One: The Challenge of Branding

This part shows you how important branding is to every business, especially in finding the best methods and practices for embedded reporting that can greatly benefit your company.

Branding is a key component of usability. Each application should blend seamlessly into the next. A consistent format among screens, menus, colors, and even logos will make users feel “at home” when navigating the platform. If an embedded reporting tool does not match up with the rest of the platform, users can quickly feel confused and overwhelmed, a situation that can weaken customer trust.

Most agencies and software vendors think their only option to properly brand a reporting tool is to build it out themselves. When this is not a cost-effective solution, they may settle for an embedded reporting tool that cannot be branded.

While the experience doesn’t have to be an exact match, the ideal scenario is for users to be able to work with tools that have the look and feel of the rest of the platform. If users feel as though they are hopping away from the system to run reports, it will have an effect on usability. It can increase service desk inquiries, and alienate some users to the point of paralysis.

This directly impacts overall customer satisfaction and can damage relationships that took years to build. Before selecting an embedded reporting application, it will be necessary to have a handle on the tool’s branding capabilities. Agencies, software vendors and SaaS providers must know what options are available for branding, what type of development expertise is required to achieve that branding, and how much it will all cost.

In the next part, learn how keeping your data safe and secure from others can also be a challenge in embedded reporting.