Visual analytics are powerful and can be used to learn more, grow more, and earn more. Despite this, their power is often untapped, especially when those analytics are on a stand-alone platform requiring the user to leave their flow of work to seek them out. I’ll call this the convenience barrier and suggest it be overcome by embedding those same awesome analytics directly into the applications the user lives in.
Embedding not only overcomes the convenience barrier, it also provides a way for the analytics to interact with the application itself, displaying only what’s applicable to the view in the application.
Imagine the sales manager who uses a CRM on a constant basis during the work day. The manager’s knowledge and effectiveness is greatly enhanced if customer purchase history, return pattern, and frequency of customer service issues are visually displayed within the CRM application – right on the page containing all the details on the customer.
Embedded analytics is key to efficiency and productivity, dropping data and insights directly into the path of the user.
