7 Great Embedded Analytics Solutions – Which Embedded Analytics Solutions Should You Use?

However, data without the right analysis and reporting tools is just a waste of digital storage space. Analytics tools are essential for discovering patterns, creating meaningful reports, and even predicting forecasts or shifts in the market. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), analytics software is improving all the time, able to assess larger volumes of more granular data. The increasing value of these types of business tools is indicated by their market worth, set to reach $88.83 billion by the end of 2023, rising to a predicted $130.95 billion by 2028.

Data analytics are improving in more ways than just the gigabytes they can handle. As businesses demand more usefulness and accessibility from their tech stack, embedded analytics have become the “go-to” method for extracting answers from a range of platforms. Understanding how the best embedded analytics solutions work with the services companies use every day could help business leaders gain the competitive edge they need.

What Is Embedded Analytics

Data analytics is usually a major aspect of business intelligence (BI) tools. Many organizations utilize BI platforms to ingest data, analyze it, and present reports, visualizations, and actionable insights.

Standard BI platforms require data sources to be “plumbed in”, usually via data integration solutions such as ETL (extract, transform, load) or ELT (extract, load, transform). However, major challenges of modern business include constantly switching between multiple platforms or handling data siloes that mean you can’t even get the data where it needs to be.

The best embedded analytics solutions cut through that digital red tape. Embedded analytics means a BI or analytics service can be connected directly to the system you need it to work with. This could be for the purpose of displaying data within a digital report, where the data constantly updates if there are any changes. It could be to create a dashboard that means a particular team can see all the data they need within a single system rather than having to constantly flip back and forth between a BI platform and their legacy system.

Of course, embedded analytics can benefit clients and customers as well as internal users. It’s a way to make visualized data analysis swiftly available to anyone who might need it, for a range of purposes.

What is Embedded Analytics Used For

The uses of embedded analytics are really only limited by the data requirements of the organization in question.

Healthcare organizations could use an embedded analytics service to present findings from multiple patients as a single source of information for a specialist consolidating data on a particular disease for a study. Of course, HIPAA is a factor here, so the best embedded analytics solutions must also have compliance and security built in as standard.

A contact center might use embedded analytics to provide agents with real-time insights into their performance. An agent who can see that their wrap time went up significantly in the morning could work a little smarter in the afternoon to bring that KPI down. Prior to embedded analytics, that agent might have to wait for a daily or even a weekly report to understand how they were performing.

App developers could use embedded analytics to increase time-to-market. Access to multiple different data sources on app performance, latency, or even the satisfaction of beta users could help DevOps teams make faster, more relevant updates to apps and get them in front of consumers in record time.

Embedded analytics solutions also benefit consumers directly, as well as indirectly. Kodak, for example, uses Yellowfin BI (more on this solution below!) to create dashboards for print presses. These provide simple visualizations that make sense instantly, even to non-technical staff. Anyone who needs it can instantly obtain information on ink usage, color, and print passes, so they can understand how the press is performing and make tweaks accordingly.

Benefits of Using Embedded Analytics

Why is it so useful to have analytics embedded right into business software? The best embedded analytics solutions help organizations save time and improve efficiency, streamlining business processes while preventing needless data siloes.

Cost savings are a given when you work faster and smarter. But savings can come from other aspects of embedded analytics. Access to real-time data can change the way people work on a fundamental level. In the Kodak example, print operators can replace ink at the right time, book maintenance jobs, or report issues fast, cutting down wear and tear on the machines and preventing costly breakdowns.

Going back to the case of the call center agent adapting their way of working, imagine that applied across a whole office full of agents. Hundreds of small wins add up to massive financial benefits for an organization. Plus, the embedded analytics help contact center managers spot issues such as extended call wait times or a slew of complaints, and act accordingly.

Embedded analytics could create a dashboard within a CRM that instantly shows individual and team salesperson performance, or even details such as a percentage of customers cancelling orders, responding to emails, or connecting via social media. CRMs already hold a ton of essential sales and customer data. Embedding analytics into the mix makes sense of that data and transforms it into a usable business tool.

7 Embedded Analytics Solutions

How do businesses know which the best embedded analytics solutions are to work with? Ideally, these services should be easy to integrate with your existing business apps and tools. You also want to look for analytics solutions that provide the right type of data analysis and visualization for your needs.

Consider creating a list of essential or desired features before you start searching for your ideal software. For example, you might need to white-label the analytics or BI solution, giving the impression that it’s a part of your own tech offering. Check with the provider of the analytics solution that you can make it a seamless part of your own dashboards or user experience before committing to a purchase or subscription.

Here are seven of the most popular embedded analytics services and their features and benefits.

Tableau

Tableau from Salesforce offers a huge suite of data integration and management services, including Tableau Embedded Analytics. There are lots of options when it comes to embedded analytics but Tableau promotes their service as a way to differentiate products by presenting real-time or relevant data right inside the interface. Use cases include adding interactive data to blogs, mobile apps, or making knowledge bases more useful for internal users.

While Tableau is a respected name in data management, there can be a sharp learning curve when it comes to integrating it effectively with existing software and apps. This can make it off-putting for anyone who doesn’t have real expertise with analytics. However, it’s still one of the most popular embedded BI solutions in the world right now.

ThoughtSpot

One of the most pressing needs for businesses is the ability to bring data together from sources all over the world, including cloud-based SaaS, social media, and other online repositories. ThoughtSpot provides a low-code platform that helps developers or less technical staff utilize data visualization to provide better experience for both internal and external users.

ThoughtSpot leans heavily on AI-powered functionality, including the ability to ask questions in natural language thanks to large language models (LLM) that easily translate these queries in computational functions. ThoughSpot offers mobile and web apps to make it highly accessible for developers on the go.

Power BI Embedded

Microsoft’s Power BI Embedded focuses on the simplification of data via useful visualization, graphs, reports, and dashboards. There is a separate platform in which users can create distinct reports, but also the option to embed data into existing business systems and apps.

Power BI promotes the fact that users can distribute anything created in the platform for free, but upon research, that’s not really a wholly unique selling point. However, Power BI is very highly rated, mostly thanks to clean, simple visuals and how easy it is to get started with this platform.

Looker

Could we talk about data analytics without mentioning Google? Of course not, which is why Looker makes it onto our list of best embedded analytics solutions. Looker Embedded from Google is billed as a way to create apps with embedded analytics faster with improved user experiences and costs. Does it live up to the hype?

Reviews certainly suggest so. Favorite features include collaborative functions which connect various business systems and services for even more deeply integrated data, and how fast it is to create new dashboards using the intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

Sisense

Sisense allows IT professionals and business data managers to embed AI-powered analytics into just about any digital product or application. Unlike some other services that solely promote low-code functionality to make their offerings more attractive to less technical buyers, Sisense offers a “pro-code” option called Compose SDK which allows skilled developers to gain a much higher level of personalization from the platform.

Sisense has a number of use cases illustrated on the company website, including an interesting one relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Project SiCo helped collate and present data about the virus, creating a better understanding of the volumes of people susceptible to the disease and how many caught it and recovered. The ability to present complex and granular data in a visual way that’s quickly and easily understood is a major selling point for platforms like Sisense.

Qlik Sense

Qlik is another huge suite of data management tools, including Qlik Sense, a cloud-based, AI-powered data analytics platform. It promises AI-assisted insights for anyone, regardless of their skill level when it comes to handling data. Like ThoughtSpot, Qlik Sense utilizes ML and LLMs to allow natural language searches, but it also uses its ML capabilities for predictive analytics and forecasting.

There are automated functions in this platform, such as auto-generated insights, and the ability to embed highly visual dashboards in a range of applications, including Excel.

Yellowfin BI

We mentioned Yellowfin in our Kodak example of utilizing embedded BI dashboards in a real-life work setting. Yellowfin has dozens of such case studies on its website, and veers away from the usual “analytics” language, instead promoting its services as a method of “data storytelling.” Another major difference in the way this platform is marketed is that the usefulness to consumers and business users other than developers is highly promoted.

Yellowfin recommends its services as an ideal way to replace legacy analytics tools that are no longer fit for purpose. Other use cases are embedding analytics straight into operational workflows or creating apps that can deliver “insights as a service.” Yellowfin provides a full suite of BI tools, plus data integration tools like ETL.

Conclusion: Your Data, Your Way

The best embedded analytics solutions are ones that work well with the data you need and provide visualizations that make sense for your organization, employees, or customers. When considering your needs, liaise with your DevOps professionals to ensure BI and data analytics tools holistically cover the requirements of your organization. Think about who will need to use platform—do you need a low-code option, or will a pro-developer handle the integration of these embedded analytics? Do you need a full suite of data management tools, or are you only in the market for embedded analytics?

Answering these questions before searching will help you find the best embedded analytics solutions for your organization, so you can ensure your business data is working as hard as possible for you.