The Fintech Buyers Guide to Business Intelligence (BI) Software: A 9-point checklist

The idea of using data to drive better decision-making is well-established. But the traditional approach – centered around Business Intelligence (BI) reporting tools – relies on specialist software and highly trained teams. 

This creates bottlenecks in the flow of information. 

Even though traditional BI tools have improved over the past several years, there is still too much distance between the data and the decision-makers. 

As a result, we’re seeing the rise of embedded analytics to bring users closer to the data – leading to faster and more accurate decisions. 

This guide helps you choose the right embedded analytics software.

9 key requirements for BI embedded analytics

If you’re on the hunt to find the best business intelligence embedded analytics and prediction tools, we recommend you ask the following questions:

1. Why should I add BI embedded analytics software?

By embedding BI tools, you’re adding serious, demonstrable value to your fintech product.

As well as providing the ability for end-users to create dashboards and visualisations without touching any code, embedded analytics allows more people to see, understand, and do more with data.

Embedded analytics allows you to connect and query your data source directly and in real-time for immediate data analysis - without moving it. For fintechs, this can support with fraud detection, risk management, monitoring financial KPIs, and simplifying your own business intelligence. 

2. How much does business intelligence software cost?

Budget is one of the biggest factors in any decision to purchase BI software. That’s why you need to do your research to ensure you’re getting the best value from your BI tool. 

When it comes to cost, consider these three areas:

• Value: Consider how the solution compares to other BI providers and legacy BI solutions.

• Scalability: Make sure you can scale to integrate embedded analytics into your applications, web pages, and workflows with full cost control.

• Transparent pricing: Beware of Business Intelligence software providers that operate the ‘budget airline’ model of pricing where you pay for the basic service, but get hit with expensive add-ons — as soon as you require additional functionally, tools, or have increased data volumes.

3. What's the ROI of BI software?

As well as significantly improving your own reporting, as a fintech, adding BI tools to your product offering can be a relatively easy and quick way to open a new revenue stream.

4. Will data be kept safe and secure?

The security of data is paramount. Therefore, keeping data safe should be a top priority.

Look for providers with a safe and secure backend, where client data is kept private. 

5. Is the BI software self-serve and easy to use?

For a BI tool to be truly useful, it needs to be usable. You shouldn't need a PhD in statistics to be able to use the data your analytics software generates.

Look for ‘no-code’ functionality. This makes it extremely easy to build reports, visualisations, prediction models and charts. 

6. Can I white-label the BI tools and embed them into my own software stack?

Being able to customise your embedded analytics tools to your own brand is great for platforms who are offering BI to their own clients.

Look for white-label BI functionality that allows you to quickly and easily label their tools with your own branding, enabling you to create a seamless BI offering. 

7. How easy is it to deploy the BI product to my platform?

Speed and ease of deployment are very important factors when choosing the right BI tool. 

Look for solutions that can be quickly and easily embedded into your platform with minimal effort. 

8. Does BI software come with customer service and support?

If you have questions or problems along the way, you'll want quick, friendly and effective support from your BI software provider. So check out customer reviews online.

9. What’s the cost of not providing data insights to your users?

If you’re NOT providing valuable insights – you can be sure that your competitors are.

Failing to offer your customers the ability to gain value from the data your platform generates, means they are losing out on the significant value of that data.

How long will your customers stay with you if you’re not providing them with the best personalised services?

Likely, they’ll soon move to a competing platform that does offer them value-added services as part of the package.

Find your embedded analytics solution

There’s no doubt embedded analytics has its benefits. With the right software, you’ll enable end-users to explore real-time data autonomously, improve BI with self-service dashboards, and create highly detailed reports in seconds. That’s bound to have an impact on your bottom line. 

Whether your goal is to improve and automate your business intelligence or enhance the products you provide to customers, the above guide will help you find the right embedded analytics solution that suits your business needs.