Financial analysis in KNIME

1. Financial analysis in KNIME

Welcome to the Case Study!

2. Welcome!

My name is Andrew, I am a data scientist at 4&8 Ltd, and this is me in my role as a Financial Analyst. I have many years of experience in both using and teaching KNIME for financial analysis applications in different industries.

3. On the case

As a financial analyst, your use of KNIME will be driven by business needs. These needs are called a business case. For this case study, you will be answering a business case using real-world data from the London Fire Brigade.

4. On the case

Your manager has a business case, needing you to extract some insights from 3 months of purchase data. They need to view overall trends over the three months; view aggregates of VAT-related transactions; and finally, you need to export detailed aggregated data both for others to use and to archive.

5. On the case

You need to create a re-usable process for other non-technical users. It needs to be both understandable and automated.

6. What's the plan?

Step one is planning how you're going to achieve the result you need. Your destination is the business case results. Think about the process steps you need to get there. Thinking of other users, use annotations to guide the way and use metanodes to declutter the route (like towns on a map).

7. One step at a time

Starting with reading the business case, you can plan the steps. Generally, these are: Data Access Data Cleaning and Transformation Data Merging and Aggregation and Data Visualization and Export. There's another step - confirming that you've answered the business case. Check this before finalizing your project.

8. Getting started

It's helpful to add the process to the canvas in annotation form before you build the workflow - to remind you of the process, ensure you use a good left to right structure and to help others to understand the workflow. Hint: I keep a copy of the blank outline shown as a template to copy and adapt for each new analysis project - KNIME is great for re-using any work that you or others have done!

9. Getting started

It's also good to edit the workflow description to describe the overall goals and process. You can also add links and tags.

10. Summary

Now for a summary: You're a financial analyst using KNIME to answer a business case You've got the data and business requirements First plan the process - make a map Ensure that you have all the steps

11. Summary

The last step is to ensure that you've answered the business case. Make sure it's automated, re-usable, and understandable by others. Don't be shy about re-using relevant templates.

12. Let's practice!

Let's start answering the business case by getting data into our workflow.

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