Analyze data to identify or resolve operational problems
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 | 14 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 14 occupations that perform it.
- Identify protocol problems, inform investigators of problems, or assist in problem resolution efforts, such as protocol revisions.
- Recommend adjudication of product complaints.
- Review and analyze computer printouts and performance indicators to locate code problems, and correct errors by correcting codes.
- Analyze problems to develop solutions involving computer hardware and software.
- Analyze network data to determine network usage, disk space availability, or server function.
- Monitor and analyze network performance and reports on data input or output to detect problems, identify inefficient use of computer resources, or perform capacity planning.
- Analyze equipment performance records to determine the need for repair or replacement.
- Identify, analyze, and document problems with program function, output, online screen, or content.
- Gather, analyze, or document user feedback to locate or resolve sources of problems.
- Analyze, interpret, or disseminate system performance data.
- Analyze information obtained from management to conceptualize and define operational problems.
- Identify solutions to business problems, such as budgeting, staffing, and marketing decisions, using the results of data analysis.
- Generate data queries, based on validation checks or errors and omissions identified during data entry, to resolve identified problems.
- Define regional or local transportation planning problems or priorities.
- Check and analyze operating system or application log files regularly to verify proper system performance.
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
14 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Clinical Data Managers
- Clinical Research Coordinators
- Computer and Information Research Scientists
- Computer Network Architects
- Computer Network Support Specialists
- Computer Systems Analysts
- Data Scientists
- Document Management Specialists
- Network and Computer Systems Administrators
- Operations Research Analysts
- Regulatory Affairs Specialists
- Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers
- Transportation Planners
- Web Administrators
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Analyze data to improve operations”. 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.