Embedded analytics make apps look beautiful, but other than aesthetics, are there competitive reasons to embed analytics on your pre-existing applications or internal web portals?
Absolutely. From increased user value to increased revenue, these are the top four competitive advantages of embedded analytics.
What are embedded analytics?
Embedded analytics are charts, graphs, dashboards, and KPI widgets that appear within a proprietary app but are generated by a separate business intelligence or data visualization tool. It’s the act of integrating analytics and business intelligence content to empower all types of users with data-analysis capabilities.
To the app user, embedded analytics are often indistinguishable from the rest of the app in feel or branding. Additionally, embedded analytics provide extra value to the app by increasing adoption, fast-tracking business growth, and enabling the app users to harness data and discover deeper insights.
Awesome applications need awesome embedded analytics. Here are 3 data-savvy companies who’ve crushed it with embedded analytics.
Other than adding stunning visual reports to your app, why should you consider embedding analytics?
Companies use embedded analytics to:
- Give customers access to the data they need, when they need it
- Enhance their customer experience
- Generate new revenue opportunities by expanding app offerings to reporting or dashboard views
- Provide common reference points and a common data language within and across teams
- Plus - it’s a lot cheaper to embed than it is to build an analytics platform in house!
Embedded analytics is an easy way to make data accessible—and look good doing it. But embedded analytics can also increase customer retention, education, and lifetime value. Let’s look at how.
1) Added value in your application
You can measure the value of your product by measuring how consistently users access the product (number of logins), how deeply they use the product (number of tools used), and how engaged they are with the product (session length). By embedding analytics into your app, you decrease logins and increase session lengths because users don’t have to leave the app to build a report or run numbers. They can access their key metrics right where they do the work.
Embedded analytics like dashboards and internal reports give users increased insights into their data—from within your app. They can use those insights to take action within your app, perhaps driving them to use existing tools that they otherwise might not use.
And while not everyone understands the value of data, for those in the know, analytics are an indispensable differentiator. If you don’t have them, buyers will go with a competitor.
2) Culture of data-driven decisions
Embedded analytics produce a flywheel of data-driven decisions. When the team gains access to data visualizations within your app, they make decisions based on that data, which drives their need for more analytic abilities.
Data visualizations have a unique ability to surface insights from dense lines of data. And while the team often cherry-picks KPIs to include in data visualizations, dashboards and visual reports have the unique ability to give individuals a starting place to learn about data discovery. Visualizations help people draw correlations and make connections, sometimes when they’re not even looking for them!
3) Speed and agility from plug-and-play analytics
Building new products and adding new features are endlessly complex digital projects. Embedding analytics helps you take the shortcut to added value. By buying data visualizations that are ready to insert into your tool, you access a fast, inexpensive, effective, and beautiful solution.
Further, when you build your own analytics tools into your software, you’re on your own. You’re in charge of budgeting resources, which means your team is responsible for delays or failures. By embedding analytics, you partner with a company that does data visualization all day, every day. They can provide you with the right analytics tools for your app, and since they’ve already built their product, they can ward off potential pitfalls.
Look for a partner who offers white-labeled visualizations, who has experience building data visualizations and embedding analytics tools in third-party apps, and who will work with you upfront with a proof of concept (POC) to ensure it matches your branding and aesthetic.
4) Data as a product
Adding data visualizations like dashboards and reports in your product adds immediate value to the customer. That’s value that your company should capitalize on by increasing the price for apps that include analytics.
Discussions about raising prices are minefields for many companies. You have to balance adding value to the customer with stretching already-thin budgets. The bottom line is, yes, you should be charging more for your data analytics.
But you don’t have to lose existing customers to offer analytics products. Test several options, gather customer feedback, and understand your market before you make a wholesale change to add analytics across the board and raise prices at the same time.
Consider these options:
- Add analytics as an add-on product charged at a set rate per month in addition to the monthly subscription
- Add analytics to higher tiers and raise prices only for that category.
- Add limited data visualizations and analytics capabilities to all tiers, with the option to unlock further visualizations and capabilities at higher pricing tiers.
Because analytics add so much value and expand your product offering, your product often becomes desirable to a wider range of users. Use that to your advantage by expanding user types and seat options.
Add value quickly through partnerships
Data visualization, data analytics, and reporting have moved from elite product offerings to essential tools in every product. By partnering with a business intelligence software for beautiful, branded, and white-labeled embedded analytics, you can quickly add value to your product.
Learn how Dundas BI empowers software vendors to differentiate their applications and maximize customer satisfaction with beautiful, embedded analytics.
About the Author
Tamara Scott is the Research and Content Manager at TechnologyAdvice.com. She writes at the intersection of technology, software, marketing, and customer education.
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