As business continues to move online, data has become an increasingly important metric. Whether you are collecting data from social media, website conversions, advertisements, or email newsletters, you need to understand it and leverage it to make decisions. This is where embedded analytics can help.
If you’re haven’t already taken the plunge with embedded analytics, you’re in the right place. In this article, we will share three helpful tips for embedded analytics beginners.
First, let’s discuss what embedded analytics really does.
What Is Embedded Analytics?
Embedded analytics is an integration of data from multiple sources directly into your software application or portal.
With embedded analytics, you can easily access, understand, and compare previous and current data. It can be used as an internal reporting tool to streamline daily workflow, or a customer-facing solution to improve user experience.
Overall, embedded analytics cuts down on the amount of time that you or your customers have to spend searching for and referencing data to help them perform tasks or answer questions.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, we will share our tips for getting started with embedded analytics.
Decide How You Will Build Your Solution: In-House or Outsourced?
If you are an embedded analytics beginner, the first thing you need to decide is whether you will build your solution in-house, or outsource the job.
It may seem like building your dashboard or portal in-house is best, but if you have a lot of data or a small developer team, it might be best to outsource the job. Here are some things to consider when making your decision:
Knowledge
Depending on your industry, embedded analytics and data reporting may not be core competencies for your business. If you don’t have developers and other IT professionals who understand how to build data architecture and embedded analytics solutions, you will need to find an outside source to help.
However, if you have team members that are already familiar with analytics and building dashboards or portals, completing the job in-house will help you save on costs.
Time
How quickly do you want to start using embedded analytics for your product or internal reporting? If you are on a tight timeline, outsourcing the job is the best choice. An embedded analytics firm will be able to provide their expertise and create solutions for you quickly.
If you don’t have time restrictions, then building your solution in-house will work. This will allow your in-house team to work on embedded analytics on their schedule, ensuring that they can successfully complete other projects as well.
Budget
Do you have a budget set aside for internal reporting and data analytics? If you do, how are you currently using it? Depending on how much of your existing budget you are using, you may be able to use some or all of this budget to hire an outside firm for help with embedded analytics.
If you don’t have an existing budget, do you have other means for hiring outside sources? If not, it is probably best to build out your embedded analytics solution in-house.
Choose Your Embedded Analytics Tool
Once you have decided whether you will build your embedded analytics solution in-house or via an outside source, you need to choose which software you will use.
There are a number of tools available for use, and each will have different offerings. To choose a tool, you will need to evaluate the following factors:
Data Size
How much data do you handle? If you have a large volume of data coming in, you need to be sure that your embedded analytics software is equipped for it. Be sure to research the amount of data that each embedded analytics solution can handle. Some tools do not do well with large datasets.
Security
What kind of data do you handle? If your portal or dashboard stores personal data, like contacts or sensitive health information, you need to be sure that you can keep it secure. Look into security and permissions in each embedded analytics tool. Some tools may not be able to offer the level of security that you need.
Data Variety
Do you have data coming in from a wide variety of sources? Is your data fairly straightforward, or is it more complex? If you have complicated data or data from more than a few sources, it is important to choose a solution that can handle those complexities. Some tools are better used for simpler and predictable data, while others can easily extract and transform varied data.
Most embedded analytics tools will offer a free trial, so you can explore their offerings and find one that is best for you. We recommend Tableau for embedded analytics beginners. It is a very intuitive, user-friendly platform. Get a free Tableau trial and try it out for 14 days.
Create a Strategy
After you have chosen a tool, you can begin to create a strategy for your embedded analytics. An embedded analytics strategy will help you make decisions for the future and stay on track with your business goals.
Here are some things to consider when creating your strategy:
How am I using embedded analytics?
Are you using embedded analytics for internal reports and growth tracking, or are you adding it in a product or application for customers?
An internal embedded analytics strategy should help to streamline daily processes and make information more accessible to everyone. If you are using embedded analytics as an internal tool, your strategy should detail who will maintain and develop dashboards, how the internal reporting process works, which permissions you will assign to different users and departments, how often you will review the data, and how you will measure success and growth using that data.
If you are using embedded analytics for customers, you need to focus your strategy on front-end design, ease of use, and security. Is your design consistent with color, layout, and graphic elements? Do you have an easy-to-follow structure that leads customers to the right place? Have you implemented security measures that will ensure your customers’ data is safe?
Is my solution adaptable?
The digital landscape is ever-changing, and the kinds of data that we collect and measure are changing along with it.
When building out your dashboard, think about your goals and consider how you might need to change your dashboard or portal as you grow. Make sure that your embedded analytics tool is scalable. Look for functions that can be used with a variety of data metrics. Use security permissions that will automatically update as new people come on board.
If you have created an embedded analytics solution that cannot be easily adapted to include new data sets, you may find yourself purchasing new software and rebuilding dashboards in the future.
Assistance for Embedded Analytics Beginners
Embedded analytics can be difficult to fully grasp, especially for data beginners. If you want to learn more about embedded analytics, dashboard design, Tableau, or internal reporting, contact us at XeoMatrix.
We offer dashboard design sessions, Tableau deployment and training, and embedded analytics solutions. Whether you want to completely outsource the job or you’re ready to start developing your data skills, we can help.
