What is Embedded BI Software?

Embedded Business Intelligence (BI) is software allowing the native integration of BI tools and capabilities into business applications. These integrations provide real-time reporting, analytics, and interactive dashboards within the software applications that companies use daily. By providing data-driven insights directly within the application environment, it enhances decision-making and enables software companies to offer high-quality analytics to their users.

Embedded BI Solutions 101

Dashboards: At the heart of embedded BI are interactive and user-friendly dashboards. These dashboards display key metrics and data visualizations, making it easier for users to understand complex data sets at a glance. They are often white-labeled to integrate seamlessly into the rest of the software application like a native feature.

Reports: Embedded BI solutions offer comprehensive reporting features, enabling businesses to generate and export detailed and customizable reports based on their data. This is critical for organizations to track performance and make informed decisions.

Self-Service: A vital feature of modern embedded BI is the self-service capability, allowing end-users to create and customize their reports and dashboards. This feature empowers users of varying technical skills to independently explore data and gain insights while keeping them within the application.

Comparing Embedded BI Solutions

Tableau:

Tableau is a longstanding BI tool known for its data visualization capabilities. It offers a wide range of features, including data connectors, dashboard creation, and data management, catering to mid-to-large enterprise companies across many industries.

Strengths:

• Data Connectors: Tableau connects to numerous data sources, allowing users to integrate data from various feeds seamlessly.
• Support Resources: As one of the oldest BI platforms, there are many online resources and a large community.
• Flexible Platform: It is suitable for small, medium, and large businesses and offers a web-based platform as well as Windows/Installed, Android, and iOS apps.
• Strong Product Suite: Tableau offers a large suite of data analytics products from data modeling, pipelining, to dashboards and reporting.

Limitations:

• Cost: Embedded BI solutions in Tableau start at over $100,000 a year, which makes it far too expensive for many small and medium sized businesses.
• Embedding Capabilities: Tableau's embedding capabilities are outdated and inflexible, often requiring a large tech stack for integration and it appears as a third-party add-on as opposed to fully white-labeled.
• Performance with Large Data Sets: Using extensive data can make graphs and charts unreadable or slow to load and limited caching and performance improvement features makes Tableau feel slow to load.

Overall Review:

Tableau is highly regarded for its data visualization capabilities when connecting and displaying data from its extensive data connectors. It is a long-standing favorite for BI software, but its bulky integration for embedded analytics and high-price make it a poor choice for organizations looking for a seamless BI analytics implementation.

Sisense:

Sisense is a BI tool that aids organizations in consolidating, managing, and visualizing data. It stands out for its ability to handle large datasets and offers a range of features that enable users to create comprehensive dashboards and reports.

Strengths:

• Powerful Data Management and Visualization: Sisense excels in handling large sets of data from various sources, making it an ideal tool for organizations with extensive and complex data requirements.
• Intuitive Interface: Despite its powerful features, once implemented, Sisense is relatively straightforward to use for users.

Limitations:

• Lengthy Implementation Process: As a complicated and extensive platform, the implementation time for Sisense can be extensive and lengthy, which can be a significant consideration for businesses seeking quick deployment.
• Rigid Data Model Requirements: Sisense demands a specific data model setup, which might introduce limitations in building custom solutions and flexibility.
• Inconsistent Support: Sisense relies on published support resources, with limited quality and responsiveness by customer support, even at the high priced Enterprise level.

Overall Review:

Sisense excels in data management and visualization but faces drawbacks such as a lengthy implementation process, inflexible data model, and limited customer support. While it may be a fit for very large organizations with long implementation timeline and fixed requirements, it is less suitable for more agile and growing companies.

Sigma:

Sigma is a modern BI platform designed for cloud environments. It allows users to leverage familiar spreadsheet functions and formulas to explore live data at scale, providing a detailed and granular view of data. Sigma's interface is similar to a spreadsheet, making it approachable for users accustomed to traditional data analysis tools.

Strengths:

• User-friendly interface: Sigma offers a spreadsheet-like interface that facilitates data exploration and analysis, making it user-friendly for those familiar with tools like Excel.
• Snowflake Optimization: Sigma, specifically designed and optimized for cloud-based environments like Snowflake, works well with the provider.
• Scalability: Sigma supports scalable BI, enabling users to handle large volumes of data effectively.

Limitations:

• Restricted Customization: Sigma has limited customization and white-labeling options, offering only a few color choices and design tweaks.
• Snowflake Prioritization: As Sigma is primarily built for Snowflake, users of other data warehouses may face constraints and receive updates more slowly.
• Limited Embedding Capabilities: Sigma lacks specific features for embedded analytics, such as internationalization, mobile-specific formatting, and extensive customization of components and formatting. As its primary use case is not for embedding, companies may run into additional limitations and difficulties.

Overall Review:

Sigma offers a user-friendly, Excel-like interface for scalable BI but may not suit all due to limited customization and a focus on Snowflake environments. This is particularly true for those seeking extensive customization or using different data warehouses. It’s a good choice for organizations who already have a dashboard tool and require deeper data analysis capabilities.

ThoughtSpot:

ThoughtSpot is a BI platform designed to offer embedded BI and search BI capabilities. It focuses on AI-powered analytics, with a very robust data model underlying the system.

Strengths:

• AI and Natural Language Search: ThoughtSpot is focused on its AI-driven analytics and natural language search capabilities, allowing users to interact with their data in a conversational manner.
• Embedded Analytics: ThoughtSpot offers native embedded BI capabilities, including the ability to embed interactive charts, dashboards, and the relational search experience into applications​​.
• Predictive Modeling and Analytics: The platform offers out-of-the-box predictive modeling algorithms, which are a significant advantage in forecasting and data analysis.

Limitations:

• Rigid Data Model Requirement: ThoughtSpot requires a very specific data model, tailored for AI use cases. This can be time-consuming to implement and may prove cumbersome to maintain over time.
• Implementation Time and Complexity: The platform's focus on AI and comprehensive features can lead to longer implementation times, often spanning several months.
• Cost: ThoughtSpot's pricing starts in the six-figure range, with the starting point for startups being around $50,000. 

Overall Review:

ThoughtSpot stands out for AI-driven analytics but its specific data model requirements and higher cost may limit its appeal to smaller organizations. The platform's focus on AI and predictive modeling makes it a strong contender for businesses looking to make a significant investment into advanced AI analytics capabilities.

Explo:

Explo is a customer-facing analytics platform designed for integration into various SaaS platforms and web portals. It specializes in offering embedded BI, dashboard visualization, and reporting solutions. The platform stands out for its out-of-the-box functionality, which allows for seamless integration and customization of analytics in user interfaces.

Strengths:

• Comprehensive Analytics Integration: Explo offers robust integration capabilities, connecting to diverse sources into a unified embedded analytics platform. 
• Flexible Reporting and Visualization: The platform excels in offering a range of customizable reporting and visualization options.
• Real-Time Data Processing: Dashboards immediately update with real-time data, enabling teams to quickly tailor their data presentation to specific business needs and preferences.
• AI Integration: The Explo AI add-on allows users to create visualizations with a single natural language prompt and easily make modifications by asking.
• High Customer Satisfaction: Explo boasts an impressive satisfaction rating on G2, with 98 out of 100. This high rating reflects the platform’s effectiveness, user-friendliness, and support.
• Price: With a free option to explore internal BI and an affordable Growth plan for embedded analytics for only $695 per month, Explo has the most affordable option for organizations aiming to add an embedded analytics solution.

Limitations:

• Integration Complexity: While Explo is designed to be user-friendly, integrating any embedded analytics platform into existing systems can require a modern data stack designed for embedded analytics.
• Ready-to-Use Solution: Its out-of-the-box functionality might not appeal to those who prefer building everything from scratch, despite the significant time and resource savings.

Overall Review:

Explo is a powerful, user-friendly platform ideal for businesses seeking efficient, reliable, and versatile embedded analytics solutions. Its high customer satisfaction ratings and robust feature set make it a top choice for organizations looking to integrate comprehensive analytics into their software. 

For businesses and developers interested in elevating their analytics capabilities with a top-rated platform, explore the Launch plan or start your 7-day free trial. 

Final Review

Embedded BI platforms have become essential for modern software businesses in integrating real-time analytics, reporting, and dashboards directly into applications. These tools enhance decision-making with features like comprehensive reporting, user-friendly self-service capabilities, and interactive dashboards. While the available options for embedded BI have grown significantly, many of the platforms do not fully natively integrate into existing software applications or require significant implementation plans. Among its competitors, Explo is the only platform that offers white-labeled, native embedding, reporting from a wide variety of data sources, at an affordable price and speedy implementation. Schedule a demo today to learn more.