How to Make Analytics a Competitive Differentiator for Your Startup

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2 How to Make Analytics a Competitive Differentiator for Your Startup 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. 2

3 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 This guide will help you gain a strong sense of the embedded analytics marketplace, and understand the most strategic way your startup 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

4 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. 4

5 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

6 Top Approaches to Embedding Analytics 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 startup s R&D or IT capabilities and understanding the risks and benefits that arise when relying on internal development teams. 6

7 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 and especially important for startups. 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 - which can be a strain on any startup. 7

8 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. 8

9 We love startups. Not long ago, we were one, and now Sisense wants to help fuel the growth of other startups with Sisense Startup - a program that gives innovative startups complimentary access to embed Analytics and Reporting into their product. The goal is to improve your product offering, drive ROI, and gain market momentum - all while supporting your startup with strategic mentoring from the leaders at Sisense. 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 9

10 Partner with the Best: Sisense's Embedded Analytics Sisense is the market leading embedded BI solution. 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. 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

11 Unique Business Benefits of Sisense OEM Solution Fastest Time to Market Complete Customization Unparalleled Scalability Granular Data Governance Agile Analysis Lowest TCO 11

12 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

13 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. 13

14 Explore Other Resources Additional Resources The Ultimate Guide to Embedded Analytics [ebook] Tutorials Why Sisense Developers Community Access the help of thousands of developers from around the world, including the experts and solution architects at Sisense. Join Developers Community Related Webinars 100% ROI in 6 Months A Case for Embedded Analytics Related Whitepapers 5 Do s and Don ts of Embedded Analytics A Beginners Guide to Embedded Data Analytics 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 14