Learn when to buy an embedded analytics solution and when to build your own, and what are the pros and cons of both options.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. So, you’ve decided that it’s time to put the power of data into your products and services. Good decision! Embedding analytics into your apps is no longer just ‘’nice to have’’; this kind of functionality is nowadays. It is of imperative importance. According to a survey conducted by Reveal, the main business reasons end-users want business intelligence/data analytics software is to make smarter, data-driven business decisions (45%), understand business problems better (44%), and increase work productivity (43%). Whether you want to improve productivity, get ahead of your competitors, make more intelligent business decisions, or increase your revenue, embedding analytics into your apps will help you achieve that and much more. So, the question is should you buy an established solution or build yourself an embedded analytics software from scratch? This article compares the pros and cons of buy vs build to help you make up your mind. Embedded analytics is software that integrates business intelligence (BI) capabilities and data visualizations directly into other existing software applications’ user interfaces (UI). The goal of an embedded analytics solution is to improve the context and usability of the data for all business users. Users can extract valuable insights in the context of their workflow and then promptly act upon those insights. The benefits of embedded analytics are tremendous for everyone. The robust capabilities and functionalities of embedded analytics platforms allow users to easily understand the meaning of data, uncover insights, and build reports and dashboards independently. That is a great benefit for ITs and data analytics experts, too; it frees up their time to focus on their own important tasks. Another great benefit of embedded analytics is that it provides you with all the important data and insights directly into the applications that your users are already using. That eliminates the need to switch between different apps and, of course, increases productivity as distractions are shed to the minimum. Cultivating data-driven decision-making, however, is perhaps the greatest benefit of embedded analytics. In-context analytics enables analytical thinking and allows your users to make faster and smarter business decisions based on the information available at the moment or visible on the specific screen that they are viewing. Data is more legitimate and solid than a gut feeling, but just because you are making decisions based on data, that doesn’t mean that these decisions will always be correct. That is very important to note, so you don’t forget or neglect to continuously measure and monitor everything that is going on around your data.
