Saying Good-Bye to Traditional BI — Welcoming & Embracing Embedded Analytics

Data is accumulated at an unprecedented rate. While it’s good to have access to information collected from multiple sources throughout the customer journey, as an industry we have failed to convert this data into useful analytics. To enable strategic data-driven decisions to be made within the organization, the workplace should have accessibility to powerful & embedded analytics within their current application workflow.

To kickstart this effort, businesses should determine what data is relevant and how it can be optimized to implement sales efforts. The vital concerns about data should be addressed using products that drive positive user experience and are full of positive interactions with data. To address data-centric concerns, users consider business intelligence tools to collect & organize data and make the most impactful business decisions.

Even though they are both different implementations of business intelligence, embedded analytics, and traditional business intelligence tools host different features to their users. Let’s dive deeper and break down the strength of each approach:

The Outdated Approach — Traditional Business Intelligence

Based on the business system & functioning of an organization, traditional BI builds top-down models for data analysis and reporting. Even though traditional BI tools support large-scale deployment with hundreds of users, the top-down model requires heavily-governed data warehouses that need close monitoring by IT professionals.

It is no longer hidden that the BI industry is going through a transition. Business teams look for strategies to collect proper data and analyze it to ensure smooth decision-making. However, traditional BI struggles to meet this need due to operational inefficiency, higher costs, and failure to provide the valuable insights that customers require.

Difficulties experienced by users while implementing traditional BI:

• Lack of insightful data and value
• Complex data solutions
• Doesn’t deliver expected ROI due to its rising costs
• Complex day-to-day operational processes
• Time-consuming implementation processes
• Large investments required
• Inflexible data modeling structures

A current traditional BI customer may not be able to measure business performance with a system that solely relies on historical data and previous results to provide analysis. Whereas, embedded analytics came into the light so that business users could make accurate decisions based on data diversification & instant availability of insights.

Also, traditional BI tools aren’t designed to be embedded, nor do they ensure security. Their architectural design and other features do not integrate easily and are not scalable. The one-size-fits-all approach in BI tools leaves no space for a customized experience for the end-user.

The lack of embedded analytics represents that the accumulated data isn’t presented in a systematic method for business decision-makers. With the introduction of embedded analytics, one can experience improved work management, increased efficiency, integrated workflow, and overall robustness.

The Key to Modern Business — Embedded Analytics

Embedded analytics is an advanced approach to using collected data in an application and the ability of data visualization inside of an app where it needs to be. Presenting data in the form of dashboards, well-maintained reports and previous history within the workflow improves the decision-making process.

Embedded analytics require solutions that are specifically designed for embedded use cases. Application data collected can be presented automatically, ensuring that the workflow system is sincerely followed by employees. Further, embedded analytics lessens the frequent involvement of IT teams that frustrates users unable to generate relevant reports in a time-bound manner. This reduction in cost will encourage small organizations to spend less on upfront costs and train employees about the use of analytics platforms.

Advantages offered by Embedded Analytics:

Cost reduction in deployment & implementation cycles

Control over-analytical functionality

Flexibility and scalability in data modeling requirements

Users remain in the application

Accessibility to real-time insights on business-critical KPIs

360 view dashboard to essential business info

Wrapping Up

The Traditional BI approach has failed many business users but it is evident that embedded analytics will continue to gain pertinence in the future as more users become data literate and businesses become fully data-centric. Embedded analytics is a proven solution for data-driven organizations looking out to enhance operational efficiency, maximize ROI, and generate business value.

Polestar helps you cost-effectively embed powerful dashboards into applications, products, and web portals with our range of analytics solutions, ultimately scaling your business growth and making analytics efficient and easy to use for every business user. Get in touch today!