The importance of data to all aspects of business has led to a rise in the use of embedded analytics software. Casey McGuigan, product manager of Cranbury, N.J.-based Infragistics, talked with StrategicCIO360 about the trend, why it matters and how you can best use the tool in your organization.
What’s the reason for rising interest in embedded analytics?
A key reason why embedded analytics is increasingly gaining elevated prominence across all industries is because businesses are no longer willing to accept gut- or intuition-based decisions to guide them. Embedded analytics is popular due to its ability to sharpen the decision-making process by basing it on hard facts.
Embedded analytics allow organizations to integrate analytical capabilities and visualize reports and dashboards into their existing applications to bring real-time data insights into the hands of decision-makers. Two of the main uses of embedded analytics are to enhance organizational data-driven decision-making and to complement existing software products.
What are the advantages of embedded analytics?
The advantages of embedded analytics systems to the end user are its ability to deliver real-time reporting, interactive data visualization and advanced analytics, directly into an enterprise business application so that business users can easily access and utilize data.
In taking a closer look, we find that enterprises and independent software vendors benefit from embedded analytics due to its ability to increase the performance of data-driven cultures, improve decision-making, enhance productivity, sharpen the competitive edge and increase revenue.
Embedded analytics provide a deeper understanding of markets and customers when you can spot trends in your data, staying a step ahead of your competitors. Users spend more time in an app because embedded analytics provide more data points without the need to go to another source. Apps also become stickier as you collect more data as users become less likely to switch to another app because your app contains useful information collected over time. This in turn increases customer satisfaction.
When you increase customer satisfaction, application usage and provide your customers the ability to make better, faster decisions based on data—you will also increase your revenue streams.
Embedded analytics can:
● Identify business opportunities, gain a deeper insight into customer journeys, and
proactively identify weaknesses in your product before they grow serious.
● Help organizations become more agile and maximize resources for success.
● Keep everyone in the organization in the know and aware of company goals,
customer satisfaction and more.
● Identify new growth avenues—tying company insights into market trends can
help uncover new revenue streams.
Which industries are using embedded analytics?
Various industries such as healthcare, finance and banking, retail, manufacturing and education use embedded analytics for both internal and commercial purposes. For example, the cybersecurity innovator Sensato reports that after embedding analytics into their system, they accelerated their visualization time-to-market by a factor of 10. They now have the ability to make sense of massive amounts of data and analyze it so that security experts can develop more sophisticated protection strategies.
Another example is database productivity company Atanasoft, which powers its two main products, DataGEM and AtanaSuite, with embedded analytics to bring data into context and to maintain and share multiple versions of their dashboards. Other companies using embedded analytics to drive their decision-making include Netflix and Spotify, which collect data about which songs, movies, artists, etc. their subscribers are listening to. This data helps shape their upsell and engagement strategies by determining relevant recommendations that they think their subscribers will like.
How is embedded analytics used in the decision-making process?
An organizational data-driven culture can help businesses make sound decisions at the moment of impact, which can improve outcomes. Data-driven decision-making doesn’t leave room for experimentation or instincts; therefore, risks are at a minimum.
When businesses realize the true power of analytics and the value of their data, everyone within the organization—from sales managers, human resources specialists and product developers to designers, marketing managers and business analysts—are empowered to make more intelligent decisions with data.
How can CIOs determine when to buy or build embedded analytics tools?
Companies tend to build their own embedded analytics solution when they feel no off the shelf tool corresponds with their needs. However, many “out of the box” embedded solutions today offer the same features as custom tools and can be implemented in less time.
