THE 5 LEVELS OF ANALYTICS:

FROM BASIC BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE REQUIREMENTS TO

SOPHISTICATED PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATORS
Do the analytic offerings in your application make you stand out from the crowd? See where
your offerings fall on the analytics maturity scale—and learn how sophisticated capabilities
can differentiate your product.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
User Demands Are Ever-Changing… ..................................................................................................................................... 1
...But Analytics Are a Long-Term Differentiator ...................................................................................................................2
Bare-Minimum Analytics Are No Longer Cutting It ............................................................................................................3
Deeper Embedding Increases Application Value ................................................................................................................5
Deeper Embedding Increases Your Strategic Benefits .......................................................................................................7
For More Opportunity, Move Across the Value Scale ........................................................................................................8
Levels 0 and 1: Companion and Bolt-On Analytics ..........................................................................................................10
Level 2: Inline Analytics ...........................................................................................................................................................12
Level 3: Infused Analytics .......................................................................................................................................................14
Level 4: Genius Analytic Applications ..................................................................................................................................16
About Logi Analytics ................................................................................................................................................................18
User Demands Are Ever-Changing…
Any product manager knows the disruptive nature of innovation –
especially application owners competing in the hyper-competitive
software market. The market has been thoroughly transformed over
the past decade by the transition to mobile, the emergence of the
freemium business model, and the move to SaaS.

These trends are most evident in the consumer market. But the
business market is following suit, driven by the demands of users who
expect every application to mirror their best consumer application
experiences. As a result, the new world of software development is
increasingly characterized by:

• Shrinking contracts. Today, you’re lucky if your customers

commit to multi-year terms. This shorter renewal cycle
means you must keep up with customer demands or risk
losing the business.

• Competition from every direction. It’s easier than ever

for companies of any size to jump into the fray with their
software. All they need is a website, a free trial, and targeted
advertising on Google or Facebook.

• Relentless pressure for improvement. Momentum from

the consumer market—where some apps are updated every
month—is pressuring business apps to significantly improve
at least once a year.

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…But Analytics Are a
Long-Term Differentiator
Analytics are an increasing component of an application’s value.
Research presented in Logi’s State of Embedded Analytics Report
showed that application providers currently assign analytics a relative
value of 54 percent of overall product value (up from 45 percent last
year).

At Logi, we believe users will continue demanding deeper, more

sophisticated analytics capabilities. And we’ve seen application
teams capitalizing on this trend to significantly:

• increase customer satisfaction

• differentiate their products and brands

• drive continuous improvements

• drive higher value for their customers

Read on to learn why!

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“The real power Bare-Minimum Analytics Are
comes from No Longer Cutting It
adoption… While every user may not be demanding “analytics” by name, study
Companies must after study shows business users want a convenient way to leverage
data. According to a recent report, 84 percent of business users say
embed analytics it’s important for them to access analytics embedded within the
in the operating applications they’re already using.

models of real-world Unfortunately, many of these users are out of luck. Nearly 67 percent
of business users have to switch to separate analytics tools to get the
processes and day- data or analysis they need, whether it’s a fundamental tool like Excel
or a separate, complicated solution like Qlik or Birst. This disconnect
to-day work flows.” hinders user adoption. While adoption of embedded analytics has
been rising, adoption of standalone self-serve analytics has dropped—
Making data analytics work for down 20 percent over the past two years.
you—instead of the other way
around “Many users are befuddled by what to do with an analytics applica-
tion,” says Anne Moxie, analyst at Nucleus Research. “It can seem like
McKinsey & Company there’s an overwhelming number of possibilities for analysis when
December 2016
going into a standalone, blank-canvas analytics application.”

But business users know exactly what to do when analysis happens

TWEET THIS
in the context of work they’re already doing. When analytics are
integrated into primary applications, adoption happens naturally—
often without users even realizing it. And if embedding is done

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really well, the natural human tendency to want more of something
good kicks in, driving demand for more sophisticated levels of
analytics capabilities.

Of course, every user won’t need the same capabilities at the same
time. Imagine your end users in cars driving down a road at different
speeds. For some users, simple data visualizations and dashboards
will meet their needs for miles to come. Others begin with something
basic like dashboards and visualizations, but quickly rev up and need
more. Still others want sophisticated capabilities under the hood of
their apps right from the start. Over time, new users enter the lanes,
and current users shift into different lanes at variable speeds.

Ultimately, your users are all moving ahead—and eventually every-

one will want more capabilities than they currently have. This cre-
ates tremendous market momentum. Application teams and software
providers have a huge opportunity to fuel this demand by delivering
sophisticated, next-level analytics to a diverse set of users in a way
that makes analytics a natural part of their everyday work.

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“The deeper you Deeper Embedding Increases
embed analytics Application Value
capabilities into the The best way to make analytics a natural part of everyday work is
unique fabric of your to embed it seamlessly into business applications. And the more
sophisticated capabilities you can weave into the fabric of your
application, the more application, the higher your user adoption and satisfaction will be.
of a differentiator Logi developed the Analytics Maturity Model to represent the
it becomes—and various analytics implementations we’ve observed in thousands of
customer applications. Five to ten years ago, companies began with
the harder it is a simple standalone analytics instance, then gradually tightened the
relationship between applications and analytics by adding single sign-
for competitors on security, co-presentation of content, and eventually workflow
to replicate your integration. Over time, the baseline requirements have shifted to,
at a minimum, offering analytics in context of other applications.
success.” Increasingly, the ceiling has risen as companies begin providing self-
service data exploration capabilities inside primary apps.

Deeper embedding increases the value of your application to users

as well as the time they spend in it, which in turn can justify premium
pricing. Plus, the deeper you embed analytics capabilities into
the unique fabric of your application, the more of a differentiator
it becomes—and the harder it is for competitors to replicate
your success.

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TWEET THIS

6
DESCRIBE TO WHAT EXTENT EMBEDDED BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS HELPS YOU TO...
Internal Corporate Applications and
Commercial Applications
Deeper Embedding Increases Your
Internal: Improve Customer Satisfaction 2% Strategic Benefits
64% 33% 1%
The farther you advance on the Analytics Maturity Model, the more
value you’ll add to your software application. In the State of Embedded
62% 32% 1%
Analytics Report, 98 percent of respondents said embedded analytics
Commercial: Improve Customer Satisfaction 5% contributed to revenue growth. An additional 82 percent said time
spent in their application increased after embedding analytics.
Internal: Increase end user adoption 4%
Similarly, more than 93 percent of IT application providers credited
52% 41% 2%
embedded analytics with improving user experience and increasing
end user adoption. And 98 percent said it helped improve customer
53% 40% 1%
satisfaction.
Commercial: Increase end user adoption
6%
What really got interesting, however, was seeing how strongly re-
spondents felt about these strategic benefits of embedded analytics
Internal: Improve User Experience
as they moved across the Analytics Maturity Model. We found that,
72% 26% 2% as the capabilities advanced from Level 0 to Level 3, the estimated
values climb steadily as well. We don’t have data yet for Level 4, but
67% 31% 2%
you can see where this is going…
Commercial: Improve User Experience

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

STRONGLY SLIGHTLY SLIGHTLY STRONGLY

AGREE AGREE DISAGREE DISAGREE

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 Some embedding solutions make it easy to
provide loosely entwined basic capabilities, but it
For More Opportunity,
gets tougher when you want to go further Move Across the Value Scale
Choose an extensible solution that lets you satisfy While not every application requires, or is even appropriate for, deep
the full range of expanding user expectations
with manageable, predictible increments of effort embedding, we believe the biggest opportunities for application
providers over the next several years will be found at Levels 3 and 4
of the Analytics Maturity Model.

To an increasing degree, embedded analytics will need to interact

MORE EFFORT

with existing workflows, spur thinking, and erase the barriers

between a user asking a question, evaluating results, and taking
action. The ISVs, SaaS providers, and IT developers that can offer
these sophisticated capabilities within their existing software apps
will see more business value than those who stick with standalone
MORE VALUE analytics tools.
Standalone Bolt-On Inline Infused Genius Meeting customer demands and offering more sophisticated ana-
Analytics Analytics Analytics Analytics Analytics
lytics capabilities depends in large part on the solution you choose.
Some analytics partners make it easy to reach Levels 0, 1 and 2—but
when you want to take your solution further, you’ll have to substan-
tially increase the amount of resources and effort to get there. More
forward-thinking embedded analytics platforms make it easy to add
sophisticated capabilities and enhance your offerings with minimal
incremental development effort.

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Ultimately, we’ve seen deeper embedding open the door for appli-
cations that operationalize and mainstream advanced analytics, and
expand self-service data discovery to include every user. And that’s a
very big opportunity indeed.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the five levels of embedded

analytics—each increasing the value you can bring to
your customers.

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LEVELS 0 and 1: Companion and Bolt-On Analytics
Commoditized. High-friction user experience. May be a good place to beta test.

The number of companies offering apps with embedded analytics at these basic levels is at 23 percent
this year.

• At Level 0, Standalone Analytics, the primary application shares data with a standalone
analytics application. End users have to switch to the standalone solution to analyze their data.

• At Level 1, Bolt-On Analytics, the addition of security integration provides single sign-on functionality. However,
users still have to toggle from one application to another.

This dashboard is bolted on to the website. Click on the image and you’ll jump into a separate site and
You have to click to see the dashboard in full. separate application to interact with the dashboard.

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“Jumping back Either way, it’s a poor user experience. Jumping back and forth
between applications is not only irritating, it’s inefficient. According
and forth between to Nucleus Research, it can waste up to two hours of an employee’s
time per week.
applications is not
While there’s little or no opportunity for competitive differentiation
only irritating, at these levels, you may find Levels 1 and 2 helpful for beta testing.
it’s inefficient.” Trying out loosely coupled analytics can help you determine the types
of data analysis your users need as you wireframe how to seamlessly
add analytics to your application.

To some extent, you may also be able to test how people adopt and
use these analytics—but be cautious if you decide to do this. When
analytics are presented separate from primary applications, user
behavior may not reflect how they would actually work with fully
embedded capabilities. Earlier we mentioned this observation from
Anne Moxie of Nucleus Research: Users can become overwhelmed
by the possibilities of a “blank-canvas analytics application,” which
can skew adoption and usage results. So if you’re going to test at
these levels, do everything you can to encourage usage of the
standalone analytics solutions. Provide explicit guidance to help users
understand the practical relevancy of the analytics to tasks they’re
currently performing with your application.

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LEVEL 2: Inline Analytics
This year’s table stakes—but not for much longer

The number of companies offering applications with embedded analytics at this level shrunk from
53 percent to 27 percent over the past year—in part because the number of companies embedding
at more advanced levels has increased. These trends indicate that companies are realizing they must
enhance their bolted-on or companion applications to meet changing consumer preferences.

• At Level 2, Inline Analytics, the addition of user interface integration allows co-presentation of analytics content
and functions with primary application content and functions. Companies embedding analytics at this level can
offer business intelligence in context of an existing application—although they still have some limitations.

This embedded dashboard appears alongside the application. You can still access the rest of
the application’s interface in the menu on the left-hand side.

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“Delivering analytics While the primary application and analytics solution still function
separately with inline analytics, users are likely unaware of it. Reports,
where users are dashboards, and data discovery tools are co-presented alongside
the primary application. Delivering analytics where users are already
already working working keeps them in your application throughout their work
keeps them in process and improves task efficiency.

your application Companies have minimal opportunities here for competitive differ-
entiation and increased pricing. Logi’s State of Embedded Analytics
throughout their Adoption Report showed that 98 percent of companies say embed-
ded analytics has helped them increase revenue. In our experience,
work process and we see revenue opportunities increase as the depth of embedding
improves task and sophistication of capabilities improves.

efficiency.“ While many applications have inline analytics, their co-presentation is

inconsistent. Best practices include white labeling and custom styling
that make the analytics look and feel like the application, maintaining
your brand identity while improving customer satisfaction through a
consistent UI/UX.

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LEVEL 3: Infused Analytics
The bare minimum for highly competitive industries.

The number of companies offering applications with embedded analytics at this level rose from 31 percent
to 37 percent over the past year.

• At Level 3, Infused Analytics, the addition of workflow integration allows functional

interactions between analytics and the primary application.

As dashboards are integrated into end users’ preferred tools, analytics appear
in context and have a consistent look and feel as the rest of the application.

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“Analytics will At this level, the primary application and analytic application aren’t
just co-presenting, they’re talking to each other. Essentially, they’re
become so one application with seamless communication throughout. This tight
integration creates a more unified and immersive experience for
ubiquitous, we users.
won’t even notice When users spot a data anomaly that requires intervention, they can
it. From a business kick off a workflow right then and there. For example, a sales manager
can analyze performance by territory, identify a poor performer, and
perspective, it’s change sales team assignments on the same screen. An insurance
manager can compare a claim against similar claims within the
going to transform approval workflow. A nurse on a hospital floor can review a patient’s
entire industries.” history while updating records with new information then and there.

Such capabilities make analytics a core part of the application, reduce

Goutham Belliappa wasted time, and minimize human error. Actions are logically linked
Big Data and Analytics practice to information. Knowing flows naturally into doing.
leader, Capgemini North America
Speaking to InformationWeek, By embedding analytics at this level, companies have significant op-
December 2016 portunities for competitive differentiation and increased revenue,
since they can infuse analytics in ways that enhance the unique func-
tionality of their applications. Get ahead of the pack by incorporat-
ing custom data analysis techniques into your background processes
along with in-context frontends that make them simple to under-
stand and use. Research shows that when analytics are so deeply
infused that they essentially disappear into an application, they in-
crease the value of that application and drive adoption of not only
analytics, but also the product overall.

15
LEVEL 4: Genius Analytics
Competitive differentiator for years to come.

The number of companies offering applications with this level of embedded analytics is currently around
15 percent. At least twice as many companies have plans to advance to Level 4 in the near future.

• At Level 4, Genius Analytic Applications, the addition of embedded self-service analytics

(including data discovery tools) supports unanticipated use cases within a managed, seamless
environment.

At this level, the user experience is liberating and empowering. Data analysis becomes integral to not only how people
work, but how they think. Efficiency improves and so does decision making. In essence, companies are creating custom
apps for every user—without the heavy lifting that implies.

Embedding self-service capabilities empowers end users to customize their data views, add
new data, and share information with colleagues.

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“Across indus­tries, With embedded self-service capabilities, users can ask new questions
of the data as ideas occur to them. With their business expertise, they
less than half come up with ways to leverage information that no software engineer
could anticipate. There’s also the immediacy effect: Answers and
of the potential insights delivered at the point of thought can accelerate problem
improvements from
solving and spur innovation. (So make sure your embedding solution
analytics have been supports really fast analytic processing.)

realized so far.” Companies have many opportunities here for competitive differen-
tiation—their applications can deliver unprecedented business value.
Harvard Business Review Recently, Harvard Business Review pointed out that across indus-
December 2016 tries, less than half of the potential improvements from analytics have
been realized so far.1 Your applications can help your customers go
the rest of the way.

Because Genius applications augment the current workflows and

thought processes of employees, they can be game changers for
workforce performance and operational effectiveness. As a recent
article in the McKinsey Quarterly pointed out, “The impact of ‘big data’
analytics is often manifested by thousands—or more—of incrementally
small improvements…If an organization can systematically combine
small improvements across bigger, multiple processes, the payoff can
be exponential.”2
1 “Most Industries Are Nowhere Close to Realizing the Potential of Analytics,”
hbr.org blog, Dec 2016
2 “Making data analytics work for you—instead of the other way around,”
McKinsey & Company, Dec 2016

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About Logi Analytics
Logi helps companies embed analytics into the fabric of their organi-
zation and products. With Logi, companies can create genius analytic
applications that are purpose-built to users’ unique roles and skills,
and delivered in the apps they already rely on – enabling anyone to
analyze data when and where they need it.

More than 1,800 customers worldwide rely on Logi Analytics. The

company is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

Learn more at LogiAnalytics.com.

See how deeper embedding of analytics can help

you develop more competitive applications:

Watch a free demo of Logi Analytics.

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