I've been an avid watcher of COVID stats in Victoria because it has a real outcome for us - it tells us when we'll come out of lockdown. From this, I’ve had three take outs about how not to manage with data.
Historically, analytics has not always been a priority feature for software vendors. Many applications typically are built with analytics bolted-on later, as standalone tools. But the changing needs of today’s business users has accelerated the importance of providing in-built ways to monitor and explore their data while they use your software.
As a specialized and mature form of embedded analytics, contextual analytics is a game-changer if you're a software vendor looking to further augment your customers’ user experience, without requiring developers to completely reengineer your offering. Contextual analytics blends the data your users need for decision-making right at the point of their daily work, directly inside the interface and transaction flow of your software.
One of the things that I'm really passionate about is great design. Design is important in all aspects of our lives and it's really important for analytics as well. When you're the recipient of bad design, you know it immediately. Have you ever seen those emails that have been completely misaligned or sat through a PowerPoint where everything is in the wrong colors and fonts? How does it make you feel?
One of the really big trends that we're seeing in the analytics space, is the move towards talking about the analytics experience. Analytics experience is about supporting or triggering decisions and transactions. This is a shift from what I would describe as the passive use of analytics, where people were expected to use dashboards and reports that didn't add a lot of value to their transactions or decision making. The difference sounds subtle, but it's really quite profound.
As a product feature for your app, embedded analytics is undoubtedly a valuable tool. But historically, many product managers and software developers have approached it as a standalone capability. This has led to dashboards and reporting modules added as an afterthought, rather than as a founding strategic component of the core application.
Broadcasting is now available in this release for both dashboards and presentations. Just like reports, you can now enable scheduled delivery of these analytic content to different audiences. We have also included additional options for schedules — making it more granular for specific frequencies. For example, for fortnightly broadcasts I can now set the delivery to be on the second Monday. Or for monthly broadcasts, to have deliveries happen on the fifth day every month.
An exceptional embedded analytics offering is underpinned by the right strategy and framework - and this starts with a clear vision. To maximize the value of data assets, you may need to recognize and then address where your product may need to improve it’s BI maturity level. To do this, it’s time to focus on where your analytics development capability and tooling is today.
A few years ago, we got an evaluation form from a prospective customer wanting to understand more about what we do. In the comments they wrote... “Please don't chase me down like those bastards at Sisense” That little nugget of gold told me a lot about the way our buyers want to purchase software - everyone hates talking to a salesperson too early. So we decided to turn our sales process on its head and put all of our technical evaluation content online.
However, the complexity and volume of data every business accumulates is a common challenge for those that need to make decisions. Data is a continuous and always growing consideration, and it can be particularly challenging for larger enterprises.
