Embedded analytics has shifted from a nice-to-have feature to a must-have for modern SaaS products. For product managers (PMs), analysts, and engineers, building these dashboards isn’t just about enabling insights—it’s about solving for adoption, scalability, and governance.

But as teams embark on building customer-facing analytics into their product, the questions each persona asks are vastly different:

• PMs wonder, Will this drive adoption and retention, and provide users with the best experience? 
• Data analysts ask, Can we ensure consistency and governance?
• Engineers demand, How do we guarantee security, scalability, and low maintenance?

Stage 1: Identifying the Need for Embedded Dashboards

The journey begins with one question: Why do we need embedded dashboards?

For PMs, there are different reasons: drive adoption and retention by enhancing the user experience. Users expect data visibility directly within your product—no toggling between platforms or dealing with complicated exports. 

Whether your application has dashboards already, at some point, teams start to get more requests, and question whether it’s still valuable to build in house or outsource. 

How Explo helps:

Explo makes it easy to embed dashboards quickly, with a clean, no-code interface that improves product adoption. Make updates directly to dashboards and respond quickly to customers opposed to spending dev cycles on analytics.

Stage 2: Building the Dashboard

Once the need is clear, the next step is defining what to build.

For PMs, this is about prioritization:

• What data matters most to our customers? Customers might want to understand the revenue and cost over time, app usage metrics by their users, or operational insights such as staff productivity. What metrics can we prioritize to unblock users from answering these simple questions without relying on their data team?
• How can dashboards be intuitive and actionable? Delivering data is one thing, but we want to ensure it’s not just accessible – it’s also insightful and actionable for users, empowering them to make meaningful, informed decisions without constant reliance on their data team.

PMs collaborate with analysts to align on the “what” and “why.” Meanwhile, engineers assess the “how.”

For data analysts, defining the dashboard vision means governance and alignment:

• Are we using consistent SQL logic across internal and external dashboards?
• Will these dashboards deliver accurate insights without manual intervention?

For engineers, this phase includes planning for scalability and performance:

• Can we support high data loads without latency?
• Will this require significant ongoing maintenance?

How Explo helps:

• PMs: With Explo, PMs can easily build charts and graphs with drag-and-drop capabilities, and embed the dashboards into their product for customers.
• Data Teams: Explo integrates with your data warehouse (DWH) or database, ensuring metrics come from the same trusted source as internal reporting. Explo’s SQL-based environment ensures analysts can use familiar workflows to build dashboards. There’s no need to learn new tools or compromise on governance.
• Engineers: Engineers love Explo’s scalability—it integrates directly with your existing data infrastructure (DWH or DB) without pulling data into new systems. Security is also a priority. Explo supports multi-tenant and single tenant models ensuring customers can only access their own data is ensured and secured through a secure token system.

Check out these latest product updates for Explo's dashboard builder.

Stage 3: Collaboration Between Teams

Here’s where things can get tricky. Building embedded dashboards requires cross-functional collaboration, and friction between PMs, analysts, and engineers often slows progress.

PMs want rapid iteration:

• How quickly can we ship a beta version of the dashboards?
• Are we adding too much complexity for engineering teams?

Data analysts focus on governance and repeatability:

• Can we build dashboards in a way that is accurate and scales across multiple customers?
• How do we ensure the SQL logic isn’t duplicated or inconsistent?

Engineers prioritize performance and security:

• Is our solution scalable?
• How do we ensure customer data security without reinventing the wheel?

This is where Explo bridges the gap. 

How Explo helps:

• PMs: Explo reduces engineering dependencies, allowing PMs to ship dashboards faster.
• Data Teams: Explo’s Data Library allows teams to set up views on top of their data to maintain a data model that our dashboard builders can use.
• Engineers: Explo provides secure, embeddable dashboards with scalability built-in, minimizing technical debt.

With Explo, teams move from siloed workflows to unified collaboration—streamlining the development lifecycle.

See how Nash's product team delivered a full analytics offering with Explo.

Stage 4: Delivering and Iterating on Embedded Dashboards

Once dashboards are live, teams shift focus to monitoring, adoption, and scalability.

For PMs, success is measured by adoption and retention. Questions they ask include:

• Are users actively engaging with dashboards?
• Are dashboards unlocking new product usage or revenue streams?

For data analysts, monitoring is about maintaining governance:

• Are metrics accurate and aligned across teams?
• Can we iterate quickly as customer needs evolve?

For engineers, long-term maintenance is top of mind:

• Is the solution secure as we scale to more users or data?
• Can we support ongoing performance without constant monitoring?

How Explo helps:

• PMs: Explo provides analytics on the embedded dashboards and reports so that you know who is viewing dashboards and can send events to your product analytics tool or database.
• Data Teams: Dashboards built with Explo use your existing DWH or database, so data governance stays intact. Analysts can iterate without impacting engineers.
• Engineers: Explo’s SOC 2 Type II compliance means security is never a question. Plus, its architecture minimizes maintenance—freeing up engineering bandwidth.

Stage 5: Scaling Dashboards Across Customers

For many teams, the true test of an embedded analytics solution is scalability. As your product scales, dashboards must keep up—across more users, customers, and data.

PMs look at dashboards as an upsell tool:

• How can dashboards scale to meet growing customer needs?
• Can we customize dashboards for specific enterprise customers without rebuilding them?

For data analysts, scaling means maintaining consistent metrics across customers:

• Are dashboards built in a repeatable way?
• Can we serve self-serve insights to customers without additional manual work?

Engineers focus on ensuring performance doesn’t degrade:

• Are dashboards performant for larger datasets?
• Can we maintain security and uptime at scale?

How Explo helps:

• Scalability: Explo supports multi-tenant deployments with ease, ensuring dashboards scale alongside your product.
• Customization: Teams can customize dashboards for enterprise customers without duplicating effort—streamlining the process.
• Performance: Explo’s integration with your data infrastructure ensures data loads are optimized, even as usage grows.

Why Explo for Embedded Dashboards

At the center of these workflows lies Explo, an embedded dashboards solution to unify your team’s needs—streamlining dashboard creation while addressing each persona’s top concerns. In this blog, we’ll break down the lifecycle of building embedded dashboards, what goes through the minds of PMs, analysts, and engineers, and how Explo solves their pain points.

Building embedded dashboards is a complex process that requires input from PMs, analysts, and engineers—all with different priorities and concerns.

• PMs need dashboards to drive adoption and retention.
• Data analysts need to ensure governance and accuracy.
• Engineers need solutions that are secure, scalable, and easy to maintain.

By integrating directly with your data warehouse, Explo ensures all teams can work off the same source of truth while minimizing engineering overhead. Whether you’re building dashboards to drive adoption, support customers, or unlock new revenue, Explo is the key to faster, better embedded analytics.

Ready to build embedded dashboards without the headache? Learn more about Explo today.

‍