Many organizations understand that delivering analytics to their customers is a great way to monetize their software applications. But, they get lost on where to start or they rush analytics integration to get their product out of the door.
The fact of the matter is users’ needs vary. Some users may be fine with managed reports and dashboards, but other users may seek the analytical agility that empowers them to answer a continued series of questions at anytime, anywhere.
With that being said, the key to success is understanding your customers. Implementing analytics into your application should be a rigorous process especially if analytics is a part of your monetization strategy. Key decision-makers need to ensure they gather reporting requirements from their customers to better understand what and how to implement analytics.
But, what flavor of BI are your customers interested in?
Self-service for your customers
For many users, self-service is quickly changing from an option to a “must-have.” The growing market of knowledge workers is becoming increasingly tech-savvy and self-service analytics provides them with agility. However, as mentioned before, not all customer needs are the same.
Many organizations, such as the General Services Administration, are relegated to government regulations and compliance standards thus their focus is on data governance, not self-service. Others such as Evologics implement a solution to balance both governance and self-service because their customers demand it– and they are successful!
Data preparation
Data preparation is a task that many decision-makers don’t readily consider. Why? Because enabling data preparation for users of all experience levels is novel. However, this is no longer a role strictly for developers. Many analytics software enable users to connect and join data, as well as connect to web services and local files.
Organizations must consider the technical ability of their users and plan accordingly. Who will integrate data? Maintain it? Develop new capabilities? These are just some of the questions to start with.
Interactivity and data discovery
While prebuilt reports and dashboards are sufficient for many use cases, some customers love the freedom to explore their data to discover insights. Interactive analysis and discovery features vary by product. Features can range from conditional formatting, slice-and-dice, different drill down paths, as well as more sophisticated analysis functionality.
While providing analytical depth to your users is great, it is important to keep in mind that usability and performance are also major considerations in a strong analytics solution. To cater to a wide range of technical expertise, these features need to be made simple to use. Also performance is a great driver of user adoption. Your tool should perform quickly to ensure users are getting the answers they need in real time.
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