
<ul class="anchorlinks">
	<li><a href="#what">What is embedded BI?</a></li>
	<li><a href="#buy">Buy or build — which should you choose?</a></li>
	<li><a href="#growth">Embedded BI’s growth potential</a></li>
	<li><a href="#consider">Things to Consider When Evaluating Embedded BI</a></li>
</ul>


<p>Every company is becoming a data company, and the ability to harness data and analytics separates industry leaders from the rest of the pack. Customers are demanding actionable intelligence in the applications, products, and services they use daily, and companies of all kinds are scrambling to give it to them.</p>


<p>Savvy product leaders know they need to equip their users with robust insights derived from analyzed data, but building these features from scratch can be a daunting undertaking. The solution: Buy and embed an industry-leading analytics platform into your core offering.</p>


<p>Buying analytics instead of building them helps companies go to market faster, see ROI from analytics sooner, focus on their core competency, benefit from incremental improvements over time, and much more. It’s <em>the </em>way to go for organizations that are serious about delivering the best analytics experience to their users.</p>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="what">What is embedded BI?</h2>


<p>Simply put, “embedded analytics” are bits of actionable intelligence <a href="https://www.sisense.com/blog/embedded-foodservice-analytics-feed-users-need-for-data/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">seamlessly infused into customer-facing products</a>, applications, or services. This intelligence can take countless forms, from helping users understand their purchasing habits over time to complex charts and graphs of running distances and speeds. The opportunities are limitless — if you have data, an imagination, and a robust analytics platform, you can make it real.</p>


<p>Imagination is an underrated part of making analytics in your product really meaningful for users. Don’t settle for just dropping a data point or dashboard into your application.</p>


<p>Modern embedded BI platforms for SAAS companies (and companies in any other industry) are designed to facilitate custom analytics that don’t just perfectly match your brand look and feel — this should be a basic requirement — but also allow your product team to make the experience of interacting with the data make sense. Custom icons and animations bring the data to life, increase customer satisfaction and stickiness, and ultimately deliver a more robust user experience.</p>


<p><strong>&gt;&gt;&gt; Looking to stand out in your market? The key is embedded analytics.</strong></p>


<p><a class="action-btn " href="https://www.sisense.com/whitepapers/stand-out-in-your-markets-how-product-managers-can-deliver-innovative-data-experiences-to-end-users-oem/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Unlock your product&#8217;s potential</a></p>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="buy">Buy or build — which should you choose?</h2>


<p>If you’re like many product leaders, your first thought when reading about embedded analytics was likely some version of, “My team can build that!”</p>


<p>And maybe you can. Scratch that, you definitely <em>can</em>, but you have to ask yourself if you can do it quickly, efficiently, and while devoting sufficient time, energy, and resources to this new effort while still focusing on your core competency. Even if you decide to start with an open source embedded BI system and adapt it to fit your needs, you&#8217;re signing up for a massive undertaking that will require you to hire new developers, take time to develop a V1, rigorously test it, and maintain and support it down the line.</p>


<p>Most companies don&#8217;t have the time or resources to go this route. What’s worse, many companies that try to build embedded analytics and bi tools from scratch end up scrapping the project and either buying an embedded analytics solution anyway or dropping analytics entirely — a dangerous misstep in an era where analytics in products and services are becoming a must-have.</p>


<p><a href="https://www.sisense.com/blog/embedded-analytics-the-build-vs-buy-debate-is-pointless/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Building analytics</a> from the ground up is a bigger lift than many teams realize. Even companies who manage to get a V1 off the ground often encounter complex hurdles they didn’t foresee: connecting to multiple data sources, application security that scales with the business, understanding testing failures — these are all reasons why it’s a better decision for most teams to buy and embed analytics instead of building.</p>


<p>Buying instead of building turns analytics into a predictable cost, saves you from hiring new teammates with analytics building skills, and gives you a secure, scalable tool you can rely on for years to come. </p>


<p>Modern BI platforms built for embedding can help you handle growth in number of users and number/size of datasets with ease. They also help you start working toward ROI from day one, versus waiting until your newly minted analytics developers have scraped together your minimum viable product. Best of all, they have huge teams of BI and analytics experts working tirelessly to improve the analytics product, meaning you reap incremental improvements year over year that you didn’t have to devote a single dev hour to building!</p>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="growth">Embedded BI’s growth potential is huge</h2>


<p>Companies looking to stay competitive in evolving markets must act now. A recent survey by the Eckerson Group found that, “Independent software vendors report that embedded analytics increases the value of their applications by 43% and enables them to charge 25% more on average.” The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to analytics: They will be in every application, product, and service sooner than later. Buy and embed today, or you might not get the chance tomorrow.</p>


<p>It’s not all doom and gloom, though! The right embedded analytics platform takes what’s already great about your core offering and makes it even better, while saving you some serious dev time and heavy lifting. Seamlessly infuse actionable intelligence that perfectly matches your brand look and feel into your core offering with a third-party embedded analytics platform. </p>


<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Fleetworthy Solutions evolves the transportation industry with embedded business intelligence</h3>


<p>Embedded analytics will <a href="https://www.sisense.com/blog/ai-for-all-augmented-analytics-infused-everywhere/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">revolutionize every industry</a>. Take Fleetworthy Solutions, a national leader in fleet safety, compliance, and risk management: Fleetworthy uses Sisense to collect, analyze, and display data for fleet owners so they can stay on top of compliance standards within their industry.</p>


<p>Every bit of vital intelligence users see is infused seamlessly into the Fleetworthy experience. Users get actionable intelligence right where they need it so they can make more informed decisions on the fly and act quickly, improving outcomes and reducing decision fatigue. </p>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="consider">Things to Consider When Evaluating Embedded BI &amp; Analytics</h2>


<p>When looking for an <a href="/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-embedded-data-analytics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">embedded BI</a> solution it&#8217;s important to look into <a href="https://www.sisense.com/blog/ultimate-guide-embedded-analytics-solutions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a few key areas</a> to ensure that the solution you choose will meet your needs. For example:</p>


<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"><iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eaK_9tTM808?feature=oembed" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


<ul>
	<li><strong>Standalone</strong>: Does the solution require additional tools from third-party vendors in order to manage, visualize, and integrate data?</li>
	<li><strong>Scalability</strong>: How much data can a single server process? How many users can access and query the database at the same time?</li>
	<li><strong>Time to Market</strong>: How long until the embedded solution is actually up an running for customers? Days/weeks or months/years? Embedding BI should save you time and resources, not make your timeline longer.</li>
	<li><strong>Customization</strong>: What kind of API sets, custom visualizations, plugins, CSS customizations, and white labeling options are available?</li>
	<li><strong>Security</strong>: What kind of options are available to make sure the right people see the right data? Does the software you&#8217;re looking at have <a href="https://www.sisense.com/glossary/multi-tenant/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multi-tenant</a> security and role level<a href="https://www.sisense.com/guides/guide-everything-you-need-to-know-about-security-in-a-bi-solution/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> BI security</a>?</li>
</ul>


<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Build your company&#8217;s future with embedded BI</h2>


<p>Today’s customers understand how much they can improve their daily lives with actionable intelligence. If you haven&#8217;t started adding analytics to your products yet, now is the time to act. You’ll have a quicker time to market, save resources time, and cost, and provide a new and powerful experience within your product, backed by a team of BI pros who know how to help your company succeed.  </p>


<p><strong>&gt;&gt;&gt; Looking to stand out in your market? The key is embedded analytics.</strong></p>


<p><a class="action-btn " href="https://www.sisense.com/whitepapers/stand-out-in-your-markets-how-product-managers-can-deliver-innovative-data-experiences-to-end-users-oem/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Unlock your product&#8217;s potential</a></p>


<p><strong><em>Ashley Kramer</em></strong><em> is Chief Product &amp; Marketing Officer at Sisense and has over 15 years of experience scaling hypergrowth companies including Tableau, Alteryx, Amazon, Oracle, and NASA. She has a strong track record of transforming product and marketing organizations and effectively defining and delivering the end-to-end product strategy and vision. Ashley is passionate about data, analytics, AI, and machine learning.</em></p>


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