Analyze data to inform operational decisions or activities
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 | 19 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 19 occupations that perform it.
- Review reports submitted by staff members to recommend approval or to suggest changes.
- Review financial statements, sales or activity reports, or other performance data to measure productivity or goal achievement or to identify areas needing cost reduction or program improvement.
- Make decisions that balance the perspectives of private citizens, public officials, and party leaders.
- Evaluate the financial aspects of product development, such as budgets, expenditures, research and development appropriations, or return-on-investment and profit-loss projections.
- Analyze internal processes and recommend and implement procedural or policy changes to improve operations, such as supply changes or the disposal of records.
- Direct daily operations of department, analyzing workflow, establishing priorities, developing standards and setting deadlines.
- Review processing schedules or production orders to make decisions concerning inventory requirements, staffing requirements, work procedures, or duty assignments, considering budgetary limitations and time constraints.
- Analyze quality control test results and provide feedback and interpretation to production management or staff.
- Analyze market and delivery systems to assess present and future material availability.
- Analyze all aspects of corporate logistics to determine the most cost-effective or efficient means of transporting products or supplies.
- Analyze inventories to determine how to increase inventory turns, reduce waste, or optimize customer service.
- Analyze and modify compensation and benefits policies to establish competitive programs and ensure compliance with legal requirements.
- Analyze market conditions to determine acreage allocations.
- Create school improvement plans, using student performance data.
- Review registration statistics, and consult with faculty officials to develop registration policies.
- Review work procedures and operational problems to determine ways to improve service, performance, or safety.
- Review project activities and prepare and review research, testing, or operational reports.
- Review financial statements, sales or activity reports, or other performance data to identify opportunities for cost reductions or service improvements.
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
Step-by-step workflows that name this activity, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Others for analysis and evaluation work
Who does this work
19 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Administrative Services Managers
- Chief Executives
- Computer and Information Systems Managers
- Data Scientists
- Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary
- Education Administrators, Postsecondary
- Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers
- Food Service Managers
- Funeral Home Managers
- General and Operations Managers
- Human Resources Managers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Legislators
- Marketing Managers
- Natural Sciences Managers
- Purchasing Managers
- Quality Control Systems Managers
- Supply Chain Managers
- Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
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.