Embedded Business Intelligence (BI): What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Transforms Modern Products

Every business is becoming a data business, and customers increasingly expect the applications they use every day to deliver actionable intelligence—not as an add-on, but as a core element of the experience. Product managers and application teams know they must provide insights that are fast, intuitive, and accessible. But building analytics from scratch is costly, time-intensive, and distracts from core product innovation.

Traditional business intelligence (BI) poses multiple adoption barriers. Users must switch contexts, learn a new tool, and remember to consult data before making decisions. In many organizations, cultural friction slows adoption. Employees who have performed their jobs for years without dashboards struggle to incorporate BI into their workflows. But the largest barrier is structural: most BI vendors charge by user seat. As organizations scale, costs skyrocket, preventing widespread adoption.

Embedded business intelligence solves these challenges by placing dashboards, reports, and visualizations directly into the apps, portals, and workflows that people already use. Instead of forcing users to adapt to BI, embedded analytics brings BI to them. As a result, organizations drive higher adoption, faster decisions, and more effective data usage (without the constraints of traditional per-user BI models).

What is embedded business intelligence?

Embedded business intelligence is the integration of dashboards, reports, and interactive visualizations directly within an application or digital product. A BI platform manages and processes the data, but the analytics appear inside the application’s familiar user interface. This keeps insight in the natural flow of work and eliminates switching between tools.

Embedded BI increases usability, reduces friction, and enables users to explore, filter, drill down, and act on insights without ever leaving the systems they rely on. It extends BI beyond analysts and power users, making data accessible for anyone who interacts with the application.

Traditional BI vs. embedded BI

Business intelligence has evolved from standalone tools into a core experience embedded directly within operational applications. With traditional BI, users must leave their workflow, open a separate analytics tool, search for reports, and then return to their task—resulting in lost time, frustration, and lower adoption.

Embedded BI eliminates context switching by integrating dashboards where users are already working. Instead of juggling multiple tools, users get real-time insights exactly when and where they need them. This workflow-friendly approach is a major reason embedded BI adoption has surged across industries.

Embedded BI also bypasses legacy pricing limitations. Instead of purchasing user seats for every viewer, businesses can embed analytics inside existing systems or customer-facing products without additional per-user costs. This lets organizations scale BI access to thousands of users without breaking their analytics budget.

Benefits of embedded business intelligence

Natural integration

Organizations can deliver a fully branded analytics experience by embedding pixel-perfect dashboards and reports directly into their applications. Users experience BI as a natural extension of the product, not a separate tool.

Self-service and Ad-hoc reporting

Embedded BI gives users the power to answer their own questions. Instead of submitting requests to analysts or IT, users can explore data through intuitive reporting tools, filters, and drag-and-drop interactions.

Remote access and distributed workforces

During the rise of remote work, access to real-time data became essential. Embedded BI ensures users can see insights from anywhere, without needing VPN access or separate logins.

Faster access to information

Embedded BI delivers critical insights instantly, enabling users to make better decisions without depending on expert analysts. It democratizes access to analytics across technical and non-technical users alike.

Lower initial and ongoing costs

By embedding a BI solution rather than building it in-house, organizations avoid the cost of custom development and reduce ongoing maintenance. Embedded BI also cuts onboarding time because users stay within familiar applications.

Lower maintenance effort

Because embedded BI updates centrally through the BI platform, businesses spend less time on upkeep. As long as the dashboards are intuitive, there’s little need for ongoing support or specialized training.

Scalability

Embedded BI supports multi-tenant environments and cost-effective scaling. Organizations can deploy analytics to hundreds or thousands of users—internal or external—while keeping their total cost of ownership manageable.

Improved collaboration

When analytics are embedded directly into systems used by multiple teams, collaboration becomes more fluid. Teams from different departments can view the same data in the same tools, creating more aligned decision-making and greater trust in shared data.

Flexible data governance

Despite appearing more open, embedded BI often strengthens governance. Companies can embed dashboards behind secure portals, use role-based access controls, or restrict views to designated datasets—ensuring the right people see the right data.

Data apps and extensibility

Embedded dashboards retain the full functionality of their native BI platform, including app-level enhancements. Businesses can deploy custom analytics apps (such as sales scorecards or what-if calculators) inside their embedded experiences for added depth and customization.

Sharing and presenting data externally

Embedded BI makes it easy to share live dashboards with clients, customers, and investors—without exposing sensitive data or giving access to the BI platform itself. Stakeholders can view real-time updates through a secure external webpage.

Goal attainment

With embedded BI, teams can monitor KPIs continuously: daily, hourly, or even in real time. This visibility helps teams focus on priorities and take action quickly when metrics start to shift.

How embedded BI transforms company operations

Streamlined workflows

Employees no longer need to break their workflow to access data. Embedded dashboards appear inside tools they already use: CRMs, ERPs, operational systems, or custom applications.

Enhanced customer and client value

Clients increasingly expect transparency and real-time insight, especially in service-based industries. Embedded dashboards give customers access to their own performance data through secure, branded portals.

More effective cross-functional problem-solving

Projects that span multiple departments benefit from shared embedded dashboards. Everyone can see the same KPIs and trends, enabling faster root-cause analysis and better alignment.

Personalized governance and security

Businesses can tailor their embedded BI implementation to their security model, whether embedding dashboards in a private intranet, behind SSO, or through a multi-tenant client portal.

Sales growth and ROI

Embedded BI helps companies consistently access their data from all sources, uncover opportunities, and make informed decisions. By enabling real-time insight, organizations can accelerate sales cycles, improve customer outcomes, and grow revenue.

Key features of embedded business intelligence

• Pixel-perfect reports with custom formatting
• Multi-tenant BI for SaaS environments
• Native integration using JavaScript and APIs
• Interactive dashboards combining charts, reports, and web content
• Ad-hoc reporting through drag-and-drop interfaces
• Extensible data apps that enhance the embedded experience

Why Domo for embedded BI

Embedded BI empowers organizations to deliver insights where they matter most: inside the applications people rely on every day. It eliminates the friction of traditional BI, increases adoption, strengthens collaboration, and supports more informed decisions. 

Even the simplest internal apps or commercial websites can become powerful analysis platforms. By weaving BI functionality directly into existing systems, organizations reduce learning curves, improve user satisfaction, and create a more data-driven culture.

Domo was built for embedded analytics from the ground up and offers a level of extensibility, scalability, and speed unmatched in the market.

Domo everywhere

Domo’s embedded analytics solution enables organizations to securely embed entire dashboards, cards, or full-featured data apps into any product, portal, or website—internal or external.

Fully branded experiences

Organizations can deliver an easy, white-labeled experience that matches the application’s UI perfectly, giving users a cohesive interface from end to end.

Pixel-perfect, interactive dashboards

Domo allows teams to build highly polished, interactive dashboards that maintain their full functionality even when embedded.

Multi-tenant architecture

Domo makes it simple to isolate customers, roles, permissions, and datasets—ideal for SaaS providers managing hundreds or thousands of client accounts.

Scalable governance and security

With enterprise-grade security, flexible governance options, and deep admin controls, Domo ensures that only the right people see the right data—in exactly the right context.

Full platform power

Unlike tools that only embed static dashboards, Domo lets organizations embed:

• Alerts
• Data apps
• Workflows
• Explorers
• Drill paths
• Writeback capabilities
• Machine learning insights

Your users get the full power of modern BI—right inside your product.

Fast time-to-value

Instead of spending years building custom analytics infrastructure, businesses can deliver fully functional embedded analytics in weeks. Domo handles the heavy lifting so development teams can stay focused on their core product. Ready to get started? Contact our team.