The Phases to Achieve Self-Service Analytics in SaaS Products

As a SaaS product manager, you’re likely exploring the best ways to implement self-service report building. At Qrvey, we’ve gathered insights from our customers to outline the key phases and best practices to help you on this journey.

Quick Wins

Get to Know Your Data

Before diving into self-service analytics, ensure your users understand the data they are working with. Using embedded analytics widgets to provide access to data exploration tools can help users familiarize themselves with the dataset. This step is crucial as it allows users to know what values to expect, setting a solid foundation for accurate reporting.

Static, One-Size-Fits-All Reports

Initially, most SaaS applications offer the same static reports to all users. While this is a standard starting point, it quickly becomes uncompetitive. Users soon desire more tailored reporting options to meet their specific needs.

Reports by Role

The next step involves providing reports tailored to different user roles. While these reports aren’t customizable, they offer additional or more detailed insights for specific roles.

For example, administrators or premium-tier users might access more comprehensive dashboards than basic users. This approach adds value but still falls short of full customization.

Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Dashboards

Tenant Level Reports

The first true step towards custom reporting is enabling tenant admins to create reports for their users. Typically found in an administrative area, this feature allows admins to craft dashboards from predefined metrics and dimensions, which they can then publish to their users.

This mix of standard and tenant-specific reports enhances the reporting capabilities of your SaaS application. See our data visualization examples for ideas.

Individual Self-Service Dashboard Creation

True self-service analytics is the ultimate goal.

Ideally, you should aim to reach this milestone within 90 days. That might sound fast, but when product managers have the motivation to upgrade their users’ experience, this is very achievable.

This phase allows any user within a tenant to access a blank canvas for building their own reports. The embedded dashboard builder inherits the application’s data security, ensuring users only access appropriate data.

To ease the learning curve, consider providing starter templates and predefined charts. Qrvey also offers end-user personalization features, enabling users to modify existing dashboards and save them as their own without affecting the original.

Check out our interactive demo center and experience these tools for yourself.

What’s Next After Self-Service Report Building

When you reach this milestone, some companies will naturally want to keep going. Below are a few additional use cases that we see our customers implementing. Also, monetization strategies start to become a real possibility. Check out our guide to monetization strategies here.

Data-Driven Automation

Once users are comfortable with self-service reporting, the next step is data-driven workflow automation. Users can move beyond basic alerting to advanced automation features, such as:

• Slack Notifications: Involving broader teams in real-time.
• Data Writebacks: Updating datasets based on event criteria for downstream actions or third-party systems.
• Webhooks: Triggering events in other systems to enable real-time action.

Custom Dataset Creation

Enabling users to create their own datasets represents an advanced level of self-service reporting. This involves making data fields available for users to select and build with.

Qrvey’s developer APIs provide endpoints for developers to create user interfaces for dataset creation. Multi-tenant data security ensures users can only access data fields they have permission to use.

Read our API docs here for granular details.

Why Qrvey is the Leader in Embedded Analytics

Qrvey stands out as the leader in embedded analytics, helping development teams ship analytics features faster. Our platform empowers product managers to deliver more value to their customers.

With Qrvey, you can transform your SaaS application by implementing best practices for self-service report building and beyond. Join our customers in leveraging advanced analytics capabilities to stay competitive and meet the ever-growing demands of your users.

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Implementing self-service report building is a journey, but with the right practices and tools, you can provide your users with powerful analytics capabilities. You can also read our top 3 self-service analytics mistakes and how to avoid them.

Qrvey is here to support you every step of the way.