In today’s high-speed, complex business environment, data has moved to center stage, becoming a vital force behind innovation, strategy and informed decision-making in nearly every industry, including supply chain.
The sheer volume of business intelligence being generated across business functions from HR and marketing to supply chain, warehousing and transportation, means that the key to a competitive advantage lies not just in collecting data, but in interpreting and acting on it effectively.
Yet traditional analytics tools sometimes fall short because they are difficult for a non-technical user to understand and building analytics from the ground up can be time-consuming, costly, and difficult to scale.
That’s why more companies are embracing embedded analytics — a powerful solution that integrates data-driven insights directly into the software already being used by businesses. This allows non-technical users and business leaders to analyze, visualize, and act on data without relying on analysts or IT specialists.
From warehousing and logistics to supply chain design and transportation, embedded analytics is transforming how businesses operate, make decisions, and deliver value. It’s moving organizations from a reactive mindset to a proactive, insight-driven culture — where speed, precision, and personalization contribute to a company’s success.
According to Reveal’s 6th annual Top Software Development Challenges survey, 78% of tech leaders plan to increase their focus BI tools in 2025, underscoring the growing importance of data-driven decision making.
Embedded Analytics: The Shift from Data Collection to Intelligence in Action
Most modern businesses are already data-rich, but insight-poor. While enterprises generate vast streams of data, they often struggle to surface the right information at the right time, in a format that empowers decision-making. Embedded analytics bridges this gap by integrating directly into operational tools and workflows. This allows users to create real-time dashboards, customized visualizations and KPIs from the data within the applications they already use — removing barriers between data and action.
Embedded analytics offer these advantages:
- Real-Time Insights: Embedded analytics provides up-to-the-minute visibility into key metrics that can help leaders make operational decisions.
- Improved Accessibility: With intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces and contextual insights, even non-technical users can explore data without needing SQL or coding expertise.
- Higher Adoption Rates: Because analytics are integrated into existing tools, user adoption increases — ensuring data-driven thinking is part of operations.
- Faster Time to Creation: Businesses can skip the lengthy process of building custom analytics solutions from scratch, saving both time and resources.
Lanxing Software: Reimagining Supply Chain Intelligence with BI
Lanxing Software is harnessing the power of embedded analytics to revolutionize supply chain optimization. Through their SaaS platform SCATLAS, Lanxing supports enterprises seeking to digitize and optimize processes across procurement, manufacturing, logistics, transportation and fulfillment.
When their built-in analytics capabilities weren’t enough to match the complexity of their business, Lanxing needed deeper, more flexible insights — from tracking SKU turnover to evaluating vendor profitability and modeling transportation costs. To meet these challenges, Lanxing embedded analytics directly into SCATLAS and it delivered:
- Customization at Scale: Clients can tailor dashboards to their specific KPIs and priorities, such as regional demand forecasting or supplier performance.
- Interactivity: Users can explore and manipulate data visually, filtering insights by time period, product category, or fulfillment channel.
- Robust SDK and prebuilt features: Significantly reduced development time and streamlined integration.
“In the supply chain industry, users need to quickly translate results and data into actionable decisions,” said Zhen Wang, product director at Lanxing. “Reveal helped us deliver that capability while freeing up our engineering team to focus on innovation.”
Commodity Centre: Real-Time Visibility Transforms Warehouse Management
Another company putting data analytics into practice is Commodity Centre, a leading warehousing and logistics provider servicing the UK and Europe. Managing over 550,000 tons of soft commodities, finished goods, and industrial metals, the company plays a critical role in global supply chains.
Before adopting embedded analytics, Commodity Centre’s previous solution was inadequate for providing clients with detailed, real-time visibility into their stored goods. They needed a more flexible, intuitive, and client-facing analytics solution — one that could be embedded directly into their portal and easily customized without extensive technical training.
Their new, flexible embedded BI platform seamlessly integrates into their client-facing portal, which allows Commodity Centre to deliver instant, customized insights to both internal teams and external stakeholders. Embedded analytics has resulted in dramatically faster, more confident decision-making and improved operational agility in warehouse management.
Warehouse managers can now:
- Monitor temperature and humidity conditions in real time
- Visualize storage capacity and product locations across facilities
- Instantly identify optimal storage for segregated goods
- Reduce manual tracking and reliance on static spreadsheets
“It blew my mind — the stuff you could do with Reveal’s embedded analytics platform and how easy it was to work with,” said Peter Ferdowsian, IT Manager at Commodity Centre. “It feels like it’s organically a part of our software — not something that’s just been dropped on the page.”
Analytics as a Competitive Differentiator
Across industries, analytics is becoming a competitive differentiator — not just for strategic planning, but for daily execution. Whether it's enabling faster decision-making on the warehouse floor or optimizing global transportation and supply chain costs, businesses that embed analytics are more agile, responsive, and efficient.
This transformation is not limited to logistics and supply chains. Other sectors seeing game-changing results from embedded BI include:
- Retail: Personalizing promotions based on real-time purchasing behavior
- Healthcare: Pharmacies can identify medication non-adherence problems by showing prescription refill timing
- Financial Services: Enhancing fraud detection and customer segmentation with real-time dashboards
- Cybersecurity: Visualizing critical information about security threats at a glance
There is a common thread in all sectors – embedded analytics empowers users with the data they need — when and where they need it.
The Future of Business Intelligence: Predictive, Adaptive, and Embedded
Business intelligence is transforming at a fast pace. AI and machine learning are being integrated into embedded BI tools to deliver predictive insights, automated anomaly detection, and even prescriptive recommendations.
Imagine a logistics manager receiving an automated alert that a particular warehouse section is nearing capacity, along with suggested actions based on historical trends and seasonality. Or a supply chain executive modeling various disruption scenarios using real-time transportation and cost data. These capabilities are becoming the new standard.
As the technology matures, three advancements will define the future of analytics in business:
- Flexibility – Solutions must adapt to unique workflows and user roles
- Speed – Businesses need insights in real-time, not after the fact
- Personalization – One-size-fits-all dashboards are out; tailored views that surface the most relevant data are in
Conclusion: Data as a Strategic Superpower
Both Commodity Centre and Lanxing Software exemplify how embedded analytics is more than a technical feature — it’s a strategic superpower. By integrating embedded analytics, these companies are unlocking faster insights, empowering more users, and creating agile, responsive operations.
Data-driven decision-making is no longer merely a strategic advantage— it's a critical driver of business performance. As more organizations harness the power of business intelligence and embedded analytics, one thing is certain: those who unlock the full potential of their data will be better positioned to innovate, compete, and grow.
Casey Ciniello is the Reveal and Slingshot senior product manager at Infragistics.
