People live and work in an age of applications. Whether they’re monitoring the levels of energy usage in their homes, planning daily fitness routines, or engaging with retailers and managing customer relationships in our workplaces, people expect and require immediate access to huge amounts of data — at the touch of a button, on mobile, tablet or laptop.

People want data and they want it now, and this impatience has been continually rewarded. It’s become increasingly normal to see analytics on what people are doing, in both their work lives and private lives.

In a social media crazed culture, individuals willingly share much of the data related to their app usage, because they know that data-driven analytics of everyday engagements with the most-used applications is vital to the developers behind those products. It’s also essential for the end users, since by sharing data they get a more tailored and valuable experience, whether in a business or personal environment.

>See also: Bridging the business intelligence and analytics gaps

This gathering of business and consumer intelligence is by no means a new thing, whether you are an IT manager overseeing internal applications for staff or an OEM development team releasing a commercial product.

However, the real challenge today is how to make sense of the huge amounts of user data and how best to respond to it in order to keep your users engaged and empower them to achieve everything they need to do within your application.

After all, if you fail to understand what your users expect and need, you risk losing them altogether. However, it can be a complex process moving between multiple apps or screens to analyse the data.

The practical business benefits of embedded analytics

This is where many application developers are seeing the practical business benefits of embedded analytics. Embedded analytics helps improve user experiences, increase end-user adoption and grow revenue, all while removing the complexity of using multiple applications and delivering the visualisations that users expect.

With these benefits and more, it’s no surprise that embedded analytics has never been so pervasive. Almost 90% of UK and US application decision makers are planning on investing in embedded analytics in the next 12 months, updating their applications to offer customers of all types sleek integrated services that omit any need for them to switch screens to access analytics.

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These are some of the findings in the new 2017 State of Embedded Analytics Report — the fifth annual trend report on the subject — in which Logi Analytics surveyed over 500 product managers, software engineers and members of application teams.

The report revealed that 93% of respondents are currently embedding analytics within their applications, up from 78 per cent last year. More than 90% of respondents state that they plan to invest in embedded analytics going forward, with a subset (72%) planning to increase spending in the next year.

The fact is users no longer want to leave their usual applications in order to get the data or analytics they require.

Adoption of embedded analytics is higher than ever because it solves user adoption issues associated with standalone data discovery tools, it helps to increase the time users spend in applications and, overall, it adds considerable value to the user experience.

All of which contributes to revenue growth for commercial application developers and high engagement for internal IT managers. Embedded analytics is the future of BI, and application teams that genuinely care about their user experience understand this.

That’s why the number of those planning to invest in embedded analytics is so high—if embedded analytics is not part of their business model yet, the intent is there to make sure it is in the near future.

>See also: The data of design: how analytics opens new doors for embedded systems design

Historically, visualisations and dashboards have been the priority for developers, but with many near-free offerings for basic visualisations having been released recently this playing field is almost now levelled.

Heads are now turning towards advanced capabilities like embedded self-service tools, integrated security, and the ability to kick off workflows in the applications. As users grow to expect slick visuals as a standard, they’re now looking for applications that make it easy and enjoyable to analyse their data and do precisely what they need to with it.

Rising investment in embedded analytics from application providers, eager to meet these high expectations, will ensure that soon enough it will all become entirely normal for us. In an age of applications, populated by the deservedly impatient, embedding analytics isn’t just advised, it’s becoming a given.

Sourced by Tom Cahill, VP EMEA at Logi Analytics

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