Data Prep 101: Its Importance, Benefits, and How to Do It Right

According to Gartner, poor data quality costs businesses an average of $12.9 million annually, making data preparation one of the most critical parts of a data analyst’s job. With effective data preparation procedures in place, data analysts can ensure that they’re only using high-quality, reliable, and relevant data. 

Data preparation is a process of cleaning, organizing, and transforming raw data into a usable format for analysis or other data-related tasks. It is a critical step in data analytics workflows, ensuring that the data used for analysis is accurate, consistent, and ready for meaningful insights.

Prepare Your Data with Astera

Astera streamlines every step of the process, from data collection and integration to profiling, cleansing, transformation, and beyond. Trust Astera for seamless, efficient, and reliable data preparation. Download your 14-day free trial and unlock the true potential of your data!

Download Free Trial

The degree to which a business prioritizes data preparation is directly linked to its potential cost-saving benefits. With a stronger emphasis on data preparation, companies can achieve greater financial savings.  

Identifying and promptly addressing issues such as outliers, duplicates, missing values, and inconsistencies minimizes the risk of errors downstream. It helps an organization in two vital ways: 

• It resolves data quality problems early, saving time and resources. 
• It ensures data integrity so that the insights generated from such data can be confidently used in decision-making. 

Better strategic decisions can drive growth, improve efficiency, and boost profitability — and it all begins with thorough data preparation. 

Data Preparation with Astera

Astera’s integrated data management platform boasts automated features for data preparation, including robust features for data cleansing, transformation, and validation. The intuitive point-and-click interface provided by Astera simplifies the process of correcting erroneous or incomplete data, ensuring data reliability and uniformity. Additionally, Astera introduces a versatile grid view for users to inspect, visualize, engage with, and evaluate data on the fly, delivering immediate insights into data quality.

Want to experience the ease of Astera’s data management tools firsthand? Try it out now with our 14-day free trial and see the difference for yourself!