Embedded map visualizations are a must in many SaaS applications. As the market for SaaS business apps grows, it's becoming increasingly important to embed visualizations in these applications from which users can learn from data.
Typically, developers will use a business intelligence (BI) tool to create these visualizations and embed them into their application. Alternatively, developers can build these embedded visualizations themselves, but compared to a BI tool, it takes a lot more time and resources.
The problem is that there are so many tools to choose from when developers want to add embedded map visualizations to their applications, that it’s often difficult to choose. Having a good data visualization tool helps with the overall results that the business wants to see in their reports. Thus, businesses must have good business intelligence tools in their arsenal to do this job perfectly.
In this article, we've narrowed down the list to the top five BI tools for creating embedded map visualizations to help you make the decision a bit easier (and we'll share a great bonus option too). Data visualization is important, and these business intelligence tools can deliver with their great handling of data analytics and big data.
Without any further ado, here are the top 5 business intelligence tools for embedded map visualizations.
What Are Embedded Map Visualizations?
In simple terms, embedded map visualizations are the integration of maps, that contain analytical and location data, into another software application. By embedding real-time maps and dashboards into an external application, end users can gain insights and valuable information from these maps.
So, let’s look at the options to embed map visualizations.
1. Yellowfin BI
Yellowfin’s analytics suite combines dashboards with automated analysis and data storytelling. This BI software provides users with a unique way to display, engage with and act on their data, and meets the needs of data analysts, business users, and customers who want to build and deploy analytical experiences.
As one of its features, users can merge their spatial and traditional business data to display map visualizations to uncover fresh insights and gain a deeper understanding of their business. It also offers various map types that users can use to render location data points on a map.
Aimed at many different industries, it's pricing packages are based on a per user or per server basis. It’s per user pricing is generally favorable for small software vendors.
2. Microsoft Power BI Azure Maps
Power BI is owned by Microsoft and its Azure Maps visual feature provides a rich set of data visualizations for spatial data on a map and for gaining geospatial context and intelligence. This can then be used by businesses to gain insight on how location influences their business data. A lot of people see this as a good business intelligence software for any data type.
It connects to a cloud service hosted in Azure to retrieve location data such as map images and coordinates that are then used to create the map visualization. Although it features a user-friendly interface and a desktop application, it will be a better fit for businesses who are already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem.
With pricing starting at just over $700 per month and going up to over $23,000 per month depending on the package, it’s quite expensive and generally out of the price range of small software vendors.
3. Tibco Spotfire
Tibco Spotfire has location analytics capabilities that provide spatial analytics for any business to quickly understand predictions and optimizations through their location. The system promises to automatically add location context to a data analysis and drive new insights that would not be possible using traditional charts and tables.
Its embedded map visualizations can be branded for white-label implementations, and it features the ability to embed content into existing HTML applications, as well as a mature JavaScript API.
While pricing for Tibco Spotfire is reasonable, which makes it more suitable for small software vendors, it does have a challenging learning curve for newer users. Thus, it is not the best BI platform for newbies in the industry.
4. Highcharts
Although Highcharts is less of a dedicated BI tool, it still allows users to generate schematic maps in web-based projects by using the Highcharts JavaScript API. In this way, it allows web developers to build interactive maps to display sales or any other location specific information on a map. This is still a good BI solution for its users.
It is back-end agnostic and works with any database or server stack and features an extensive map collection and the ability for users to create their own maps. It also allows users to use the maps for white-label implementations and they can be styled with JavaScript or CSS.
Although pricing is good and suitable for small software vendors, Highcharts does require a lot more developer resources to integrate the maps with a product compared to a BI tool designed specifically for embedded analytics.
5. Tableau Embedded Maps
When it comes to BI tools, Tableau is often considered to be one of the top choices by analysts. Its maps features are designed to make the most of geographical data, and with instant geocoding, it automatically turns location data and information into interactive maps.
With Tableau, users can embed interactive views and dashboards into webpages, blogs, infographics, an interactive chart, and web applications, and these embedded views update automatically as the underlying data changes.
It also features a JavaScript API that developers can use to embed visualizations in web applications, and the option to provide customized, unique experiences to match their brand.
The biggest drawback of using Tableau is that it can be quite expensive depending on the number of users, and that it's generally out of the price range of small software vendors.
Another Bonus Tool for Embedded Map Visualizations (Hint: Starts with a Y and Ends with an I)
Now that you know the top five business intelligence tools to effectively help you with embedded map visualization, we will introduce you to the bonus BI tool. Of course, we do not want you to feel like this is a marketing post all along, so we tried our best to save the best for last.
Yurbi is an effective business intelligence tool that can help you with your embedded map visualization needs. Yurbi showcases a complete business intelligence platform that can efficiently contribute to the success of your embedded map visualization.
It is equipped with interactive dashboards, ad hoc reporting, embedded analytics, embedded data visualizations, a huge central repository of reports supporting self-service scheduling, and advanced data and security governance.
What sets us apart from the five business intelligence tools mentioned in terms of embedded map visualizations?
Pricing. We offer competitive pricing for larger companies that are remarkably more affordable than the five BI tools mentioned above. However, small businesses and startups have a special place in our hearts, so we are offering much more affordable pricing plans for them.
However, that doesn’t mean that they’ll be getting a downsized version because they’re paying lower than the others. Regardless of how much they paid, they will get the same high quality level of performance from Yurbi.
Every business needs great BI software, regardless of the amount of money they paid for it.
We use High Charts.
Yurbi has licensing High Charts as our embedded map visualization. How does that make things better? The more is that we make it super simple to customize and embed High Charts without the normal developer effort required to do it by itself. Maps can be created by a business user/data analyst with no coding required.
Plus all the features of dashboard filtering, scheduling, drill down, and more are enabled by default, just like all the Yurbi visualizations. Since we are using High Charts, there are many more maps and features that we may not have out of the box exposed, but via customer request, we can make almost anything possible (and quickly).
Self-hosted. As it is self-hosted, Yurbi takes away the worries of installing complicated architectures of pushing data into 3rd party clouds while getting. Self-hosted also means you don’t have anxiety due to privacy and security concerns of 3rd party vendors and networks. With Yurbi, you gain control of everything and nothing gets out without you not knowing it. Every product manager and C-level executive would love this feature, knowing that their data warehouse would be safe from external and internal threats.
Abundant and consistent support. Lastly, our staff are your staff too. Need a feature to be implemented on your BI tool? We got you covered. Have any concerns about embedded analytics? Need help with doing an interactive dashboard for interactive visualization? We can help you out as soon as possible. Consider us as a remote member of your team, working to produce the best results for you and your business.
We provide support to everyone needing our help, and we make sure you get the best customer satisfaction that comes with your payment. Hence, you get what you paid for -- and more, thanks to our over-delivering of promises to you.
Get the best in business analytics with Yurbi, complete with our all-out support.
To see is to believe, we know that. So why not try Yurbi on your own? Schedule a live demo with our experts or contact us for more information. No pressure to buy anything, just purely to help you out with the best solution.