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June 18, 2009
Embedded BI Dashboards for OEMs: Build or Buy?
When software manufacturers and OEMs consider embedding business intelligence dashboard software to their application(s), the 'build vs. buy' question almost always arises. There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages with each option.
On one hand, by building their own BI dashboards, these companies save some upfront costs. They can also use the internal talent and resources they trust to make a module to their specifications.
On the other, however, there are a number of important considerations. Firstly, a BI module considered useful and competitive by today's best practices is hardly an ad-hoc project that can be successfully completed in a timely and accurate fashion by a firm whose core business is not BI.
Secondly, without any prebuilt elements, the software manufacturer would have to build everything from the ground up, which translates into much longer deployment times and higher costs of ownership in the long run. And lastly, time to market with the reports or BI cycles would start becoming much longer; and if there are any unforeseen bugs or problems with the module, all this is compounded.
Buying the dashboard module has, too, advantages and disadvantages. Upfront costs are generally higher—and can get truly substantial with some vendors--but the quality of the software, time to market and BI cycles are generally much better than if the company were to build its own.
The key is to identify embeddable dashboard software that has the following advantages:
1 - Is proven, useful, robust and Web-based, which means that it contains not only reporting and analysis features, but also easy ways for multiple users to access data and information as well as take action on it
2 - Is easily embeddable, which means flexible and compatible with the preexisting architecture of the company's software as well as with multiple data sources
3 - It is easily integrated with other software, from single sign-on to simple and comprehensive Style and CSS integration or reuse
4 - Is composed of prebuilt elements, which allows easy customization while saving coding time
5 - Is priced to produce a quick ROI
When dashboard software meets these conditions, buying the module is far preferable to building one, as it will be fulfilling its purpose efficiently, on time, without problems and without making the software manufacturer incur a high cost.
If you're looking for more information, LogiXML has an excellent white paper on embeddable dashboards and BI and the 'build Vs. buy' question.
Posted by Hound of the BI-skervilles at June 18, 2009 2:00 PM
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