When you work with data, you know one of the biggest causes for concern is just how much effort goes into the task of data preparation itself. This year’s CrowdFlower 2016 Data Science report suggested that data preparation alone accounts for 80% of the work data scientists carry out each day. This includes cleaning and organizing data as well as collecting data sets.

Thankfully, self-service data preparation tools exist today to help reduce the time and burden associated with data prep. According to Gartner’s Rita Sallam, “self-service data preparation is the next big market disruption.” We couldn’t agree more. Using such tools, data pros are liberated from hours and hours of manual data prep so they can direct their efforts to the all-important task of analyzing their data to make strategic decisions for their organization. And, just maybe, have some time left over for themselves.

With that in mind, we launched an award program just before Independence Day. We asked Altair Monarch customers who have already been liberated from data prep hell, to let us know how they’ve spent their new-found time. For weeks, we read your stories, delighted in your photos and anecdotes of the exploits made possible by self-service data prep.

Now that Summer has unofficially ended, we’re thrilled to announce the first-ever winner of the coveted “Best Use of New Found Time” award! Drumroll please… Congratulations to Bob Grocoff, Officer, Leasing Operations Consultant of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

According to Grocoff, “Altair Monarch has been a real time saver for me to efficiently extract data from my monthly PDF reports quickly in order to reconcile my General Ledger accounts on time. Your software has definitely allowed me to take a well needed vacation with my wife and I really appreciate that very much!”

Bob, we hope Monarch allows you to take many more vacations! Not only have you earned the prestigious designation of being our inaugural winner, you’re also the recipient of a $500 gift certificate that you can use toward travel, lodging, dining or any other activity of your choice. Enjoy!

Haven’t been liberated yet? There’s no time like the present. Take advantage of the many benefits of self-service data prep. Users can:

• Access data from any source – Users can connect to all major databases and automatically extract data from multi-structured sources and web pages. This means 100% of enterprise data can be used in decision making, not just a fraction.

• Understand their data – Those unsure if any quality issues exist with their data need not worry as they are able to quickly profile and filter data before working with it and can be notified if any quality issues exist.

• Easily work with their data – Users can work directly with their data and access prebuilt manipulation functions, add calculated fields, and mask data without having to learn a new script language or develop complex flow diagrams.

• Combine, join, wrangle, blend and append data – Self-service data prep enables users to combine disparate data automatically using powerful join analysis and fuzzy matching.

• Work in a collaborative setting – Thanks to native support for the most popular visualization and advanced analytics tools such as IBM Watson Analytics and Cognos Analytics, Tableau and Excel, prepared data can be fully leveraged for a wide variety of tasks by users throughout the organization.