How Emnos elevated its retail analytics experience with Yellowfin embedded BI
Background
emnos is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider for the sports and food retail market, with over 20+ years of experience providing its retail analytics solution to customers across five countries.
Established in 2003 in Munich, Germany, emnos is also part of the wider b.telligent network, a data management consultancy group. Their solution provides in-depth analytics for both sport and food retailers and their suppliers via a ‘plug-and-play’ automated, AI-powered B2B analytics product, splitting it into two platforms – ‘emnosSPORTS’ and ‘emnosFOOD’ – to cater to the unique requirements of both retail sectors.
The company has operated its retail analytics platform since 2008, and entered a partnership with Yellowfin BI in 2023 in order to elevate their product’s user experience with expanded data visualization and embedded analytics capability.
“What we appreciate most about Yellowfin is we have chosen a solution that best supports our embedded analytics use case, and a strategic long-term partner. Even though emnos has been around for a while, we are a small company, and we need less service providers and more partners. That is what we feel we have gotten with Yellowfin.”
Inga Whitmore, CPO, emnos
Challenge
Legacy analytics platform that required modernization
Retail data is of very high interest for both retailers and suppliers and their decision-making. However, using and sharing that information is not always a straightforward process with traditional data tools, resulting in many retailers not able to leverage their data-sets for insights.
The core of emnos’ SaaS analytics solution is to provide their retailer customers and their suppliers the ability to explore and share insights, perform daily data analysis, and collaborate on their critical data in one easy-to-use platform that makes this process as accessible as possible.
“We mostly concentrate on what we call insight sharing,” Inga Whitmore, Chief Product Officer at emnos, explained. “The typical situation is the retailer owns all the transaction data, and therefore all the knowledge on how many products have been sold, what is sold in the same basket, how customers mix between brands, and so on, which the brands also need. As a third party in the middle, emnos can ensure insight sharing is really happening, and that all our customers use more data and provide more insights than if the retailer would do it themselves.”
Emnos’ primary obstacle to this objective emerged after a number of years running its platform: “We have had our platform since 2008, so we started suffering from our code base not being in the shape we wanted it to be,” said Inga. “We realized it was getting tougher and longer for us to react to user requests, and coincidentally this was at the same time emnos launched its sports business. So we decided to take the Greenfield approach to build a completely new platform.”
To do this, emnos identified the most important aspect to update for its new platform was data visualization. “What we needed was a data visualization tool that could be fully embedded in our platform, and that could meet the modern needs of our business users, who are not necessarily data experts at the same time,” said Inga.
“In legacy, we were not able to use the same visualization techniques for both pre-calculated dashboards and requested dashboards, resulting in a lot of effort and people to customize each use case. It also did not represent the depth of information our customers wanted. So we needed a flexible solution to adapt our dashboards, and better present data for our audiences.”
Solution
Flexible embedded analytics with white-labeling and data visualization
Emnos began its search for a solution to its challenges in 2022 and consulted with expert colleagues from its partner b.telligent to evaluate different embedded data visualization tools.
“Most business intelligence (BI) solutions provide data visualization, so what was most important for emnos was that it was extendable, and could deliver all the visualizations we needed,” said Inga. “Because we’ve been in the market since 2003, we have developed our own IP, so we wanted a solution that could match our brand and visualize dashboards the way we envisioned.”
The team considered several vendors, including Power BI and Tableau, before settling on Yellowfin with the help of b.telligent: “We also looked at how easy it is to be embedded into our existing platform. We need to be able to guide our users to find the right insight very fast and easy, and to then drill deeper and connect all the different data points. Our users must be able to use our platform with very limited to no training. This is crucial for our platform’s success.”
For Inga, Yellowfin BI provided both the extensibility and embeddability it needed. “With Yellowfin, we can white-label the BI solution and get the dashboard and charts the way our users want it to look right now, and it’s very easy for them to use. With other vendors, you need to know the tool; there’s no way you can make someone not interested in data a good user of a tool like that.”
The final selling point of Yellowfin as emnos’ embedded analytics solution was based on collaboration. “We felt that Yellowfin is an awesome partner where we can develop our product together,” Inga said. “We’re a small company that’s flexible, and Yellowfin is flexible. It’s a super cool match to develop the type of product we wanted to deliver to our customers together.”
Implementation
Seamless embedded BI for customers and internal users
emnos progressed with embedding Yellowfin into its retail analytics product in June 2023, managing the migration process from its legacy platform in stages with a group of customers.
“The process to get to the first version of our new product, with Yellowfin embedded in our portal, felt very smooth,” said Inga. “The feedback from our customers using Yellowfin has been very good. Our users have found we are better able to help them find the right dashboard, and guide them on where they want to go far, which is why the embeddability is so super important to us.”
For Inga, their integration of Yellowfin into emnos’ product experience is based on the demands of the everyday business user, rather than advanced experts. “They are category managers of brands, and embedded analytics is something, especially in the sports industry right now, that is super new. So we needed to get the basics right. Once it is normal they have access to this type of data, we need to provide them more insights, which is where the full library of visualizations and features that Yellowfin makes available comes in.”
Results
Modernized analytics user experience with seamless, fully embedded reporting
Today, emnos has extended its retail analytics product with Yellowfin BI, and unlocked several new capabilities and benefits, including:
- Fully embedded dashboards and expanded data visualization capabilities
- Easier customized reporting for a more seamless analytics user experience
- White-labeled BI that looks and matches emnos’ existing platform and brand
“We are now able to provide a better user experience in our platform because of the embedding functionality, because it’s easier to customize in a way that’s simplified for our users,” said Inga. “We have been able to embed Yellowfin technologically in such a way that, for example, our dashboard development is now independent of release cycles, which is great because it makes us so much more reactive to our users’ needs.”
The ease-of-use that Yellowfin has brought emnos also extends to its internal workforce, according to Inga. “We have hired people who had no clue of Yellowfin, and to see them add value with their work with it has been a rather quick and easy thing. In the past, we felt the need to send people for training for years until they can do anything – it’s much easier with Yellowfin.”
Above all else, it’s the strategic partnership between emnos and Yellowfin which Inga cites as one of the biggest benefits. “What we appreciate most about Yellowfin is we have chosen a solution that best supports our embedded analytics use case, and a strategic long-term partner. Even though emnos has been around for a while, we are a small company, and we need less service providers and more partners. That is what we feel we have gotten with Yellowfin.”
Future
emnos continues to refine their Yellowfin integration as it prepares to open availability to all legacy product users later in 2024, as a core part of its new retail analytics platform.
The company is exploring the broader features of the Yellowfin platform, including Guided NLQ (Natural Language Query) and its data storytelling component, Yellowfin Stories. “These are all features we are looking into, and we absolutely want to go there in the future,” concludes Inga.
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