A software company that specializes in electronic forms management solutions for healthcare organizations described empowering end users as a key factor in choosing an analytics vendor.
Access CTO and Vice President Chuck Demaree explained how he evaluated business intelligence vendors during a webinar held by the Aberdeen Group and sponsored by Izenda.
View the webinar on demand: Enriching Applications with Embedded Analytical Horsepower.
He said self-service BI needs to extend to accessing custom databases. That’s something Demaree said other vendors didn’t offer or added only after hefty charges.
“End users can easily do anything they wanted to do with our product solution,” he said.
Demaree and Michael Lock, VP of Aberdeen Research and an acknowledged embedded BI expert, explained why healthcare organizations prefer embedded analytics.
“The biggest driver of technology in the healthcare world is the need to get information and data closer to the point of care,” Lock said. Whether it’s in a primary care office or a hospital, medical staff work in environments that don’t lend themselves well to using many applications at one time.
Demaree said his company chose Izenda for their Access Passport application because it allows each user to customize their landing page to present the information they want.
“That’s why embedding Izenda into the product was a natural for us,” he said.
Both men had advice on how to enrich applications with embedded analytics.
Build vs. Buy
Demaree said that’s an easy question to answer. “We are the best at what we do. We are the leader in our vertical in the forms and process automation.” Demaree said they didn’t build an analytics solution because that’s not their specialty.
It didn’t make financial sense and wasn’t a good use of Access resources to do what Izenda specializes in rather than rely on them and plug their product in to Passport, he said. (Read more on this topic in Embedded BI: Build vs. Buy: 8 Key Considerations.)
Time to Market
Aberdeen’s Lock said his research revealed a notable improvement in buying vs. building. Choosing to buy proved to be almost a month and a half quicker than building a solution. He said that was significant difference in getting to market quicker for a software company.
Key Takeaways for Embedding Analytics
Lock listed the following among the key takeaways about embedded analytics:
- Analytics has evolved into a necessity for software applications.
- Competitive pressure drives investments in analytics. Organizations need to make use of data, not just store it.
- An embedded approach helps operationalize analytical activity.
- Performance benefits of embedded analytics are real and attainable.
Embedding functionality within other applications is not just about building and integrating BI tech into other solutions, according to Lock. Software product teams need to put it into the everyday workflows of the end users.
With these analytics tools embedded, end users will explore and interact with data. They’ll create views of the data for analysis within the comfort and familiarity of the software they use every day. Organizations realize a major benefit because it creates a data-driven mindset embedded within the end user’s operational activities. The user can pull game changing insights out of this presentation of data, Lock said.
“As the ISV market grows… I would expect the market for embedded analytics to certainly keep pace with the growth of software market if not outgrow it,” he said.
Embedded Analytics Enable Real-Time Efficiencies
Access Passport lets organizations keep their fingers on the pulse of the revenue and operational performance. Managers can examine the payer mix and patient load in real time. The healthcare organization using embedded analytics can change its staffing model in real time to reallocate people based on current needs.
Demaree said dashboards show performance drivers also. Using visualizations by Izenda, the dashboards show who does the most work. If one area or department becomes overburdened, they can move staff to reduce the load.
“None of our competitors have that functionality,” he said. Access added this functionality with little effort by embedding Izenda’s self-service analytics platform. That increased the software company’s market share and aids in seeking new customers while increasing customer retention. (Read more on why Access chose Izenda’s embedded analytics platform.)
