Finding the perfect embedded analytics solution can quickly become an overwhelming venture. This is especially true for businesses today in such a competitive atmosphere in our data-forward world.

So how can you find the right solution to meet both the needs of your business and your customers?

We’ve come up with five important facets you will need, regardless of your industry or market. Keep reading to find out what they are, and how you can use embedded analytics to optimize your SaaS platform and offerings.

Problems with Traditional BI Platforms

First, let’s look at how much BI solutions have taken hold of user-focused platforms lately. This traditional approach has arguably created a more staggering environment with the saturated market of BI solutions. What’s more, traditional BI solutions don’t offer much out-of-the-box customization capabilities required for most SaaS platforms.

Customization is critically important in a SaaS landscape that is becoming more centered around end-user accessibility, affordability, and automation. Traditional BI solutions are behind in these areas, where embedded analytics thrive.

Let’s explore this further:

• Accessibility – By most modern development standards, traditional BI solutions are more complex. They are purposely not as user-friendly for non-technical teams, making data literacy more difficult for those who aren’t traditional analysts. This is because they are designed for data engineering and data science teams as opposed to your customer end-user.
• Affordability – The investment required to customize traditional BI solutions are typically very expensive and require long development cycles. They typically require enhancements to your infrastructure as well. Not only does this increase your deployment costs, but ongoing maintenance is much higher than a more modern embedded solution that is designed to integrate seamlessly into your app or web portal.
• Lack of Features – Traditional BI solutions are either not fully mobile, or lack end-user customization capabilities. This makes self-service data reporting more difficult than it has to be. It essentially creates issues for real-time data access, decreasing customer experience and creating more workflow interruptions for developers and app users.

How Can Embedded Analytics Help?

Modern embedded analytics solutions are designed to be lightweight and easily integrate into your existing SaaS platform. More so, they are super customizable to the point where your end-users will have no idea they are using a 3rd party solution within your app.

Here are a few key areas where embedded analytics can help:

• Enhance end-user engagement within your SaaS application
• Allow non-technical users to read, edit, create, and analyze personalized dashboards and reports
• Reduce the need for extensive IT and data science resources
• Connect various data sources for a simplified collection of streamlined data
• Allow a group of end-users to view real-time business metrics for valuable decision-making.

Top 5 Features in an Embedded Analytics Solution

While both traditional BI and modern embedded analytics solutions strive to create essentially the same goals for data, the key differences are notable. Here are a few examples of features you will find in an embedded analytics solution, and why they are the perfect fit for any SaaS use case. 

Security & Compliance Integration

Security and compliance is understandably a top consideration when providing data access to end-users. While data is heavily relied upon, it is also one of the most sensitive and riskier assets.

Embedded analytics solutions are designed for compliance and can integrate enterprise security measures already present in a company’s SaaS platform. They allow more control in the hands of a business for access control and authorization roles, so reports can only be seen by those with permission. Many of these are trackable as well, allowing companies to be more hands-on with their encompassing security efforts. 

Self-Service Reporting

Consider how much it matters to empower end-users with the analysis of massive datasets and the creation of custom reports and dashboards. Without the dependence on data scientists or customer support teams, non-technical users can measure, interpret, and manipulate data easily - with no coding.

This enhances data literacy and data usage for your customer end-users, maximizing customer satisfaction and retention. 

Mobility

Remote work is at an all-time high. As a result, mobile usability is a highly demanded feature within many business aspects, including data visualization.

A modern embedded analytics solution can equip your SaaS platform with mobile-friendly data visualization. With an improved mobile experience, you customer end-users can gain value from your app from any device or location. 

Customization & Flexibility

Analytics solutions should always work according to the needs of your customer. Fortunately, with embedded analytics solutions, personalization is a top priority.

Customization adds more value to your application as it becomes tailored specifically to your desires. Dashboards, user permissions, access rights, and more are provided in a custom fit according to the parameters and metrics that make sense to your company.

White Labeling

White labeling goes hand in hand with customization and flexibility. It allows embedding to occur without clashing with your desired formatting. This means your original fonts, themes, and user experience elements are all met with embedded visuals.

It may not seem like a big deal on the surface, but differences in simple business aesthetics matter more to end-users than you think.

Wrap Up

Finding the best solution for you requires research and an understanding of what it means to fully support your software and data ventures. Request a trial and see for yourself if Explo is the right embedded analytics solution for your SaaS platform.

Other Embedded Analytics Resources:

• Benefits of Embedded Analytics
• Embedded Analytics Uses Cases
• Embedded Analytics Applications
• Embedded Analytics Solution