Contents. How to Make Analytics Your Competitive Differentiator...3. Top Approaches to Embedding Analytics & BI...7

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2 Contents 1. How to Make Analytics Your Competitive Differentiator Top Approaches to Embedding Analytics & BI Partner with the Best: Sisense's OEM Solution Comparing Embedded Analytics Partners Unique Technical Benefits of Sisense OEM Solution OEM Customer Stories...33

3 section How to Make Analytics Your Competitive Differentiator 1 Businesses across all applications and in every industry are faced with mountains of data. Finding a meaningful way to manage this data has become a necessity, especially when it s data that can help your customers or partners succeed. The only question is: will data be your company s weak point or competitive differentiator? In today s ambitious business environment, customers want access to an application s data with the ability to interact with the data in a way that allows them to derive business value. After all, customers rely on your application to help them understand the data that it holds, especially in our increasingly data-savvy world.

4 To capitalize on the value of their information, many companies today are taking an embedded approach to analytics and delivering insights into the everyday workflow of their users through embedded analytics and business intelligence (BI). However, in order to successfully expose analytics to customers and partners, companies are faced with three main challenges: Manage complex data (big and disparate datasets) quickly Share data and insights securely Ensure the solution is built on scalable, cost effective infrastructure Learn all about embedded analytics in this guide, including a general overview of embedded analytics, the different approaches to embedding BI and analytics, and the benefits and challenges of the most popular BI solution technologies that offer OEM partnerships. This guide will help you gain a strong sense of the embedded analytics marketplace and understand the most strategic way your company can benefit from embedded analytics. Sisense enables us to have information at our fingertips and make decisions based on data, we have created a competitive advantage for ourselves and our customers. Gareth Barry, CEO and Founder of Unleashed

5 What's Embedded Analytics? Embedded analytics is defined as when analytical capabilities such as data management, reporting and visualization are built into other business applications and solutions. Service providers offering on-premise, cloud-based or hybrid solutions, can then offer customer facing dashboards, reports, and services such as software infrastructure, platforms, and processes. Many companies today are embedding analytics into their application so users can access insights from their data in easy-to-understand reports and dashboards. Gartner reported that today 25% of analytics capabilities are embedded in business applications, while other industry research firms stated that as many as 40% percent of organizations are embedding analytics. Both numbers show the incredible growth of embedding analytics and point to a high-value return on investment. 5

6 In fact, the value is two-fold: service providers who are using embedded analytics to help their customers be more successful are simultaneously creating a powerful competitive differentiator. The outcome? Happier more loyal customers, and a strong competitive advantage for the company. Aberdeen Research Group discovered that 53% of service providers are embedding analytics to drive competitive advantage, and the top service providers who did saw a 31% year over year increase in customer base. Other top benefits service providers are experiencing include improved user experience, new revenue streams, and increased average customer value: Figure 1: Embedded Analytics What's in lt for Me? Differentiate products and develop competitive advantage Improve end-user experience, protect installed base 37% 53% Service Providers Create net- new revenue streams 29% Increase average customer value 26% 0% 20% 40% 60% % of Respondents n=41 Source: Aberdeen Group, Juty

7 section 2 Top Approaches to Embedding Analytics & BI Build vs. If your company is convinced it needs analytics, but is still on the fence about which approach to take, they are probably engaging in the famous Build vs. Buy debate- weighing the pros and cons of building a BI solution versus buying an embeddable BI solution. Buy At the heart of this decision is an assessment of your organization s R&D or IT capabilities and understanding the risks and benefits that arise when relying on internal development teams.

8 Building BI In-House Considering the initial build of a BI solution and the ongoing maintenance required is an important aspect to the decision of Build vs. Buy. While building BI in-house gives you complete control over features and integration, it requires staffing an entire development team. This requires ongoing investments of time and budget from R&D- a budget that is likely to get exorbitantly high as data, users, and general analytics needs increase. Specifically, R&D is an expensive resource that is not only focused on internal systems, but also on developing products and services. BI projects are long-term and require constant iterations resulting in a serious cost to divert expensive R&D resources to non-core activities like building and maintaining an in-house BI solution. Another issue that arises from growing BI out of your technical department is that the knowledge of the actual BI needs stems from the business users rather than the technical departments, leading to significant risk that the BI solution will be misaligned with actual requirements and need constant and time-consuming iterations. Finally, as the amount of data and number of users grows and new changes in your company arise, an in-house solution will need to develop quickly to meet new, unanticipated needs. Due to differences in priorities between R&D and business departments, users often experience excessive delays in getting the data or analysis in a timeframe that is actionable and fail to deliver results. Remember, an established BI tool grows and innovates with the market, and an in-house BI tool will require similar time and R&D investments. 8

9 Becoming an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) Partner for BI Today, it is much more common to embed a business intelligence solution by working with a BI partner and embedding their product through an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement. Becoming an OEM is proven to be the easiest and most effective way to offer business intelligence because it allows you a fast time to market using an established BI solution and technology. Many of the resource allocation and budget issues dissipate by embedding a BI solution, especially one with technology built on cost effective infrastructure and that can easily scale to your current and future data needs. In fact, top BI analyst and researcher, Wayne Eckerson, described the movement towards embedding analytics as: The best way to simplify and operationalize BI is to embed it directly into operational applications and processes that drive the business. This is the definition of embedded analytics, and it s the next wave in BI. Eckerson went on to say that future of BI and its continued success in terms of user adoption and extensive deployments is dependent on embedded analytics. 9

10 Since Sisense OEM partners specialize in business intelligence, we provide a solution built to deliver high-quality, white-labeled, interactive data analytics that is scalable and cost effective. Sisense s single goal and R&D focus is to deliver powerful and intuitive business intelligence, so your application s analytics will be updated periodically and always stay on the cusp of a rapidly-evolving market. With Sisense, you can easily get value from your data without training or experience since it's just so easy to produce quality, insightful analytics- a tool with no learning curve. James Davison, Senior Data Analyst, Celestica 10

11 section 3 Partner with the Best: Sisense's OEM Solution Sisense is a fully extensible, Single-Stack embedded BI. Our unique Single-Stack solution provides an end-to-end software that lets you easily prepare, analyze and visualize complex data without any additional tools- so that you and your users will have everything you need to analyze big data from multiple sources. 11

12 Gartner s annual Magic Quadrant on Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms is often considered one of the most well-researched and highly-regarded points of reference to understand the layout of the BI landscape, This year, Sisense was named a Visionary in the report and our powerful OEM solution was cited as a core organizational strength: Sisense has a strong OEM partner network that now accounts for 50% of the company s revenue :

13 Unique Business Benefits of Sisense OEM Solution Fastest Time to Market Complete Customization Unparalleled Scalability Granular Data Governance Agile Analysis Lowest TCO 13

14 1 Fastest Time to Market Though implementation of a BI solution can be a long and ongoing process with business users struggling to define requirements upfront, Sisense mitigates this risk by offering a full stack, self-service solution we call our Single-Stack architecture. Sisense s Single-Stack solution is designed for business users to iterate and explore questions quickly and independently. Building and sharing dashboards is always a breeze with Sisense s instant implementation and white labeling. Connect to your data sources in a click, create a drag-and-drop data model and immediately start building customer-facing, HTML5 dashboards and reports. Add your own branding and customizations independently or with the help of our dedicated customer success team. Sisense is now a part of sales demonstrations because it s a game changer It s become a main selling point Malinda Jepsen, Lead BI Specialist at Orion 14

15 2 Complete Customization Customization is important especially for OEM purposes, which is why we offer an API-first design that allows for complete customization. Developers fall in love with Sisense because it enables them to build their own data product on top of an extremely powerful backbone. Every element in Sisense is designed to be accessed and modified via extensively documented JavaScript and REST API. With single-click SSO and Active Directory integration, customization is advanced and extraordinarily easy. Sisense offers comprehensive features to customize to your business, such as SSO, embeddable widgets and dashboards, comprehensive data and row level security. 15

16 3 Unparalleled Scalability One of the toughest challenges when choosing a BI solution is the inability to predict future requirements in scalability. Multiple factors change that demand more resources such as data size, user numbers and the volume of analysis. Sisense was designed from scratch with a scalable, memory-optimized columnar database that can comfortably handle terabytes of data, many users and concurrent queries. Our powerful and award-winning In-Chip data engine that powers Sisense makes our OEM solution perfect for larger enterprise implementations or any business that experiences growth. Performance never suffers, even when working with big data, dozens of disparate data sources, and large amounts of concurrent users. More and more departments would come to me wanting to use Sisense to solve their own data problems. Because Sisense is so easy to scale, I was able to instantly deploy around the company. Within a few months, just our fuel department sawan 80% increase in profitability. Shane Hedlund Project Manager at Profit Tools

17 4 Granular Data Governance Control user access and define exact permissions on a need-to-know basis by limiting access of database, row, dashboard or user level. Create out-of-the-box dashboards and reports or give your users the freedom to create any view or visualization. Sisense changes the way you think about analytics: instead of an arcane IT project, it's something that a business user can use to derive value immediately. James Davison, Senior Data Analyst, Celestica 17

18 5 Agile Analysis When considering embedded analytics, the ability to quickly ask new questions is of high importance since companies are always faced with the need to promptly satisfy customer requests. Sisense provides the only business intelligence solution that lets users instantly analyze and visualize both big or disparate datasets with agility. By covering the full scope of business analytics in one agile BI software, Sisense can take users from preparing complex data for analysis to creating dashboards with a wide variety of visualizations in a single tool. Users get instant answers to their new questions as the natural process of analysis progresses. Some agile features include the ability to drill down to the most granular raw data across all data sources, and add tables from multiple sources without creating aggregations, indexes, or summary tables in advance. The ability to incorporate new data on the fly without a DBA, IT team, or specialized scripting empowers users to ask new questions and act on the answers in the proper timeframe. 18

19 6 Lowest Total Cost of Ownership The most significant cost of an embedded BI solution is often derived from maintenance and upgrades. Continuous involvement of a development team and other skilled personnel to extend, support and maintain a BI tool takes resources away from core applications. Sisense provides full support maintenance and upgrades, and is easy for business users to use and navigate. Sisense s award-winning technology is built with an infrastructure that can be easily customized to your business needs, requires a short time to value, and has the scalability to cope with significant growth in data, users and queries. This drastically reduces total ownership costs by mitigating the need for internal R&D teams to support constant changes for end users. Because Sisense is hugely scalable and can be easily white labeled and embedded, we are already making our investment back- and it's been just months. Adam Clark, the Product Manager at EEG Events 19

20 True Long-Term Partnership We see our OEM customers as partners and therefore Sisense provides all the dedicated support, training and maintenance as it s needed, when it s needed. See why so many companies have chosen Sisense as their embedded BI tool. 20

21 Sisense Feature Overview Scales to terabytes of data Processes large volumes of data quickly (terabytes of data, dozens of sources, hundreds of millions of rows) Extensive Security & Governance Use role level security management to manage groups and individuals with integration to active directory Scales to many concurrent users Supports multiple concurrent user queries, with the ability to customize views of the data Advanced Embeddability Users can embed components of a dashboard into any web-based application from the entire layout to individual visualizations or widget Unique Open Platform (Sisense API Sets) Sisense holds many API sets that act as entry points to extend, customize and build solutions on top of the product/add widgets to the Sisense platform Mobile Embeddability Users can take their own mobile apps and embed Sisense widgets within Extensible Visualization Sisense API allows users to create custom visualizations from popular Javascript libraries (e.g. D3) Minimal Hardware Costs Designed for commodity hardware regardless of data size Full White Labeling Provides complete support in white labeling and re-branding Minimal Operational Costs Minimal IT intervention, easily handled by non-technical end users

22 Comparing Embedded Analytics Partners Sisense vs. Alternatives section 4 Comparison Points: CRITERION DESCRIPTION Standalone Does not require additional tools from third party vendors Scalability (Data / Users) The volume of data a single server can process, number of concurrent users Time to Market The time it takes for embedded analytics to be in production Data Preparation The ease of adding new data sources Customization Extensibility, API sets, white labeling, custom visualizations, plugins and CSS customizations Agility The ease of asking new questions and receiving answers quickly to satisfy customer requests Embeddability Ability to build components (dashboard or widget level) into web-based platforms Security Built in multi-tenant security, SSO, role level security Required technical expertise The technical expertise required for setup and management Software/Hardware/Operational Costs Average costs considering different external and intrinsic factors

23 1. Stand-Alone BI Solutions Stand-Alone BI Overview: Stand-alone BI solutions provide a number of tools to take you from start to finish in your data analysis process: manage, visualize and integrate data. The problem is, they are often complex to deploy and use slower, more costly technology. The most common example of stand-alone solution s technology is in-memory processing technology. Since in-memory processing loads the entire database from storage to RAM for analysis purposes, the reliance on RAM becomes problematic- with companies either needing to purchase additional RAM, which is expensive on larger scales; or alternately to leave some of their data out of the picture in order to accommodate the memory limitations. Unfortunately, datasets larger than several dozen of gigabytes often slow down or even break these types of stand-alone tools. The challenge is compounded with multi-user applications, since each user requires additional memory space for user-specific operations. When it comes to Embedded Analytics, it is dangerous to limit the amount of data and users, since that is essentially limiting your growth and creates a slow and limited experience for your end users. 23

24 With Sisense, I felt like I could create a BI dashboard without becoming an expert in report development. It was obvious that this is exactly what our customers need. Mike van Thiel, CEO and co-founder of Known Factors Similarly, many of the most popular stand-alone solutions have their own proprietary scripting language needed for data preparation, requiring companies to recruit or outsource dedicated technical expertise. This also makes extensibility and agility challenging since business users are more dependent on technical teams. Bottom line: Though stand-alone solutions can provide a full stack BI tool, they are often built on legacy technology that prevents the solution from scaling past just 100GB of data or forces companies to invest in expensive additional hardware and human resources. 24

25 CRITERION SISENSE STAND-ALONE BI SOLUTIONS Standalone solution Yes Yes Scalability (Data / Users) Terabytes Gigabytes Time to Market Days/Weeks Months/Years Data Preparation Yes No - Requires proprietary scripting Customization High Moderate Agility High Moderate Embeddability High Moderate - Requires users to first build on desktop and then publish to the web Security High Varies Required technical expertise Low High Software costs Moderate Moderate Hardware costs Low Varies - Higher as data grows Operational costs Low High 25

26 2. Data Visualization Tools Data Visualization Overview: Data visualization tools are used to present data in a variety of colorful graphics that are easier for business users to consume than lists of numbers. While data visualizations themselves are valuable, data visualization tools cannot be considered a complete analytics solution since they do not provide: data management capabilities (data preparation / data compilation), advanced analytics, or scalable data storage and integration features- which is especially important for OEMs. Ironically, some of data visualization tools today cost as much as full-fledged analytics solutions. Many buyers are sold on the front-end (pretty dashboards), not realizing that the software lacks a back-end to actually get the data in a format that can be plugged into a data visualization tool. The easiest way to understand the limitations of data visualization software is to request a POC (Proof of Concept) using your own data, not sample data, to see how accurately and quickly the tool can get your messy data into a format that can be visualized. Bottom line: Many problems will arise from having only half a data analytics tool, including the most costly: the need to invest in third-party ETL solution for data management- as well as the extra skillset to manage it. Not only are we able to quickly create a meaningful dashboards using Sisense, but we can link up the data and drill down into any piece of data in one click. If you can dream it, you can do it in Sisense. Gareth Barry, CEO and Founder of Unleashed 26

27 CRITERION SISENSE DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS Standalone solution Yes No Scalability (Data / Users) Terabytes Gigabytes Time to Market Days/Weeks Months/Years Data Preparation Yes- Minimal IT support required to add new data sources No - Requires third-party software for data management/etl Customization High - Full white labeling, custom visualizations, developer API sets Moderate - Often no API Agility High Low - Managing multiple tools Embeddability High High Security High Varies Required technical expertise Low Low Software costs Moderate High Hardware costs Low Low Operational costs Low Varies; based on cost of additional third-party software 27

28 3. Cloud BI Solutions Cloud BI Solutions Overview: Many expect that choosing a cloud platform as their OEM solution is the best way to get a BI tool with the maximum level of self-service. Businesses hope to experience fullymanaged Cloud BI the same way they experience other fully cloud-based self-service applications like Salesforce and Google Analytics. Unfortunately, this is not the case with cloud BI solutions that have to plug into existing data sources. Then, adding and synchronizing data becomes a constant battle, since BI software is best deployed to be as close as possible to the data it feeds off of in order to minimize the overhead of transferring data from sources to BI software. Due to the challenge of synchronizing data and data preparation overhead, Cloud BI solutions require end users to either call the customer support or bother their IT department every time they want to add data or alter a field-which is a frequent occurrence in data analysis. This is because the same process of transferring and handling data that s required for on-premise will also be required for a cloud platform. Additionally, data that is transferred over the open Internet needs to be encrypted and then decrypted - slowing the data management process down by an additional 60%. The ongoing introduction of new data sets or sources quickly becomes very resource-heavy. 28

29 Bottom Line: Cloud BI solutions often require countless service hours, an expensive ROI model, and a rigid data-driven environment with little tolerance for change. Quite the opposite of the personal control Cloud BI implies with its selfservice association. If a BI solution is not self-service on-premises, it sure as won t be self-service in the cloud, so test it on your own data before making an investment. Sisense Cloud Options: Sisense believes in self-service BI regardless of whether a company deploys BI on the cloud or on-premises. If you are truly looking for a cloud-based or fully-managed BI service, Sisense offers the option of setting up a machine on Amazon (or other cloud services) and providing self-service dashboarding, reporting, analysis and collaboration via Sisense Web. Companies can use Sisense s powerful technology for easy and accurate data management, while being less dependent on software than any other vendor using traditional 3rd party data warehousing and ETL tools. On top of that, Sisense Web offers an extremely easy browser-based BI application. 29

30 CRITERION SISENSE CLOUD BI SOLUTIONS Standalone solution Yes Yes Scalability (Data / Users) Terabytes Varies - typically GB scale Time to Market Days/Weeks Weeks/ Months Data Preparation Yes Varies - often require scripting Customization High Low Agility High Moderate Embeddability High High Security High Moderate - issues with synchronization Required technical expertise Low Low Software costs Moderate High Hardware costs Low No direct hardware costs Operational costs Low No direct operational costs 30

31 section Unique Technical Benefits of Sisense OEM Solution 5 In-Chip Engine Sisense s In-Chip Engine is proprietary technology that lets you run any ad-hoc query and receive answers on the spot, without the need to prepare data in advance for each new question. The Sisense s In-Chip Engine maximizes existing computational resources, including disk storage, RAM and CPU cache for the most efficient compression techniques, and uses advanced and innovative querying algorithms to bypass limitations imposed by the operating system. Therefore, only a fraction of the data must be stored in RAM in order to attain the same or better performance as other BI solutions, making Sisense the fastest BI solution- even on big and disparate datasets. Our In-Chip technology allows Sisense to achieve a definite edge on other BI solutions in terms of performance, even at terabyte-scale datasets, and at much lower hardware costs. 31

32 Single-Stack Architecture Sisense s Single-Stack solution describes our instantly deployed, end-to-end BI software that includes everything you to need to prepare, analyze and visualize data of any type and size. Our Single-Stack architecture takes you from data integration to visualization with a single BI solution. Using our Single-Stack solution eliminates the need to use additional tools, saving companies the need to invest in data warehouses, visualization tools or professional services. With no DBA required to manage the platform, no manual mashups to maintain, and no special scripts to learn, Sisense Single-Stack is able to provide a complete business intelligence platform at unmatched TCO. Sisense has saved our lives. We were struggling to put together information from many data sources, and now a big report that previously took days, takes just minutes with Sisense. Ewa Jakubowska, Data Analyst at NetBet An Investors Dashboard with Sisense 32

33 section 6 OEM Customer Stories

34 Entertainment EEG Events Group (EEG), a world-class global event management service, was juggling multiple data sources from hundreds of clients and their events, but lacked a reporting tool that could consolidated the data into one report to send to their customers. After choosing Sisense from over 16 other BI tools, EEG confirmed that Sisense is the best Business Intelligence solution to: analyze complex data, embed and brand dashboards and reports, scale to any amount of users, and implement quickly- requiring no training or coding Our job is to provide tools to our clients that help them go home happy after an event, and we can do that with Sisense's OEM capabilities. Sisense isn't just about business, but it's a tool that helps me make my customers happier. Adam Clark, Product Manage at EEG Events 34

35 Computer Software & Technology Orion is a premier portfolio accounting service provider for Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). The software frees advisors from back-office tedium so they can enjoy their business again by devoting their time and energy to better serving clients. Orion uses Sisense as an embedded, interactive BI platform that allows advisors to better monitor and execute their activities. After choosing Sisense, we went live in just a couple of months, and that was very, very impressive. I attribute the speed of implementation to Sisense s usability and how quick and easy it is to put data sources together; there was a very short learning curve. The Sisense support and development teams have been a critical part of getting our product to market so quickly. Sisense has been a true partner in this product release. Malinda Jepsen, Lead BI Specialist at Orion READ CASE STUDY >> 35

36 Computer Software & Technology Known Factors provides Business Intelligence services for a variety of industries including real estate, travel, automotive, ecommerce, healthcare and political campaigns. Today, many of Known Factor s customers need help managing their data which is often too complex, large or too widely distributed to manage internally. Therefore, Known Factors became an OEM customer of Sisense and uses Sisense embedded analytics to enable their clients to build dashboards easily and independently without investing in extra staff or expensive internal projects. This allows Known Factor s customers to deliver the same competitive advantages provided by BI tools used by large corporations. Sisense is as easy as dragging and dropping in Excel, except you get interactive, powerful reports. The capabilities of the Sisense report builder are just so powerful and slick. The kicker? Sisense is completely extensible which is perfect for white labeling. Mike van Thiel, the CEO and co-founder of Known Factors READ CASE STUDY >> 36

37 Manufacturing Industry Lacking a quick, reliable forecasting and demand planning, James Davison, Senior Data Analyst at Celestica, the multinational contract electronics manufacturing services that supplies a variety of leading OEMS and handles $ billion dollars of goods, decided the company needed BI software. Sisense provided Celestica with an easy way for everyone in the company to produce quality data analytics with no training, as well as a white labeled embedded analytics service for their clients. After being deployed in just days, Sisense was adopted virally across the company, empowering everyone with the ability to build compelling dashboards. The company s quick adoption of Sisense has already saved weeks of time on every report Sisense is being eagerly embraced. In fact, it's going viral. Our demand analyzer is now built into Sisense and is deployed around the globe, running over 200 users. It performs so quickly, it's getting used as an enterprise scale application. James Davison, Senior Data Analyst at Celestica READ CASE STUDY >> 37

38 Transportation & Shipping In the shipping industry, profit margins are slim, generally running between 5-10%. To help improve these margins, Profit Tool s software analyzes the data in the complete trucking life cycle, and chose Sisense to help them pinpoint areas where they could increase revenues, improve customer satisfaction and expand market share. Using Sisense, Profit Tools developed a new profitability module and was able to increase revenues for clients through actions like route optimization and carrier management. With a new product to sell to customers and internal deployment of Sisense that led to an 80% increase in profitability for their Fuel Department, the return on investment was remarkable. I built a dashboard in front of the customer and he stopped me mid-dashboard to tell me that the single report I had just created would replace a report that took him 10 hours a week to create. No other company in our industry gives their customers this visibility or the ability to drill down to the item level like Sisense does. Shane Hedlund Project Manager at Profit Tools READ CASE STUDY >> 38

39 Explore Other Resources Additional Resources Download Free Trial Product Demo Schedule 90 min POC Tutorials Why Sisense Related Webinars 100% ROI in 6 Months A Case for Embedded Analytics Related Whitepapers Developers Community Access the help of thousands of developers from around the world, including the experts and solution architects at Sisense. Join Developers Community OEM Case Studies We see our OEM customers as partners and provide dedicated support, training and maintenance as it s needed, when it s needed. That s why leading companies all over the world have chosen Sisense as their embedded BI tool. Read Case Studies 5 Do s and Don ts of Embedded Analytics A Beginners Guide to Embedded Data Analytics 39