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Introduction:  

In the era of data-driven decision-making, businesses are constantly seeking ways to extract valuable insights from their raw data to help them make data-driven business decisions. One such practice gaining significant attention is embedded analytics.  

Embedded analytics offers a seamless way for users to incorporate data analytics functionalities into their existing workflows, eliminating the need to navigate to complex interfaces and new tools. By embedding analytics within familiar applications, businesses can empower end-users with actionable insights while improving overall productivity and deriving better business outcomes.

What is Embedded Analytics?

Embedded analytics refers to the integration of analytical capabilities directly within business applications, enabling users to analyze and visualize their real-time data without having to switch between separate platforms. By using embed analytics it allows users to perform data analysis and reporting tasks within their daily operations. 

This process is done by integrating interactive dashboards, visualizations, reports, and other analytical features directly into software applications for the end users to consume daily. 

Embedded Analytics VS Traditional Analytics 

What is traditional analytics? 

Traditional analytics refers to the process of analyzing data using standalone tools or software platforms that are separate from the primary application or system. It involves extracting and transforming data from various sources before loading it into the analytics tool for analysis. The focus is primarily on historical data analysis and generating reports and dashboards to gain insights. 

What is Embedded Analytics? 

Embedded analytics integrates analytical capabilities directly within systems used by end-users, eliminating the need for separate analytics tools. It enables users to analyze real-time data without having to switch between different applications or interfaces. The emphasis is on providing actionable insights within the context of specific tasks or workflows, allowing users to make informed decisions instantly.

Some of the differences between Embedded Analytics and Traditional Analytics are tabulated below:

The Benefits of Embedded Analytics 

Integrating embedded analytics solutions in your business processes can benefit your organization in the following ways:

Real-time Insights: 

Embedded analytics provides real-time insights and data-driven decision-making capabilities directly within the context of functional workflows. This allows users to make decisions based on the latest information, enhancing overall efficiency. 

Less Learning Curve For Users: 

Embedded analytics promotes higher user adoption rates compared to standalone analytics tools because users can access powerful analytical capabilities without having to switch between different systems, leading to a more seamless and integrated experience.

Direct Data Access: 

With embedded analytics, users have direct access to relevant data and reports within their workflow, eliminating the need for manual data extraction and analysis. 

Customizable Dashboards: 

Embedded analytics allows organizations to create customized dashboards tailored to specific user roles or departments. This empowers users with personalized visualizations and key performance indicators (KPIs), ensuring they have the right information at their fingertips for efficient decision-making.

Increased Productivity: 

By embedding analytics into customer-facing applications, businesses can provide customers with interactive reporting and self-service capabilities to perform data analysis with ease.

Scalability : 

Embedded analytics solutions are designed to scale effortlessly as business needs evolve. They offer flexibility in terms of integrating with various data sources and accommodate frequently changing requirements.

Low on Cost: 

Embedding analytics within existing applications eliminates the need for additional software licenses or separate infrastructure investments. Leveraging existing technology investments reduces costs associated with deploying standalone analytics tools while maximizing return on investment.

Data Security: 

Embedded analytics solutions often inherit the security measures already implemented in the host application, ensuring data integrity and compliance with relevant regulations. 

Businesses effectively implement embedded analytics by leveraging powerful tools specifically designed for this purpose. These tools offer advanced functionalities that enable organizations to extract, analyze, visualize, and share data seamlessly. 

Let us discuss some factors to consider before investing in embedded analytics platforms. 

Factors For Selecting the Right Embedded Analytics Solution

Some of the key features of embedded analytics applications are mentioned below:

Data Integration with Data Sources: 

An embedded analytics tool should be capable of connecting to various data sources such as databases, data warehouses, cloud storage systems, and APIs. It should support different data formats for seamless integration.

Data Preparation and Modelling: 

The embedded analytics tool should help in transforming raw data into a structured format with ease. Processes like data cleansing, data mining, filtering, aggregation, joining tables, creating calculated fields, and handling missing values should be facilitated.

Visualization and Reporting: 

An embedded analytics tool should have the ability to create visually appealing and interactive dashboards and reports. It should offer a wide range of visualization options including bar charts, line graphs, scatter plots, treemaps, heatmaps, geospatial maps, etc and along with that users should be able to easily customize the build of visualizations by changing colors, fonts, labels, and layouts.

Advanced Analytics: 

An embedded analytics tool must offer advanced analytics capabilities such as hierarchical drill down, predictive analytics, linked insights, cross-filtering data from multiple dashboards, etc. These features enable organizations to gain deeper insights from their data to make informed decisions. 

Collaboration: 

The tool should allow users to collaborate on shared reports or dashboards by providing features like comments. Additionally, it should provide options for sharing insights with others through email notifications or embedding reports in other applications through APIs. 

Security and Access Control: 

Embedded analytics tools need robust security measures to ensure the protection of sensitive data. It should support role-based access control, allowing administrators to define different levels of access and permissions for users or user groups. Additionally, it should provide encryption capabilities for data in transit and at rest.  

An effective embedded analytics platform should own a comprehensive set of capabilities including data integration, data modeling and preparation, visualization and reporting, advanced analytics, collaboration and sharing features, security measures, as well as customization options. 

Embedding Analytics with Sprinkle Data 

Sprinkle Data stands out as a top choice in the market with its extensive features and capabilities for embedded analytics. Users can easily build their own embedded analytics solution with Sprinkle Data through APIs. By adding the user key and secret token in the URL, user-specific dashboards can be embedded directly in the user's application to share data insights daily with end users.

Conclusion:

Embedded analytics has emerged as a robust tool for organizations to gain deep insights and make data-driven decisions helping them to enhance user experiences, improve productivity, and drive positive business outcomes.

The incorporation of embedded analytics tools helps businesses unlock the full potential of their data by helping end users to analyze information in real-time, find meaningful insights, increase user engagement, and identify underlying patterns, trends, and anomalies that can lead to strategic decision-making.

Frequently Asked Questions FAQs – What is Embedded Analytics?  

What is an example of embedded analytics?
An example of embedded analytics is when a business intelligence dashboard is integrated directly into another software application such as a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

What is embedded analysis?
Embedded analysis refers to the practice of integrating analytical capabilities directly into other software applications so that users can perform complex analysis tasks without relying on separate tools or systems.

Why use embedded analytics?
Organizations use embedded analytics to derive data-driven insights which enables them to provide self-service analytics capabilities to end-users who may not have expertise in using standalone analytical tools.
 

How do you create embedded analytics?
To create embedded analytics, organizations need to identify the required data sources and metrics, integrate them into the target application, and ultimately provide a user-friendly interface for interacting with the embedded analytics functionalities.  

Give examples of some tools that offer embedded analytics.
Examples of some embedded analytics software include Sprinkle Data, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, Qlik Sense, and Sisense.
 

What is the difference between enterprise analytics and embedded analytics?
Enterprise analytics refers to a centralized system where an organization sets up a dedicated infrastructure (such as a data warehouse) and deploys separate analytical tools or platforms to cater to the needs of various users across the organization. On the other hand, embedded analytics is focused on integrating analytical capabilities directly into existing applications used by end-users so that they can access insights within their familiar workflow without relying on standalone tools.
 

What is the difference between embedded and standalone?
Standalone analytics tools are independent applications that require users to switch between different systems or interfaces for performing analysis tasks. Embedded analytics, on the other hand, is seamlessly integrated into other software applications so that users can access analytical capabilities within their existing workflows without needing to use separate tools. 

What are embedded analytics capabilities?
Embedded analytics capabilities include features such as interactive dashboards, various data visualizations, ad-hoc reporting, self-service querying and exploration, predictive modeling and forecasting, and real-time alerts or notifications based on patterns.

What are the four types of analytics?
The four types of analytics are
- descriptive (describing what has happened),
- diagnostic (explaining why it happened),
- predictive (forecasting what may happen in the future),
- prescriptive (suggesting actions to optimize outcomes).

Give applications of embedded analytics solutions.
Applications of embedded analytics can be found in the retail industry to track customer behavior and in the marketing industry to track campaign performance by embedded dashboards/reports in existing business applications.