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Why It's Imperative to Update Your App's Analytics Now - 5 Considerations

By Glen Rabie, CEO of Yellowfin

Embedding basic reporting into your application and calling it a day is no longer enough to satisfy the BI needs of today's user. Customers are more aware of what modern analytics solutions offer - automated analytics, contextual analytics, data storytelling - and this has become their benchmark for self-service analytics. If your app can't keep up with those features, they will know - and go elsewhere - and if your developers spend more time answering report requests than improving the value of your app, it's important to update sooner, rather than later.

For software vendors, having a strong analytics capability is key to attracting more customers and increasing the value of your application, making it imperative to consider updating sooner, rather than later.

Today, analytics has evolved beyond just data visualization and embedded dashboards. There's now automated insights, contextual analytics, and data storytelling to consider - new and powerful enterprise-grade tools your customers want, and expect, from their software providers.

The modern era has seen users become increasingly aware or familiar with these types of enterprise features, which have become their benchmark for self-service BI. If they use your app and its analytics aren't up to the same standard, they will know - and demand this functionality.

Simply put, just giving users access to data in your app doesn't mean you have strong analytics.

But when do you know your app's analytics are outdated to warrant the need for an update?

  • If your customers continuously push report requests to your developers, your analytics  isn't sufficient for today's needs or does not support self-service as the workload is entirely put on your devs.
  • If users are constantly demanding more analytical features they see elsewhere, such as automated insight discovery or contextual analytics.
  • If customer adoption is low, your software's features are likely viewed as outdated.

Maybe you have analytics your developers built in-house, or an older embedded 3rd-party tool that suited your customer's needs at the time. But the reality is your users' data is continuously increasing in complexity and volume, and they will need better tools to be able to keep up.

If you put off an analytics upgrade for too long, your users won't be satisfied with the experience, and you risk customer churn, higher development costs and reduced win rates.

In this article, we detail the top 5 considerations software vendors should evaluate when deciding to update their application's analytics and why it's imperative to upgrade today.

Reason 1 - You can focus on improving your app's core experience

Building analytics from scratch costs a significant amount of time and money and is often underestimated.

If your application's current analytics suite is home grown and you continue to try to maintain it yourself rather than choose to update via an embedded analytics solution, two critical problems typically occur. Your developers either:

  1. Spend significant time creating new reports for users
  2. Waste valuable development sprints adding new analytical features to meet demand

The consequence of this approach is your developers have less time to focus on improving your core software. They also face an impossible task in trying to keep up with the latest enterprise features of modern BI tools, without having the specialist skills or industry knowledge those established platforms have.

By updating your app with a modern embedded analytics solution now, your users can instead help themselves with actionable dashboards and self-service reporting that opens up the ability for deeper analysis. You will also no longer need to worry about keeping up with competitors.

Most importantly, if your end-users have the latest BI features to fulfil their increasingly sophisticated BI needs, they won't request new reports or features, freeing up your developers to focus on your software, while improving customer satisfaction and increasing the benefits of your app overall.

Reason 2 - You offer exceptional analytical experiences for your customers

When you choose to upgrade with the latest embedded analytics, you enable users to leverage the best self-service BI features and technologies faster, and transform how your customers engage with and use your application with tools that improve their user experience.

Modern BI solutions offer advanced features such as automated business monitoring, tools that use AI to automatically generate alerts, comparisons and insights to help users monitor metrics and quickly answer their questions - without the need to manually analyze complex data.

There's also powerful new ways to embed analytics, like contextual analytics, which tie dashboards and reporting together with user workflows, to deliver the data customers need to assist in their decisions - directly within your user interface. Contextual analytics enables your app's analytics to guide your customers toward making better use of your app, optimizing their use of your software and increasing the business benefits your software provides.

Reason 3 - You create and maintain a competitive advantage for your solution

Market leading functionality such as automated alerts and contextualized insights can offer an incredible amount of value to your end users. Not only that - it can provide a long-term competitive advantage.

Adding best-of-breed analytics to your software means you keep ahead of competing applications in your feature-set and create a stickier user experience.

You will also delight customers by over-delivering with modern, future-proof capabilities like AI and machine learning, with a chance for your solution to be recognised as best-in-class.

Ultimately, you improve the business benefits of your app, satisfy users and retain a competitive differentiation over other vendors by offering a modern analytics stack.

Reason 4 - You can lead your modernization with embedded analytics

If you're currently re-architecting your application for a migration to the cloud or the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, there are significant benefits to leading your modernization efforts with analytics.

Firstly, embedding a proven analytical solution into your software product is one of the quickest modernization wins you can have today. Little effort for your developers, but a big UI and user experience facelift.

Analytics can also be used as an incentive that gives on-premises clients a reason to shift to the cloud, increasing your customer migration rate to your cloud service.

There is a significant opportunity to enable more sophisticated analysis of your customer's data in a SaaS environment. You can provide benchmark and comparative analytics (aggregated of course) so that your customers know how they compare to their peers. This is valuable information that helps your customers further.

All in all, modernizing with analytics and moving away from an outdated architecture opens up valuable opportunities that should not be overlooked when deciding on why to upgrade now.

Reason 5 - You realize new revenue opportunities

Updating your app's analytics greatly reduces customer churn, as your application will now have the many analytical features and functions your users need.

Having a modern analytics stack also significantly improves the win rate by giving your sales team another edge to win more deals in the long-term.

Finally, you can charge more for your product and its services by monetizing the new and advanced add-on analytical features your application now offers, particularly if your competitors can't match your new tools. Why? Because you now offer greater value, in a single package.

Why you need to update your application's analytics today

Upgrading your app's analytics sooner rather than later gives your users the ability to gain deeper analysis for better decisions - and helps you keep up with demand for more BI capability.

To learn more about the benefits of embedded analytics and best practices, watch Yellowfin's Embedded Analytics Walkthrough Video.

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About the Author

Glen Rabie 

Glen Rabie is the CEO and Co-Founder of Yellowfin, a global analytics and BI software vendor. Prior to founding Yellowfin, Glen worked for National Australia Bank in multiple roles, including Senior Business Consultant and Global Manager. It was here that he learned the value of enterprise data and developed his passion for data analysis. Glen enjoys the challenge of bringing new products to market and competing with the world's best. Most of all, he is proud of the team he's built - their passion and seeing the difference that the Yellowfin team has made to the analytics industry.

Published Wednesday, October 14, 2020 7:37 AM by David Marshall
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