3 Methods to Measure ROI for Embedded Analytics

Your application is built to deliver value. But without strong analytics, you may be leaving ROI on the table. Everybody says they do embedded analytics, but if that’s your goal, wouldn’t it make more sense to choose one that specializes in it?

When you look at analytics, and especially embedded analytics, this mindset creates real problems. You're asked to justify investment in dashboards, data tools, and systems that improve decision-making, customer experience, and your product itself. But those benefits aren't always easy to measure upfront.

This challenge applies whether you're embedding analytics into a SaaS product or rolling out reporting across your operations. In embedded use cases, the value comes from better customer retention, increased usage, competitive differentiation, and new revenue streams. But those gains show up gradually and take time to mature. If your business only invests in what it can measure instantly, you'll miss every single one of them. Analytics are the gateway to understanding, enabling users to interact with and interpret the insights generated through data collection, preparation, and analysis.

Embedded Analytics ROI: Quantified. Visualized. Justified. Video

In an environment where analytics tools are a major investment for developers, it can be easy to see it as a nice-to-have instead of a necessary part of what makes your application successful. But analytics can help you and your customers maximize ROI and maintain a competitive edge. The key is to focus on the long-term benefits that far outweigh any initial effort.

And the benefits are tangible. According to insightsoftware and Hanover Research’s report on measuring the ROI of embedded analytics, 99% of organizations see ROI on their embedded analytics investment within the first 12 months, with 70% realizing returns in just 6 months. This rapid return underscores the significant impact embedded analytics can have on an application’s success, but maximizing its value requires a strategic approach.

To help you assess whether embedded analytics is the right investment, consider the hidden costs of limited analytics offerings. Here are three ways to measure ROI for embedded analytics.

Time Loss in the Weeds of Ad Hoc Requests

A key hidden cost of suboptimal analytics is the drain on development resources caused by ad hoc reporting requests. When analytics capabilities are limited, teams often receive a constant stream of custom requests for reports, dashboards, and data analysis. This creates a significant burden on your development team, pulling them away from more strategic, high-priority tasks, like enhancing core features or working on product innovation.

In our survey of over 300 application developers, we found that embedded analytics reduces monthly support tickets related to reporting by 20%. 80% of participants found that their embedded analytics investment led them to faster time-to-insight, providing users with faster access to information than competitor products, and enabling more agile responses to market changes.

Follow these steps to measure the impact of current ad hoc requests and evaluate the potential benefit of a self-service solution:

1. Track Request Frequency: Monitor how often custom reporting or data analysis requests are submitted.

2. Assess Complexity: Evaluate the complexity of each request to understand how much time is spent per request.

3. Estimate Developer Hours: Calculate the total developer hours spent addressing these requests each week.

4. Estimate Cost: Determine the cost of these hours by factoring in the hourly rate of your development team (including salaries, benefits, and overhead).

5. Compare Costs: Compare the cost of addressing ad hoc requests to the investment in an embedded analytics solution.

6. Project Savings: Estimate the potential reduction in hours and costs with a self-service analytics solution in place.

Higher Maintenance Costs for Custom Solutions: Streamlining with Embedded Analytics

Without comprehensive analytics, application teams often turn to custom-built solutions or patchwork fixes to meet customer needs. These systems require constant updates and troubleshooting, resulting in ongoing maintenance costs that drain resources. Each time a custom solution breaks or needs an upgrade, your development team must divert focus from more strategic priorities, incurring additional operational costs and delaying important roadmap features.

These piecemeal approaches also introduce inefficiencies, as time and resources are spent addressing issues that could be avoided with a robust, embedded analytics solution.

To assess the hidden costs of maintaining custom solutions, follow these steps:

1. Inventory Custom Solutions: List all the custom analytics solutions currently in place.

2. Track Maintenance Time: Measure the amount of developer time spent on troubleshooting and updating these custom solutions.

3. Calculate Maintenance Costs: Multiply the hours spent on maintenance by your development team's hourly cost to estimate the total maintenance expenditure.

4. Identify Issues: Identify the specific areas where custom solutions frequently break or require attention, contributing to delays and inefficiencies.

5. Compare Alternatives: Compare the ongoing cost of maintaining custom-built solutions to the cost of implementing an embedded analytics solution.

6. Evaluate Long-Term Benefits: Assess how an embedded solution could reduce the need for custom fixes, saving time and reducing operational costs over time.

Loss of Competitive Edge and Revenue Opportunities: Leveraging Analytics for Growth

Applications that lack advanced analytics features such as customizable dashboards and interactive tools risk falling behind competitors who provide these capabilities. Our research found that 86% of embedded analytics buyers found self-service analytics to be of key importance. Additionally, 80% found customizable dashboards to be an important part of what influenced their decision to buy analytics.

Top capabilities all users expect to be included in their embedded analytics solution are:​

• 44% Data preparation tools​

• 41% Customizable dashboards​

• 40% Interactivity features

This shows that customers expect real-time, data-driven insights to inform their decisions. Failure to deliver can result in lost sales, diminished customer satisfaction, and decreased retention. Moreover, a lack of interactive and customizable analytics features reduces your ability to differentiate your application from competitors, meaning you miss out on valuable opportunities for revenue growth and market expansion.

To assess how your analytics offerings impact your competitiveness and revenue opportunities, take these steps:

1. Monitor Key Metrics: Track metrics such as customer churn rate, feature adoption, and customer lifetime value to understand the impact of your current analytics.

2. Conduct Customer Feedback: Survey customers to gather feedback on the analytics features they find most valuable and whether they feel your application lacks essential analytics capabilities.

3. Benchmark Against Competitors: Analyze the analytics features offered by your competitors. Identify gaps where your solution is lacking and where enhancements could offer a competitive advantage.

4. Quantify Missed Opportunities: Calculate potential revenue losses due to the absence of interactive features and customizable dashboards by comparing sales growth in competitor products that offer superior analytics.

5. Estimate Revenue Gains: Estimate how revenue could grow with enhanced analytics capabilities, such as increased sales, higher adoption rates, or expanded licensing opportunities.

6. Create a Business Case: Build a business case for embedding analytics by demonstrating how it can help you capture more market share, retain customers, and increase profitability.

 Technology to Increase ROI

Proving ROI isn’t just about crunching numbers—it’s about showing the transformation that embedded analytics enables. When done right, embedded analytics shifts your application from being a tool to being a strategic enabler for your customers, unlocking new levels of efficiency, engagement, and growth. And that’s where the real value lies. Logi Symphony is a powerful embedded business intelligence and analytics software solution that empowers you to deliver exceptional embedded analytics that not only enhance your product but also transform the way your customers work. By enabling your clients to make smarter, faster decisions and empowering their end users with actionable insights, you create a ripple effect of value that strengthens their success—and your competitive advantage.

With Logi Symphony, equip your users with:

• Self-Service Analytics to empower non-technical users to interact with data independently.

• Managed Dashboards to create dashboards that not only look professional but also provide unmatched functionality, ensuring every user has what they need, right when they need it.

• Advanced Reporting to enable drillable, interactive reports that can be integrated directly into your application’s workflows.

• AI-Powered Insights to provide users with predictive and prescriptive insights, setting it apart from the competition.

• Data Preparation Tools to reduce the load on your development team and speed up implementation timelines.

• In-Memory Cubes to provide lightning-fast query speeds while shielding your users from backend disruptions.

• Writeback Capabilities to give your users the ability to edit, update, or add data directly within the application.

With a platform like Logi Symphony, you’re investing in a future-proof solution with an aggressive roadmap to increase ROI. That means you can focus on what you do best while delivering immense value to your users.

Ready to learn more? Read our research report on the ROI of embedded analytics solutions.