The business intelligence (BI) industry is undergoing a transformation. Research predicts spend on BI tools will decrease more than 80 percent this year. Yet, analytics are in more demand than ever—just not from traditional standalone BI tools.

Traditional BI is losing grip to a new class of solutions: embedded analytics. Investments on embedded analytics now represents 60 percent of new or additional analytics purchases, according to the 2018 Nucleus Research survey. Reason: Because over 83 percent of professionals want analytics inside the applications they already use, instead of wasting time switching from one application to another, according to the 2017 State of Analytics Adoption Report.

The Future Is Embedded Analytics
Plethora of traditional BI tools are trying to wedge themselves into the growing embedded analytics market—but they just fall flat. “Not all analytics platforms were built to be embedded,” says Gartner in their report, 5 Best Practices for Choosing an Embedded Analytics Platform Provider. “Some providers attempt to offer embedded analytics offerings that are the same products sold to direct customers, but lack required capabilities for a truly embedded experience.”

Traditional BI vendors that ‘dabble’ in embedded analytics fall short for two reasons. One, they’re not designed to be embedded. Their architectures, security frameworks, and feature sets just aren’t built with application teams in mind. And they aren’t completely customizable or extensible—which means they can’t keep up with the requirements of independent software vendors (ISVs) that need to maintain their brands and deliver a completely seamless user experience.

Two, traditional BI tools have set up their businesses to chase 100 different use cases. Their roadmaps, professional services, and support teams are focused on embedded analytics, which leaves their whole business fractured.

There is a world of difference between a solution that focuses exclusively on embedded analytics and one that’s been retrofitted for embedded use cases. Traditional BI vendors are trying their hardest to enter the embedded analytics space, but no one benefits from a tool that is suddenly able to support embedded analytics. You’ll only end up with a disjointed and disappointing application experience. Purpose-built embedded analytics solutions put information in context of the business applications users already love—and they’re dedicated to delivering modern features and engaging experiences that makes your application even more valuable.