The hidden tax on analysts

Analysts are among modern enterprises’ most valuable assets. Their insights guide strategy, shape investments, and determine how organizations compete.

But the way most companies structure analyst work is fundamentally broken. Instead of fueling innovation, outdated workflows bury analysts in busywork and repetitive tasks caused by tool sprawl. Imagine paying an extra $21,000 per analyst every year; not in salary, but in wasted time. That's the reality for many organizations today.

According to a survey conducted by dbt Labs with The Harris Poll, analysts lose an average of 9.1 hours per week to inefficiencies, translating into $21,613 in lost productivity per analyst each year. For a business with 1,000 analysts, that’s an annual hidden tax of $21.6 million—and that’s without accounting for the intangible losses to speed, agility, and quality of decision-making.

This is not just an employee experience issue. It’s a productivity crisis that touches every aspect of business, from growth to competitiveness.

Tool sprawl: A drag on business growth

Analysts aren’t disengaged because they dislike their jobs. They love the challenge of turning data into insights. What burns them out is being forced into endless busywork by outdated systems.

In fact, our survey discovered that 77.4% of analyst time is lost to mundane tasks like data prep, validation, and repetitive queries—leaving only 22.6% for generating insights. Executives can’t afford to ignore this drag. Every day analysts spend reconciling spreadsheets or switching between mismatched tools is a day of delayed insights and missed opportunities.

Analysts don't lack talent or motivation; workflow design is the problem. As a quick fix, many organizations have responded to the rising demand for insights by layering on more self-service tools. But adding more and more tools hasn’t solved the problem, it’s compounded it. Instead of accelerating decision-making, tool fragmentation creates friction, context-switching, and errors, forcing the very people the C-suite relies on to unlock competitive advantage into low-value administrative tasks.

Given that our survey found that analysts find themselves juggling 5.4 platforms daily—switching between them nearly six times a day—62% report feeling overwhelmed by tool sprawl.

The result isn’t just analyst frustration. It's measurable business loss.

The cost of doing nothing

Inefficiency at this scale is more than a workflow annoyance. It’s a high-stakes performance crisis with severe financial consequences.

When analysts spend three-quarters of their time validating data rather than analyzing it, leadership is flying blind. Decisions are delayed. Strategy execution slows. Responsiveness suffers. In a market where speed and accuracy define winners, inefficiency is a competitive liability.

Why AI-powered automation changes everything

Analysts don’t need more tools. They need structured workflows that automate the low-value work draining their time. The path forward lies in AI-powered automation, designed not as a bolt-on, but as the backbone of the analytics development lifecycle.

Analysts are ready for this shift. Ninety percent want more AI tools integrated into their workflows. AI-powered workflow automation, from real-time data quality checks to automated visualization, ranks at the top of their wish lists. And nearly all analysts (97%) express interest in governed self-service platforms that blend autonomy with compliance.

In other words, they want AI tools that take mundane, repetitive tasks off their plates and make their work more secure and efficient. This isn’t about replacing analysts with technology. It’s about empowering them to focus on what they were hired to do: generate insights that move the business forward.

Optimized workflows can power the analyst revolution

The path forward is clear. Organizations that invest in workflow automation and governed AI platforms aren’t just reducing costs, they’re unlocking growth.

Almost all analysts (96%) say they’re more likely to stay with employers who invest in workflow optimization. But this is more than a retention play. It’s the future of AI and analytics: shifting analysts from data prep to decision acceleration.

When analysts are free from busywork, they become strategic catalysts—delivering faster insights, enabling bolder decisions, and strengthening organizational agility. However, failing to act equates to lost productivity, delayed insights, and unnecessary attrition. Adopting centralized, AI-powered workflows now means redirecting millions of wasted dollars into innovation and growth.

This hidden tax is costly, but not inevitable. Smarter investment in automation and governance can eliminate it altogether, and leaders who act now will gain unmatched speed, efficiency, and resilience.

These findings are just the beginning. Explore the full research in The Analyst Revolution.