Professional Documents
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Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Why Organizations Need Visual Data Discovery
3. Accessing Data: Where It Lives and Who Sees It
4. Reporting in a Self-service BI World
5. Key Takeaways
6. About George Anadiotis
7. About Izenda
8. About Gigaom Research
9. Copyright
1 Executive Summary
Production reporting has been around for a long time, but its requirements change as much as
the tech industry itself does. Delivery expectations have shifted from quarterly to hourly, so the
entire business intelligence stack must now be user-driven and flexible. Licensing by number of
users is obsolete, since there is no way to predict who will need the reports or who will create
them. And in the mobile era, sending users to IT for their reports is doomed to failure, and
desktop apps are legacy technology.
If the learning curve for reporting isnt low, adoption will be. Reporting and analytics must be
embedded inside applications and end-users must be able to use their interfaces not just for
running reports but also for designing them. Highly complex reports shouldnt take two
expensive developers to build if one single client services person can do it instead.
This report is for executives, product managers and developers at independent software
vendors (ISVs), SaaS vendors, solutions providers, or anyone building business applications. It
will investigate how reporting needs, capabilities, and implementation requirements have
changed, and present a new set of dos and donts for successful embedded analytics.
Key findings in this report include:
It is imperative to embed modern BI (reporting, dashboards, and visualizations) in the
application users daily work. A generation of users that has been brought up on mobile and
browser-based applications that are self-contained is unlikely to accept switching to a
separate application to access BI features.
Democratizing access to data is key, and can be achieved by enabling access to
transactional databases (or read-only copies) instead of creating separate analytical
databases. In doing so, the burden on IT or the data science team is minimized, and users
are empowered to access data on their own.
Democratized access to data should not equal a lack of control. There must be a mechanism
for user authorization and access rights, as access to the reports and data should be
restricted to only the appropriate users for any given scenario.
Reporting functionality should have a professional look and feel that is natural for users.
Reports should be easy to create, embedded in applications, and have production-level
polish.
ISVs and solution providers now face a build-versus-buy strategy for BI implementation.
Arguments tend to favor buy because these organizations lack core BI expertise and often
spend too much time and too many resources building and maintaining it in-house.
Thumbnail image courtesy of Sergey Nivens/iStock.
Users are coming to expect that they can access information when and how they want.
Applications failing to meet their expectations will ultimately fail to increase adoption.
Dashboards should enable users to go deeper by accessing broader data sets requiring
visualizations. ISVs and solution providers will not retain customers without addressing these
new realities.
stark contrast to the fragmented experience that comes from using a separate BI tool (either on
the desktop or on a different cloud environment) for data exploration and visualization.
Using embedded BI does pose an issue: the need for ad-hoc reporting with production-level
polish. Traditionally, reporting has come in two variations: One is aimed at quick-and-dirty
reporting, giving users tools to mix and match various datasets to produce ad-hoc reports
according to their needs. Typically this kind of reporting is aimed at on-screen consumption and
is lacking in terms of pixel-perfect alignment and production-level polish. The other is aimed at
producing reports following internal guidelines or regulatory frameworks. Typically this kind of
reporting is aimed at printed-medium consumption and is focused on looking professional.
These two worlds must converge. Organizations need reports that are easy to create,
embedded in applications, and have production-level polish. One way to achieve this is by
implementing a multilevel editing mechanism. New reports can be based on master report
templates that enable on-the-fly creation, but they should also be individually editable to enable
high quality.
In the end, to be successful, self-service BI must combine all of the features mentioned so far:
direct access to data for reporting and analysis, easy-to-use BI tools, and simpler and
customizable end-user interfaces.
This is not an easy goal to achieve for any ISV, so it calls for an important decision: to develop
this functionality internally or to bring it onboard by means of purchasing an existing customer
solution.
Just like end users, most ISVs see BI functionality as something that brings additional value but
falls beyond their core expertise. The level of sophistication required to develop and maintain a
BI solution dictates that a specialized BI team be created within ISVs wishing to implement BI on
their own. This has cost and time-to-market implications. Putting together a team can be
challenging. Developers with knowledge of BI, particularly emerging capabilities like
visualizations, are in short supply, so non-BI software organizations needing to staff will have
difficulty.
The alternativeutilizing existing personnel to deal with the needs of embedding BI
functionality into productswill lead to sub-par results and cause disruption in the ISVs core
business. Allowing scarce and expensive technical resources to focus on core product and
operations is better than continually trying to maintain and enhance BI functionality.
Even if a specialized BI team can be assembled, the cost and the time required to develop a BI
solution will be substantial. Embedding an off-the-shelf BI platform solution can be integrated
faster than developing BI functionality (reports, dashboards, visualizations) or trying to integrate
disparate BI tools that lack a common architecture, and it should also end up costing less. In
Embedded Analytics in the Self-Service BI Enterprise
addition, embedded solutions have become more modular and more easily customized,
reducing the need for building a custom BI solution.
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5 Key Takeaways
Applications are ubiquitous, and the need to access the data they generate for analytical
purposes grows more and more pronounced. An alternative to traditional BI solutions is
embedded BI, as it gives users the opportunity to access data directly from the application
environment.
Examining the features of user-driven, embedded BI solutions, here are some takeaway points:
Reporting, dashboard, and analytical solutions should be embedded in applications to
achieve maximum usability by a generation of users that is accustomed to self-reliant
applications.
BI solutions should aim to democratize access to data and lift the burden from IT and the
data science team. Reporting off transactional databases rather than creating specialized
analytical ones facilitates this goal. Both end users and IT stand to benefit from this
development.
Democratized access to data requires a solid security framework to ensure that the right
people have access to the right data. A security framework must not overlay itself on
existing application security, but rather integrate seamlessly so it becomes an organic part of
the application.
The two separate strands of visual reports, quick-and-dirty reporting and production-level
reports, formatted according to guidelines, must converge. Reports should be easy to
create, embedded in applications, and have production-level polish.
For most ISVs and solution providers, developing an in-house BI solution for applications is
prohibitive and costly in terms of time-to-market and required resources. In most cases
adopting a third-party solution for BI is most sensibleas long as it offers the required
functionality and integration.
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7 About Izenda
Izenda is a leading business-intelligence platform purpose-built for ISVs, solutions providers and
enterprise users. Its integrated business-intelligence platform allows end users to easily access,
visualize, and share valuable business intelligence in real time. Embedded seamlessly into
applications, Izenda delivers BI directly to the people who need it most. Learn more at
izenda.com.
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Giga Omni Media 2015. "Embedded Analytics in the Self-Service BI Enterprise" is a trademark
of Giga Omni Media. For permission to reproduce this report, please contact researchsales@gigaom.com.
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