Analyze business or financial data
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 16 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Analyzing Data or Information (4.A.2.a.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 16 occupations that perform it.
- Analyze price proposals, financial reports, and other data and information to determine reasonable prices.
- Collect historical cost data to estimate costs for current or future products.
- Perform system lifecycle cost analysis and develop component studies.
- Analyze data gathered and develop solutions or alternative methods of proceeding.
- Perform multifactor data and cost analyses that may be used in areas such as support of collective bargaining agreements.
- Analyze corporate intelligence data to identify trends, patterns, or warnings indicating threats to security of people, assets, information, or infrastructure.
- Measure and analyze Web site usage data to maximize search engine returns or refine customer interfaces.
- Prepare, examine, or analyze accounting records, financial statements, or other financial reports to assess accuracy, completeness, and conformance to reporting and procedural standards.
- Match appropriations for specific programs with appropriations for broader programs, including items for emergency funds.
- Analyze credit data and financial statements to determine the degree of risk involved in extending credit or lending money.
- Analyze financial or operational performance of companies facing financial difficulties to identify or recommend remedies.
- Identify key risks and mitigating factors of potential investments, such as asset types and values, legal and ownership structures, professional reputations, customer bases, or industry segments.
- Interpret results of financial analysis procedures.
- Evaluate business operations to identify risk areas for fraud.
- Apply feature selection algorithms to models predicting outcomes of interest, such as sales, attrition, and healthcare use.
- Evaluate costs and revenue of agreements to determine continued profitability.
- Conduct special studies to develop and establish standard hour and related cost data or to reduce cost.
- Analyze business operations, trends, costs, revenues, financial commitments, and obligations to project future revenues and expenses or to provide advice.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
16 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Accountants and Auditors
- Budget Analysts
- Business Continuity Planners
- Compensation, Benefits, and Job Analysis Specialists
- Cost Estimators
- Credit Analysts
- Data Scientists
- Financial and Investment Analysts
- Financial Quantitative Analysts
- Financial Risk Specialists
- Fraud Examiners, Investigators and Analysts
- Logisticians
- Management Analysts
- Online Merchants
- Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products
- Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Analyze business or financial data”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.