10 Questions to Ask About Embedded BI and Your Business

Embedded business intelligence (BI) is the integration of reports, dashboards and analytics inside an application. The information is typically displayed and managed by a BI platform and is placed directly within the application user interface to improve the context and usability of the data. An embedded BI platform delivers state-of-the-art reporting and analytics without the time and expense of having it built from scratch. We live in a world that competes on time and information – yet accessing that information is still complex and time-consuming for most business people.

Click through for 10 questions to determine if embedded business intelligence is the right choice for your organization, as identified by Karl Van den Bergh, VP Product & Alliances at Jaspersoft.

If you answer yes to three or more of the questions, then both you and your customers may benefit from embedded BI.

Do users complain that your application does not provide enough pre-defined (canned) reports?

Do users ask for a lot of look and feel customizations to the canned reports?

Are users currently exporting data from your application into a tool like Excel or even into their own database?

Would better use of visualization make your users more aware of trends and outliers, and help them make better decisions?

Are additional reporting and analysis capabilities so valuable your customer would be willing to pay extra for it?

Are users asking for data in many different formats (e.g. Web grids, Web charts, print or PowerPoint files)?

Have one or more of your users become the “expert” in creating reports or analyzing your data?

Does your application bring together data from several different sources?

Does the structure of your data sources change often?

Do you need to provide reports and visualizations to mobile devices as well as over the Web?

If you’ve answered yes to three or more of the questions, then both you and your customers may benefit from embedded BI.