In this special guest feature, Jason Beres, Reveal Developer and SVP Developer Tools, Infragistics, discusses the top 5 industries that are benefiting from embedded analytics and its impact on decision making. Jason has written tech articles for various pubs, speaks at national conferences, and has authored/co-authored 10 books on software/development. His expertise in development further extends to ensure data and analytics are displayed in innovative and customer-driven MO for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF and Java products. Jason is an expert on technology issues such as the software testing process, data-driven teams, customer input in product design, open source, and changes in data analytics and business intelligence over the past 30 years.
The demand for business intelligence (BI) is soaring. Organizations that have on-demand access to data are able to make more informed decisions and gain a competitive advantage. Business intelligence enables you to track every metric – from revenue and business performance to analyzing customer behavior and competitor data. Successful organizations don’t randomly guess what items are selling – they use business intelligence to make product decisions based on previous orders and determine what to restock. Even the smallest business – such as the local baker — can track how many bagels he is selling and what ingredients he needs to buy.
One recent innovation in BI software is embedded analytics, which delivers real-time reporting and interactive data visualization directly into an enterprise business application. With the help of embedded analytics, organizations are presented with remarkable opportunities to increase productivity, strengthen competitive advantage and improve customer satisfaction.
Some industries are leading the way in taking advantage of the actionable insights available through embedded analytics. Among the frontrunners in the embedded analytics frontier include:
1. Healthcare
Not only can organizations gain a competitive advantage through data analytics, but today’s embedded analytics platforms are being used to save lives. The pandemic emphasized the importance of relying on data, rather than hunches, as the world became dependent on COVID-19 visualizations to steer us out of the crisis. Government agencies and health experts are using analytics tools to understand, track, and reduce the spread of the virus. Embedded analytics helps health experts identify vaccine supply chain issues, virus hotspots, COVID-19 rates, and more, all in real time.
Another example of embedded analytics in the healthcare social services industry is Casebook, a software platform initially incubated by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It allows caseworkers to leave paper and Excel spreadsheets behind and use embedded analytics to prepare easily digestible reports and data visualizations with the click of a few buttons.
Physicians can also use healthcare analytics to identify patterns of factors that increase patients’ risk of disease. With this information, physicians can then recommend medications or guide patients to make lifestyle changes to reduce their overall risk of disease. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, disease prevention represents a huge potential cost savings of $70 to $100 billion.
How embedded analytics is being used in healthcare
- Accurate diagnosis
- Provide patients with more personalized treatment
- Reduce readmission rates by leveraging population health data against personal patient data to predict at-risk patient
- Reduce patient wait-times by measuring and leveraging scheduling and staffing procedures
- Improve the quality of care by streamlining tedious processes related to making appointments, processing insurance, and providing referrals.
2. Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)
One of the many innovations in the financial services industry is embedded analytics, which can extract actionable insights. From profit and loss dashboards summarizing revenue, expenses and costs acquired over a specific period of time to finance dashboards which offer deeper insights into a company’s overall financial performance, interactive analytics visualizations help finance professionals make informed decisions.
Imagine this: You go to the bank to request a loan. Financial analytics help the bank make a decision by providing not just simple reporting, but interactive visualizations like graphs and charts that can further back up loan approval or denial. These insights assist the banker’s decision-making process in whether to approve or decline your loan request and can even suggest different offerings tailored to you and your bank profile.
Another example is Superstream’s cloud-based accounting software, where graphic presentations help companies make informed business decisions based on the latest global data and financial consolidation. This financial intelligence is presented at the time of most impact – when the user needs it most – in the context of the normal workflow.
Financial analytics arms us with the tools we need to better understand and analyze financial data to lower costs, drive revenue, and add more value to customers.
How embedded analytics is being used in BFSI
- Formulate an optimum channel strategy
- Understand customer spending patterns and push compelling offers on credit/debit cards
- Detect fraudulent transactions, as well identify and monitor suspicious account holders
- Reduce financial reporting time and efforts
- Suggest investment opportunities to customers based on their existing portfolio
3. Telecommunications
In today’s highly competitive business environment, telecom companies need forward-looking, predictive insights that can help them differentiate their services, solve customer problems and increase their client base. Telecommunication analytics software is a BI management tool that allows the telecom industry to leverage their wealth of data to draw actionable insights and improve operational decision-making process.
There are over 6 billion smartphone users and over 4 billion active internet users worldwide. With the rapid rise in these numbers, telecom companies are flooded with data. Telecommunication analytics can help segment the market and provide personalized deals to customers as well as provide insights on optimizing network usage and improving customer experience and security.
Telecom analytics can also use predictive insights to keep satellites, vehicles and repeater towers functioning optimally to reduce downtime and even discover new trends in the behavior of end-users to avoid mobile services outages or poor quality.
How embedded analytics is being used in telecommunications
- Use predictive maintenance insights to keep satellites, vehicles and repeater towers functioning optimally to reduce downtime
- Improve customer satisfaction and retention through personalized usage reports viewable on any device
- Discovering new trends in the behavior of end-users to avoid mobile services outages, or poor quality
- Monitor network coverage
- Identify security breaches and frauds
4. Retail and consumer goods
Modern retail analytics allows marketers to tap into a cycle of constant iteration, continuous learning and quick decision-making. Marketers today no longer have to wait for ad hoc analytics projects to gain valuable insights. Nor do they have to rely on analysts to sort through and make sense of mountains of complexity. Instead, retailers can use embedded analytics technology to streamline their data, mine it and make informed decisions in forecasting sales and selling strategies.
For example, brick and mortar and e-commerce stores can use retail analytics to discover what products and categories are resonating with buyers, boost efficiency in supply chain, manage their inventory and identify consumer trends.
Analytics in the retail industry holds much promise as artificial intelligence chatbots will deliver even smarter insights and recommendations customized to marketers in their respective retail analytics platforms.
How embedded analytics is being used in retail and consumer goods
- Suggests cross-selling and up-selling strategies based on the customer’s purchase history
- Plan marketing campaigns that target their audiences more accurately
- Provides information on how empty or full their stocks are and allows stores to always provide the amount of products needed
- Forecast sales and future demands
5. Manufacturing
Manufacturing is one of the most important industries in the world’s economy, accounting for approximately 16% of the global GDP. To help streamline performance, the industry embraces the power of data analytics to ensure improved decision making and enhanced performance.
Manufacturing analytics is the process of using data and data technologies to optimize supply chain and processes, increase performance, ensure high quality and reduce costs.
From when raw materials enter the plant to when the product exits the plant for distribution, analytics provide manufacturers with visibility on the entire process so they can better understand performance and the company’s financial picture.
Data analytics offers manufacturers the ability to gather, store, process and utilize data in their daily operations by drawing key insights about improvement and optimization opportunities. For example, a chip manufacturer might use embedded analytics software to determine plant efficiency, the number of units produced by line and the cost of labor vs. revenue.
How embedded analytics is being used in manufacturing
- To meet forecasted production
- To reduce and eliminate production line downtime
- Discover production problems in advance
- Improve supply chain agility
Data-driven decision making has never been more important. Business intelligence applications, and most importantly, embedded analytics — easily supply and analyze useful information which can help drive better informed decisions. From knowing where vaccines are needed to determining marketing budgets, more organizations are relying on data to help them identify challenges, save lives, capitalize on opportunities, and make timely decisions that could affect the bottom line.
Sign up for the free insideBIGDATA newsletter.
Join us on Twitter: @InsideBigData1 – https://twitter.com/InsideBigData1
Speak Your Mind