Embedded Analytics for SaaS: Build or Buy?

TL;DR

Embedded analytics integrates real-time insights directly inside business applications, eliminating the need to switch tools. While building in-house may look simple, hidden costs (maintenance, compliance, advanced features) make it a long-term burden. The ROI of embedded solutions includes faster time-to-market, customer retention, and new revenue streams. Before deciding, companies must weigh resources, flexibility, and speed to market. Knowi Embedded provides AI-powered, cross-source, secure analytics with white-labeling — letting teams focus on core product innovation.

Table of Contents

What is Embedded Analytics?

Embedded analytics is the integration of analytical capabilities within a business application or operational process that you already use. This integration facilitates real-time data analysis within the native environment of the application, eliminating the need to toggle between different systems or platforms. It combines the operational capabilities of a business application and enhances it with analytical capabilities.

For instance, within a financial software platform, embedded analytics can provide real-time trend analysis, predictive forecasting, and actionable insights based on historical data, all without the user having to leave the platform. 

Why is Embedded Analytics important?

Today, embedded analytics has become extremely crucial as customers expect instant, self-service insights within your product to help them make faster, better decisions without waiting. 

But building it in-house is rarely as simple as it seems. Engineering resources get tied up, timelines slip, and costs increase well beyond initial estimates.

Why Building In-House looks Simple, but Isn’t

At first, adding a dashboard can look like a quick project. A few sprints and you’re done, right?

But the real scope quickly expands:

• Specialized engineering time (BI developers, data engineers, UX, PM)
  
• Opportunity costs of redirecting your team from core features
  
• Underestimated timelines that slip by quarters
  
• Maintenance overhead for changing data sources, evolving schemas, compliance needs

What seems like an add-on becomes a major, ongoing engineering commitment tying up manpower and increasing costs. 

The Hidden Costs of Building

Even if you launch an MVP, the real work starts post-release:

• Maintenance: Adapting to new data sources and structures
  
• Security & Compliance: Meeting evolving industry standards
  
• Performance: Scaling and optimizing as your data grows
  
• UX Improvements: Responding to customer feedback
  
• Advanced Features: Conversational interfaces, natural language search, AI-driven recommendations

Modern analytics is not a one-time build but it’s a continuous investment and commitment. 

The ROI of Embedded Analytics

True ROI goes beyond upfront development costs:

• Faster Time-to-Market: Deploy in weeks, not quarters
  
• Improved Retention: Empower customers with insights that drive stickiness
  
• New Revenue Streams: Offer premium analytics tiers
  
• Accelerated Feature Velocity: Continuously evolve without internal engineering bottlenecks

Ask Yourself These Questions Before Deciding

• Is analytics a supporting capability, or is it truly the core product?
  
• Do you have the in-house resources to maintain and improve analytics continuously?
  
• Can you afford the time it takes to build? How fast must you move to stay ahead of competitors and meet evolving customer expectations?
  
• What level of flexibility and customization do your customers demand?

For many teams, honest answers to these questions point toward embedded solutions. It’s a growing recognition that partnering with analytics specialists delivers better results, faster, than building from scratch.

Why Choose Knowi’s Embedded Analytics?

Knowi is more than just a dashboarding layer. We’re an end-to-end, AI-powered analytics platform that embeds in your product:

• AI-powered Analytics and natural language querying
• Agentic, conversational experiences for true self-service
• Unified analytics across SQL, NoSQL, APIs, and documents
• Built-in data integration and multi-source joins
• Enterprise-grade security and governance
• Scalable architecture that grows with your product
• Easy white-labeling for your brand

Your team stays focused on your product roadmap, while Knowi takes care of delivering the analytics your customers demand.

Interested to see how you can implement embedded analytics? Read our guide on embedded analytics with Knowi or talk to our team.