Ask HN: How do you choose a solution for embedded analytics? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you choose a solution for embedded analytics?

2 pointsseektable4 comments

I'm founder of SeekTable, this is a BI tool that currently plays best in embedded usage scenario. Existing customers seems very happy, and actually churn rate for integrated installations is zero. However, I'm stuck on how to scale from dozens to hundreds of installations -- and in this regard I need better understanding on how this kind of software is choosen.

Let's assume that you have a web-based business app, possibly SaaS and want to offer embedded reporting/analytics capabilties for your users. How you would find it? For search queries like "embedded analytics software" Google returns useless junk prepared by SEO-spammers. Will you take your attention to the Ads shown in the search results?

How did your existing customers found you?

It seems to me that you should work on trying to map your customer journey which is the path the customer takes before they end up buying products similar to yours.

Once you have that mapped out the next step is to figure out how to insert yourself into that process. If they do searches, you need to figure out how to show up for them either through ads or organic and useful content, for example.

Another tip that might be useful is to research your competitor and see how they advertise. Do they make ads? Do they send emails? What wording do they use?

All that should get you started pretty well.

Sales cycle for this kind of software is really long - very often timeframe from the first contact to subscriptions purchase is up to year. I'm not talking about cloud-version paid users, this is about installations. Also, users that contact on technical things / purchases are not users that made a decision (= who finds the solution).

In these conditions, I simply cannot determine what channel works and in most cases, I've no full information on how existing customers found SeekTable.

What do you mean by embedded?

My first thought was a closed hardware system with the software installed on it.

This means that reports are embedded into existing web applications, in most cases simply with iFrames. 'Embedded BI' is a widely used term in this space, for example: 'Power BI embedded analytics'.

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