Embedded BI for digital marketing intelligence

Imagine running a multi-million dollar cross-country campaign for a pan-continent product launch. Multiple teams are involved, and budget allocations need to be adapted in near real-time in order to optimize the campaigns in-flight and avoid expensive waste. There are two contrasting techniques to make this possible technically-

1. Build up an elaborate IT infrastructure that collates data from the multiple sources in near-real time, processes it according to business rules, feeds into a reporting database and then connects to some dedicated BI tool for exploratory data analysis or dashboarding.
2. Embed a Business Intelligence capability natively within the various campaign apps and which are capable of running complex data analysis/reporting within the native app and without the need for ETL.

The advantages for second approach when it comes to fast moving digital marketing campaigns could not be more stark. It is not uncommon to spend 5 figure sums on a daily basis on a single channel (Facebook Ads, Google, Linkedin etc.) and to properly juice out these massive investments requires near real-time actionability.

This is what embedded BI does. It integrates with native apps as a bolt-on modules, and can provide advanced reporting capabilities within the app (e.g. Salesforce) and this in turn multiplies the utility and ROI of data insights investments. The need for maintaining dedicated BI tools is minimized, time to insights delivery is greatly reduced and most importantly, there is an order of magnitude reduction in reliance on IT Engineers to produce business focused reports.

In this article, we explored 2 market leading tools for embedding BI capabilities when it comes to tracking multi-channel campaign performance-Tableau and PowerBI Embedded. This technical article was created from grounds-up for Senior Technical audience that is looking for specific solutions on how these tools could address key business scenarios in channel attribution, econometrics, promotions tracking, and sales funnel optimization.

Use case and vendor comparison

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An independent BI Solutions Consultancy providing Embedded BI Services using Tableau Server, Power BI Embedded, and Kibana for FTSE 50 UK enterprises