Why embed BI reports
Embedded capabilities of BI tools is an effective way to establish data-driven culture in your company. Technically this means embedding reports and data visualizations into existing web-based business software used in the company - like intranet portal, CRM, ERP etc. Main benefits of this approach are:
- usability: users don't need to switch to separate BI application to get reports/insights.
- relevancy: canned reports are placed in the right locations (steps of business processes) which leads to better BI adoption.
- security: guarantee that users will see only data that they permitted to access.
- lower BI costs: very often no need to use per-user BI software licenses (fixed price), less efforts on reports integration/modification/upgrades.
How to choose the right embedded BI solution
First of all you need to check technical preconditions to ensure that a BI tool:
- can connect to your main application database (or replica that is used for reporting). If your app needs near real-time reporting - in other words, outdated reports are inacceptable - BI tool should also support live connections to this data source.
- allows you to define data model with metrics, dimensions and report parameters you need.
- produces reports you need: pivot tables (aka cross-tabs, matrixes), charts, usual tables that display non-aggregated data (rows). It is important to check that these visualizations support all features that are important for you; for example this could be drill-down/expand-collapse in pivots, calculations (differences, running totals etc), concrete chart types, pagination for large tables. Ability to define custom visualizations (HTML/JS) is a big plus, this means that you'll able to satisfy any requirements to the report if needed.
- can export to PDF/CSV/Excel. Many BI tools doesn't support export to Excel at all, or it is very limited (for example, without preserving the layout and/or cells formatting). And almost no one support export to Excel PivotTable.
- supports reports embedding: your main application should be able to pass current user's security context in a safe way and BI tool should take into account this context to apply row-level filtering for this concrete user.
Not must have but usually desired features:
- ability to customize reports visual appearance (say, with CSS) - in this way embedded reports may use main application styles (fonts, colors) and don't look like foreign elements.
- white-labelling: hide BI tool brand everywhere so user will not ever know that reports are produced by 3-rd party product.
- JSON exports: to have a possiblity to visualize data in a very custom way.
And the last but maybe most important thing: determine your bugdet that you can spend for BI capabilities: say, if your company is not in the Fortune-500 list, an enteprise-grade BI solution might be too expensive and too complex to use at the same time.
Comparisons of BI tools
- Embedded BI tools features comparison (pros & cons)
- Affordable BI tools for small teams (price comparison)
- SeekTable vs PowerBI for embedding (detailed comparison)
- SSRS Alternatives