Donald Farmer - Embedded Analytics

There are several advantages to embedded analytics which business users and IT teams appreciate.

From the point of view of an IT team, who are very concerned with issues such as security and data governance, embedding your analytics in another application which is already secured has a simple but significant benefit. There is only environment and one login to be managed; the analytic application does not add an additional layer of complexity, We will look at this topic in more detail in Chapter 8 .

Business users will be most familiar with their existing operational applications. Embedding analytics in this well-understood environment affords a non-specialist user insights and information in a way that works with their existing skills and practices.

In addition to being familiar, it is also more efficient to embed analytics in a commonly used application. If we need to switch from our working application to an analytic application, we interrupt our workflow. In fact, we lose focus a little while were doing it, in addition to the simple hassle of opening and navigating to another application.

How does this work in practice?

In a call centre, an operator taking customer calls for support can see on one screen not only the customer record, but (thanks to the embedded analytics) but also trends and patterns related to this and similar cases. These patterns - perhaps the customer is calling increasingly often over time - may prompt the operator to route the call to a specialist who can better diagnose and resolve the underlying issues at hand. The result should be a better resolution for the customer and more efficient handling by the call center.

A salesperson on the road with an application that helps them select the next customer to visit and optimise the offers they make could see, embedded in that application, even on a mobile device, a recommendation driven by machine learning.

Other applications may sound more advanced, but in principle are very similar. A doctor may use an embedded algorithm to assist with diagnosis. A production-line manager in a busy factory needs may need to compare the performance of different machines in order to see where improvements can be made. An HR person, interviewing an employee with performance issues, may need to compare their work and achievements with peers within and across organizational boundaries in order to suggest a best course of action.