Data & analytics consulting · Alteryx specialist

Most teams drown in manual data work.
We build the automated systems to fix that.

Optimus Consulting automates the error-prone manual processes eating up your team's time — messy spreadsheets, reports rebuilt by hand every month, workflows only one person understands — and replaces them with governed, repeatable systems your business teams can run themselves. We do this using Alteryx, the enterprise platform built for exactly this kind of work.

Data & automation engagements delivered for

Federal Reserve Bank Morgan Stanley Fannie Mae TransAmerica Reinsurance Group of America Prime Therapeutics Comcast
The problem

Manual data work is costing you more
than you think

Enterprise finance, HR, and analytics teams are stuck doing by hand what Alteryx was built to automate — burning hours, introducing errors, and creating fragile single-person dependencies that put your operations at risk.

Hours lost to manual reporting

Teams spend 30–60% of their time copying, reformatting, and reconciling data that Alteryx workflows can run in minutes — automatically, on a schedule.

Workflows only one person understands

When Alteryx processes live in one person's head — or worse, in undocumented Designer files — every vacation or departure becomes an operational risk.

No governance around your pipelines

In regulated industries, unaudited data workflows aren't just a technical problem — they're an audit finding and a compliance liability.

Business teams can't self-serve

Powerful automation tools exist for exactly this — but without proper setup, training, and documentation, most business users still can't access them independently.

If any of this sounds like your team — buried in spreadsheets, rebuilding the same report every month, or not quite sure how last quarter's numbers got built — that's the problem we solve, regardless of what you'd call it.

Our approach

Built to outlast the person who built it

Most Alteryx implementations get handed off as a black box — workflows that work until something breaks and nobody knows why. We build the opposite: fully documented, governed, and designed for your team to own long after the engagement ends.

Typical Alteryx implementation
  • Workflows delivered with no documentation
  • Team can't modify or extend what was built
  • Server admin left to figure out on your own
  • Every change requires the consultant back
The Optimus approach
  • Full workflow documentation and knowledge transfer included
  • Built for your team to own, modify, and extend
  • Server administration, governance, and audit trails included
  • Training and enablement so teams self-serve from day one
Services

What we build

From initial Alteryx Server setup to enterprise-wide workflow governance — end-to-end engagements or targeted interventions where you need them most.

Automation

Workflow automation & data pipeline design

Replace fragile manual processes with robust, scheduled Alteryx workflows. Automated data prep, reporting, and reconciliation — fully documented and ready for your team to maintain.

Server admin

Alteryx Server administration

Setup, configuration, scheduling, and ongoing administration of Alteryx Server environments. Includes user management, permissions, and monitoring for enterprise-scale deployments.

Governance

Workflow governance & documentation

Audit-ready standards for how Alteryx workflows are built, named, versioned, and maintained — across teams and regions. Designed for regulated industries where traceability is non-negotiable.

Enablement

Training & self-service enablement

Structured training programs, workflow templates, and documentation that let your business teams use Alteryx Designer independently — without relying on a specialist for every request.

Not sure any of this applies to you? Start here instead →
Platform expertise

Deep across the full platform

Hands-on experience across every major Alteryx product — from workflow development and Server administration to predictive analytics and the Intelligence Suite.

Designer Desktop

  • Workflow development & optimization
  • Macro development (standard, batch, iterative)
  • Analytic apps & custom interfaces
  • Data blending & transformation
  • Custom tool development

Designer Cloud

  • Cloud-based workflow development
  • Team collaboration & shared workspaces
  • Cloud data source connectors
  • Migration from Desktop to Cloud
  • Cloud-native pipeline design

Alteryx One

  • Unified platform administration
  • User & workspace management
  • License administration & provisioning
  • Cross-product governance setup
  • Environment configuration & rollout

Alteryx Server

  • Server installation & configuration
  • Workflow scheduling & automation
  • Gallery management & publishing
  • User permissions & role management
  • API integration & monitoring

Intelligence Suite

  • Text mining & document processing
  • Sentiment analysis
  • Natural language processing (NLP)
  • Image recognition workflows
  • Unstructured data preparation

Predictive Suite

  • Predictive modeling & scoring
  • R-based statistical tools
  • Forecasting & time-series analysis
  • Model validation & deployment
  • Statistical analysis & reporting
Credentials

Deep Alteryx expertise. No generalists.

Optimus is led by a single Alteryx specialist with over a decade of enterprise analytics experience — across financial services, federal government, and Fortune 500 companies.

SM

Shawn McDonald

Founder & principal, Optimus Consulting LLC

10+ years building Alteryx-led analytics infrastructure across financial services, federal government, and Fortune 500 environments. Deep hands-on expertise in Alteryx Designer and Server, paired with the organizational experience to make implementations stick — governance frameworks, documentation, and the training that turns a tool into a capability.

Alteryx certifications

Designer Core Designer Advanced Server Administration Cloud Designer Enterprise Data Science

Also works across

Snowflake AWS Power BI Tableau SQL Python Azure Databricks
Federal Reserve Bank

Alteryx modernization & governance across regional banks

Upgraded enterprise Alteryx environment from v21.1 to v24.2, architected centralized Server deployment on AWS EC2/RDS/S3, and authored governance standards for intake, scheduling, and data validation adopted across multiple regional banks.

Morgan Stanley

Alteryx Server administration for Legal & Compliance

Provided Tier 3 analytical support for the Legal and Compliance Division, delivered structured training on audit-aligned controls and documentation standards, and championed GenAI-enabled analytics patterns to accelerate reporting.

Read the full case study →
TransAmerica Life Insurance

Cloud migration & analytics infrastructure

Migrated Alteryx analytics infrastructure to AWS EC2, built Power BI telemetry dashboards to monitor platform governance metrics, and optimized complex workflows and API integrations for financial reporting.

Reinsurance Group of America (RGA)

Snowflake integration & enterprise analytics enablement

Integrated Snowflake with Alteryx Server for high-volume reconciliation, developed Python-based custom tools and macros, and led analytics training across Finance, IT, and operations — increasing self-service adoption and ensuring regulatory compliance.

Read the full case study →
Fannie Mae

Enterprise analytics, HR technology & reporting

Built cross-platform analytics using Alteryx, Power BI, and Oracle OBIEE over seven years. Led enterprise Skills Taxonomy initiative for 7,500+ employees and automated mass HR data changes using Alteryx and Oracle HCM.

Prime Therapeutics · Comcast

Workflow automation & platform administration

Migrated departmental workflows to Alteryx Server, built analytics apps for governance and audit, and designed high-efficiency workflows that reduced offer configuration processing time by over 90%.

Case studies

Manual data problems, solved in production

A closer look at how specific engagements went — the situation, the actual constraints, and what changed as a result.

Morgan Stanley Reinsurance Group of America

Modernizing Compliance Reporting for a Global Financial Services Firm

Legal and Compliance Division — embedded analytics support for the firm's global compliance metrics program.

Legal & Compliance Alteryx Server Workflow Governance Training & Enablement
The Situation

Manual metrics, manually presented

Morgan Stanley's Legal and Compliance Division relies on a set of global compliance metrics to demonstrate ongoing monitoring and control effectiveness — reporting that ultimately supports audit and regulatory review. These metrics lived in Excel templates, manually rebuilt each cycle and transformed into PowerPoint decks for distribution.

The Challenge

Three compounding problems

  • A manual rebuild every cycle — analysts hand-transformed Excel data into presentation-ready slides on a recurring basis, slow and exposed to error at the exact point where accuracy matters most.
  • Human judgment inside the metric — several metrics required analyst-entered notes as part of the underlying calculation, a genuinely hard automation problem where judgment can't be removed, only the manual rebuild around it.
  • Fragmented tooling — Alteryx had been adopted independently across multiple departments with no shared standards, so teams kept re-solving the same problems in isolation.
The Approach

Governed automation, not a black box

Provided Tier 3 analytical support, unblocking analysts on complex logic in real time so reporting cycles didn't stall. Redesigned the workflow to treat analyst-entered notes as a governed input rather than a manual patch — moving the process out of Excel without removing the judgment it depended on. Delivered structured training on analytics best practices, audit-aligned controls, and documentation standards, closing the cross-department knowledge gap. Championed early adoption of GenAI-enabled analytics patterns to further accelerate reporting.

The Outcome
  • Reduced manual effort and improved data accuracy across the compliance metrics pipeline, cutting delivery time for key global metrics.
  • Introduced audit-ready documentation standards where none had existed cross-departmentally, reducing reliance on any one analyst's institutional knowledge.
  • Established a reusable pattern for blending analyst judgment into governed, automatable reporting — applicable anywhere compliance or legal functions combine quantitative data with qualitative sign-off.

Facing a similar Excel-to-PowerPoint reporting grind, fragmented tooling across departments, or metrics that depend on analyst judgment? This is the exact class of problem Optimus Consulting solves.

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Modernizing a Legacy Data Pipeline Through a Major Platform Upgrade

Business Empowerment team — Snowflake integration, enterprise-wide Alteryx enablement, and a critical AWS pipeline migration.

Snowflake Alteryx Server AWS & Parquet Migration UiPath Enterprise Training
The Situation

A wide skill gap, and a pipeline riding on an aging Alteryx version

RGA's Business Empowerment team supported Alteryx users across Finance, IT, and operations — a population that ranged from analysts opening Designer for the first time to advanced macro developers. At the same time, a critical set of custom macros pushed data into RGA's AWS environment on a file format and authentication method that wouldn't survive a looming platform upgrade.

The Challenge

An upgrade that touched everything at once

  • A major version jump — moving the enterprise Alteryx environment from 21.4 to 24.1 across both Desktop and Server, with no room for the AWS data pipeline to break in the process.
  • An outdated file format and authentication method — the custom macros pushing data to AWS needed to move to Parquet and have their authentication logic rebuilt to work correctly under the new version, on both Desktop and Server.
  • A two-speed user base — the same training program had to serve first-time users learning the formula tool and experienced developers building advanced macros, without shortchanging either group.
  • Governance and regulatory exposure — high-volume reconciliation work needed governed data models and privacy-conscious handling, not just faster automation.
The Approach

Rebuild the pipeline, scale the training, govern the data

Integrated Snowflake with Alteryx Server and implemented the Snowflake Bulk Loader to support governed, high-volume reconciliation data models. Rebuilt the custom AWS-bound macros around the Parquet file format and updated their authentication to work correctly across both Desktop and Server on the new Alteryx version — the centerpiece of the 21.4-to-24.1 upgrade. Used UiPath to automate select Alteryx Server tasks and support the broader upgrade rollout. Developed Python-based custom tools and macros to automate data cleansing, validation, and analytical review. As part of the Business Empowerment team, taught a full range of Alteryx-centric classes — from a beginner's introduction to the formula tool through advanced macro development — while also leading analytics roadmap planning and implementing data governance policies for regulatory compliance.

The Outcome
  • Successfully carried the AWS data pipeline through a major two-version platform upgrade with the file format and authentication rebuilt and working on both Desktop and Server.
  • Increased data literacy and self-service adoption across Finance, IT, and operational teams through a training program that scaled from absolute beginners to advanced macro developers.
  • Established governed, high-volume reconciliation data models on Snowflake, reducing regulatory and data privacy risk.
  • Automated select Alteryx Server tasks via UiPath, reducing manual operational overhead during and after the upgrade.

If you're staring down an Alteryx version upgrade with custom macros, legacy file formats, or authentication logic that might not survive it — or you need a training program that actually works for both brand-new and expert users at once — this is the exact class of problem Optimus Consulting solves.

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Ready to put Alteryx to work?

Most engagements start with a 30-minute discovery call. No pitch deck — just a direct conversation about where manual data work is slowing your team down.