’ll definitely get into that. I’m gonna ask you to define all this. Yeah. Okay, sorry. I interrupted you. What else? Yeah,

John Wessel 02:41
yeah, and that. And then I think just understanding how businesses are thinking internally about these topics, where we have a different definition of roles for a lot of companies, like, we’re talking analytics engineer here, but more so in the reporting and analytics like, you’ve got these roles, like data scientists, and then you’ve got these practical jobs, like reporting, and there’s just this mix up of thing, you know, like, there’s just, just, like, super things,

Eric Dodds 03:07
yeah, all right, definitely getting into those. Okay, the things that I’m interested to pick your brain on, one, how, like, how possible is it to automate some of this stuff across business models? I think that’s a really interesting topic. There are companies that have tried to do it, so I think that would be fun. And then, if we have time, I want to ask you about the culture around reporting and analytics, because so much of this is not a technical, you know, the questions are not technical. It’s actually like, you know, who is using the reports? How are they using them? How are decisions made? Right

John Wessel 03:41
communication between the teams, because the data team, the business teams, yeah,

Eric Dodds 03:45
okay, we’ll try to get to all of it. Let’s dig in. All right, sounds good? All right, that’s a wrap for the prequel, the full length episode will drop Wednesday morning. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it.