It turns out that the core differences of embedded BI solutions are all here, teach you how to evaluate!

The products of each software company have their own features in terms of function, and have their own market positioning and value proposition. In the era of big data, in order to make products more attractive, many software companies have begun to introduce embedded BI solutions into their products to meet the growing data analysis needs of users.

At present, the products on the market are more or less advertised on the point of embedded analysis, but the embedded features of each are not exactly the same. Therefore, software companies need to carefully evaluate before deciding on a solution. So, when choosing an embedded BI solution, how should you evaluate it?

The truth is, some superficial presentations can be deceiving. Many BI products have embedded features that look great when demonstrated, but not when implemented. A major mistake that many software companies tend to make is focusing on the functionality of a BI product and ignoring how well it integrates with the software and customer environment. To help software companies avoid this mistake, here are five factors to consider when choosing an embedded BI solution.

1. Embedding support at the DIV level

As a common integration method, Iframe can embed the analysis results of dashboards and reports into the web pages of the software through simple settings. In this way, it is the embedded capability advertised by most products on the market. Although this method is simple, it has many limitations. If you want to achieve deep integration of data analysis functions and software native, data and event interaction, Iframe is not the best structure choice.

If you're looking for embedded BI that integrates deeply with your product, your customers won't notice if the BI functionality is native. Then, a seamless embedding solution based on the DIV level of JavaScript will be the best choice. Using DIV embedding, you can use native JavaScript to integrate the entire dashboard, or even a single chart element into your project as a DIV. The embedded chart element has a highly open interface and supports data exchange with other elements in your project. interact. The entire BI software can be embedded directly into your product, making it indistinguishable from your software and blending perfectly with your software. , which ensures a seamless and intuitive user experience.

2. The ability to integrate API

An easy-to-use API is essential if you want to provide your customers with a customizable user interface (UI). For example, the API allows toolbars to be turned on and off based on user type, only displays specified data sources based on usage rules, and supports the creation of various dashboards with different filters and options.

Most BI products that are not specifically designed for embedding will not provide full API capabilities. Professional embedded BI can perform in-depth integration operations such as permission management, classification management, renaming, and deletion of dashboards/reports within the application software by calling APIs. , By calling the product API, you can perform in-depth integration operations such as permission management, classification management, renaming, and deletion of dashboards/reports in the application software. The interface between application software and BI software is completely transparent to end users.

3. Integrated security

Integrated security for single sign-on (SSO) functionality is another important factor in evaluating BI applications. SSO configuration for BI products not designed for embedding can be very difficult or impossible. For these products, users typically have to log in to access the enterprise application, and then need to log in again to access data analytics capabilities. It's clumsy and annoying for the user experience.

Products designed for embedding make it easy to adopt SSO security. Once users are logged into your application, they can interact with anything, including embedded BI, in a secure and seamless manner. Embedded BI can reuse the authentication system and authority management of the business system, with simple configuration and high security.

4. The scalability of embedded BI

As the data analysis needs of enterprise software grow, enterprises need to consider the scalability of the embedded BI. Container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes solutions make scaling simple, allowing you to easily scale from a few to millions of users with minimal cost. Therefore, support for containerized deployments should be considered when choosing an embedded BI solution.

For embedded BI solutions (like IFrame-based BI products) that are not in the same environment as your product, it is difficult to achieve inexpensive container-based scaling. Such BI providers may scale at a completely different granularity and need to independently source products based on the number of containers, which can be prohibitively expensive.

5. Integration cost issues

When evaluating the price of an embedded BI solution, consider the product's licensing mechanism in addition to the initial offer (including discounts). Non-embedded products are usually priced by user, server or CPU. This means that as your customers' usage of the application grows, you will have to accept higher costs for software usage.

To avoid the impact of a metering solution, choose an embedded BI product with a fixed-cost pricing model that aligns with how you plan to expand product usage and expand product usage and customer base.

Choosing the Best Embedded BI

Evaluating an embedded BI solution is more than just checking the functionality of the product. You need to determine whether the proposed pre-selected solution is truly designed to be embedded and has all the features needed to seamlessly integrate with your enterprise software applications. Whether that includes considering DIVs versus APIs, security versus scalability, hosting models versus pricing models, know what you're looking for and choose a solution that fits your needs. Remember, not all embedded BI solutions are the same, so choose the one that best suits your application and business.