Introduction

As a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, understanding your customers' analytics requirements is vital. Your customers have various questions about their sales process and customer demographics that, when answered, can significantly enhance their business operations. Due to this need, your customers may begin to ask you about adding analytics natively within your platform to help them answer their common questions.

Some examples of questions your customers want to answer are:

• What's the current number of leads in stage X?
• What's the average time from the first contact to sale close?
• If a contact originated from a particular ad campaign, what's the rate of Closed Won?
• Is Google an effective channel for closing a sale in my business? How about Facebook?
• And more…

Providing these answers directly within your platform becomes critical as your business grows. While exporting data via CSV might suffice at an early stage, it becomes a potential risk as you scale, with customers possibly exporting their data to more capable platforms.

How Industry Giants Approach Advanced Analytics

Industry leaders like Salesforce and Hubspot have recognized this customer need and incorporated direct solutions into their platforms.

Salesforce, for instance, developed Salesforce Reporting, a feature allowing the creation of custom datasets and visualizations directly within the platform. According to their statistics, teams using Salesforce reporting saw:

• A 28% surge in sales revenue
• A 27% increase in the win rate
• A 29% rise in sales productivity
• A 25% reduction in ramp time for new hires

Source: Salesforce FY23 Customer Success Metrics. Base: Sales Cloud n=1,072-1,157

This indicates the immense value Salesforce Reporting provides to its customers. Salesforce capitalizes on this by including these features in their enterprise package, justifying a cost as much as $75+ higher per seat compared to their standard offering without reporting.

Similarly, Hubspot introduced Hubspot Analytics, offering insights into common CRM metrics via tabular and visual data representations. Hubspot offers different pricing plans with varying levels of advanced reporting, with a price differential reaching $700+ per month. This way, Hubspot captures considerable value in their pricing structure, reflecting the benefits they offer to their customers through detailed reporting.

While integrating analytics directly into your platform can significantly enhance customer value and increase revenue per customer, developing these tools can be extremely costly and time-consuming, particularly as customer demands for additional features and data insights grow more complex.

So, what's the solution for SaaS businesses looking to incorporate advanced analytics without breaking the bank? Let's explore how modern embedded analytics tools come into the picture.

Using Modern Embedded Analytics Tools

Today's cutting-edge embedded analytics tools offer an array of high-impact features straight from the get-go. These include sophisticated filtering, intricate charting, advanced mapping, automated data layers for caching, analytics tracking, API for seamless customer setup and management, a drag-and-drop chart interface, and customizable styling options.

Not only do they encompass a host of functionalities, but these tools also have inbuilt compliance with standards such as SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, and GDPR, easing your compliance burden. In addition, many such tools offer no-code interfaces that enable non-technical team members like customer success managers (CSMs) to make modifications for users. This can help in creating an elevated, high-touch customer interaction.

Finally, the rise of artificial intelligence has paved the way for the most advanced embedded analytics tools to integrate features that can expedite answering customer queries. This is achieved with the assistance of natural language processing systems in-app, enabling faster, more intuitive interaction with data and analytics.

This surge in the sophistication of analytics tools is revolutionizing the way businesses approach and understand their data, bringing a new level of insight and understanding to their operations.

But with a plethora of options out there, which tool offers the best combination of features and ease of use? Let's take a look at one such tool: Explo.

Introduction to Explo: The Advanced Reporting Tool

Explo, an embedded data visualization tool, presents an effective solution for swift development of advanced analytics features in your application. With just a few lines of code, Explo allows you to offer analytics and reporting directly within your application.

Integration is simple: Connect your data warehouse, set up customer-level data security and segmentation, and then enable your users to visualize their data on your platform. Explo offers an Explore product for viewing pre-configured visualizations and a Report Builder for self-service data exploration.

Rapid Deployment of Advanced Reporting like Salesforce and Hubspot Analytics with Explo

Explo enables you to set up advanced reporting within your platform swiftly and efficiently. You can recreate an experience akin to Salesforce Reporting or Hubspot Analytics in just a matter of minutes.

Let's walk through a quick tutorial of setting up custom reporting for CRM data using the power of Explo:

1. Connect your data warehouse: Choose from our diverse connection offerings. This enables us to read your database and create visualizations based on real-time data.

In this example, our data warehouse comprises a Contacts table with the following columns: Contact Name, Lead Stage, Date Created, and Lead Source.

2. Create default reports: From this table, we can generate default reports, which can be customized per customer. This allows your customer support managers to offer a personalized experience to their users.

Default reports provide a foundation for your customers to start thinking about their data. They can modify these reports and refine the queries to get more in-depth answers.

For instance, you could set up reports to answer frequently asked questions such as:

• What stage are each of my contacts in?

• How many Closed Won deals do I have for each of my Lead Sources?

• In the last month, how effective has Facebook been as a lead generation platform? How about the last 3?

• Embed the visualizations in your application: Once you're satisfied with the experience, you can quickly embed it into your application with just a few lines of code.
  

Concluding Thoughts

Incorporating advanced reporting into your CRM SaaS platform is crucial for business growth. It not only improves your customers' sales processes but also allows you to increase revenue per seat given the value you provide. However, creating and managing custom analytics can be a massive undertaking in terms of time, effort, and finances. Leveraging a third-party platform like Explo can help you meet your business objectives concerning analytics quickly, without significant engineering investment.

Investing in powerful analytics is not just a strategic business decision but also a commitment to your customers. Giving your customers the right insights can empower them to make data-driven decisions, ultimately improving their business efficiency and profitability.