Most people dread the weekly grocery shopping chore. But not me. Big grocery chains have leveraged new advances in technology to make this time-consuming, sometimes grueling task, a cake walk. And I, for one, really appreciate it. With a simple click in my grocery app, I now have the ability to order groceries and either have them delivered or ready for curb-side pickup.
But what if the app could take this service a step further? What if I could:
- Integrate it with my smartphone calendar to pinpoint the best time frames for pickup
- Create and monitor a weekly grocery store budget
- Integrate the grocery store spend from my credit card app and view spending patterns against my budget
- See how often I grocery shop in a month, why I went over budget some weeks, and my total savings from coupons
What if all of your apps provided analytical insights like the example above? It would make it much easier to make decisions that save time and money.
In business, this level of visibility is extremely valuable: It provides the intelligence needed to help employees at all levels make smarter decisions. Sure, there are many business intelligence (BI) and analytical technologies available that provide insights on how business is performing. But what they lack is the ability to drill deeper to uncover why the business is performing the way it is and to make that information immediately accessible to business users who can do something with it.
Dploy Solutions is stepping up its level of business intelligence by integrating embedded analytics with our KPI management capabilities. The new solution provides companies with multi-dimensional views into business performance along with drill down capabilities to see where the issues exist, why problems are happening, and what is being done to remove obstacles to optimal performance.
In this blog, we will take a closer look at:
- The value of marrying KPI management with embedded analytics
- How embedded analytics will improve your competitive edge
- Why embedded analytics is the future of business intelligence and Dploy Solutions
The value of marrying KPI management capabilities with embedded analytics
First, what is embedded analytics? The term refers to capabilities that are integrated into existing business systems, such as CRM, ERP, marketing, or financial systems. Embedded analytics are different from stand-alone analytics software solutions that require data integration from the outside systems. A recent research report published by Aberdeen Group, Embedded Analytics: Context-Driven Intelligence Drives Better Business Results*, states that an “embedded approach cultivates enhanced data literacy and offers several pathways to growth.” The analytics experts at Sisense agree. The company’s blog discusses the many advantages of embedded analytics and how the trend will change the BI market.
Specifically, with KPI management capabilities, embedded analytics make it possible to better understand the factors that drive KPIs as well as the impact of KPI progress on other areas of the business, such as revenue and financial performance. At Dploy Solutions, we have always preached the importance of going beyond KPI management insights to see where and why targets are missed and to manage the appropriate actions to get back on track. Currently, Dploy Solutions enables this enhanced level of insight for existing KPI metrics. Adding analytics capabilities will extend this visibility throughout the business, opening up new windows of uncovered opportunities to drive process improvements and growth.
With the help of our data integration and data warehousing services, all of your data from your critical business systems can be aggregated and analyzed in one central software solution with the capabilities to manage insights, track how your business is acting on those insights, and measure results.
Improve your competitive edge
According to the Aberdeen Group report, companies are looking for a more cohesive analytics strategy to help drive business forward. But in order to be successful, companies realize they need to create a more analytical culture. In other words, analytics need to be part of employees’ everyday process and workflows. Indeed, 40% of Aberdeen survey responders say they would like to use embedded analytics to make process and cultural improvements; 33% would like a more efficient and strategic use of the data.
Figure 1: Why Take An Embedded Approach to Analytics
When employees are more engaged in the analytics, they know what’s happening in the business. They make smarter decisions related to their job. And they take faster action to make improvements that contribute to overall business achievements. At every level of the business, strategic knowledge better positions the organization to win against the competition.
Here’s an example: Let’s say ABC Company, a manufacturing business, is realizing a drop in throughput on second shift. The shift supervisor knows this because he’s tracking the KPI—throughput—in Dploy. With the power of analytics capabilities in Dploy, data from the company’s MES, CRM, and ERP are now housed in a data warehouse along with the KPI data, and the system can quickly look at and identify relationships between the various factors. The shift supervisor gets insights—specific to his job function and role— delivered to a custom dashboard. He sees that the main root cause of the throughput drop is associated with different machine setting being used on the second shift. With this knowledge, the supervisor can quickly take action to correct the problem and get throughput back on track.
The future of embedded analytics is getting brighter and making business users smarter
Advances in technology are making it possible for business users at every level—not just data scientists—to leverage the power of robust analytics to drive major improvements and gains in the business. At Dploy Solutions, we have partnered with the pioneers in embedded analytics technology, Sisense, to improve the breadth and depth of our solutions. The Sisense analytics platform creates insights that are accessible to everyone, everywhere, regardless of technical and data expertise. Together, Dploy Solutions and Sisense will help companies stay on track with critical performance metrics and the overall health of their businesses.
Dploy Solutions launched its analytics capabilities on February 7, 2019. If you are interested in learning more and seeing a demo, contact us today.
* Aberdeen Group, ‘Embedded Analytics: Context-Driven Intelligence Drives Better Business Results’, July 2018
