As part of an integrated campaign targeting 4 key personas in support of GoodData's embedded analytics offering--concepted, copywrote, and creative directed an eBook for PMs, "How to Launch an Embedded Analytics Product." Researched and personally wrote the piece, delivering an innovative thought leadership track around the "lightning bolt vs. rolling thunder" approach--combining market knowledge with strategic vision and creative execution.

1. embedded
FOR PRODUCT MANAGERS
Explain it to Me like I’m a Product Manager:
How to Successfully Launch an
Embedded Analytics Product

2. Flash in the Pan, or
Rolling Thunder?
You Decide.
Failure. Flop. Fizzle. In a world where only 40%
of developed products make it to market and,
of those, only 60% generate ANY revenue at
all—these are the product manager’s new “F”
words. Do a little research on the criteria for a
product launch to be deemed successful, and
the F words are enough to strike terror into the
heart of even the most fearless product guru.
Add in the unique risks associated with
being in a startup, and if you’re like many
SaaS PMs—the pressure to perform at launch
is astronomical, and yet…the reward can be
just as great. Forty-seven percent of North
American and European enterprise software
decision makers are expecting to increase
their investment in SaaS products this year,
according to Forrester.1
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 2

3. A full 64% cite increasing the use of analytics
within business applications as a high (38%) or
critical (26%) priority. Interest in SaaS products
with analytics capabilities is at an all-time high.
In fact, Forrester identifies the cloud/SaaS
and embedded analytics as two of the five
technology pillars that will shape the future of
business applications innovation.2
That means, as a product manager in the software
space, the time is now for you to start planning
your next launch, capitalizing on customer
demand for embedded analytics to catapult
your product—and company—into new realms.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to
successfully add analytic capabilities to your
core product. We’ll highlight a few of the main
reasons product launches fail and steps you
can take to counteract them. And finally,
we’ll illustrate the importance of taking a rolling
thunder approach to launching your analytic
features, preventing your important launch
from being a flash in the pan.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 3

4. Electricity Gathers ::
Leveraging Customer
Relationships for
Product Planning
When it comes to product planning, the customer
is definitely always right. One of the most critical break
points in most new product and/or feature launches
is neglecting to tap into real customers to inform
your roadmap; confirm (or correct) assumptions;
and ultimately, to define, test, and validate your
product—turning short-term “Eureka moments” into
long-term shared value and success.
With an established core product, there’s a strong
likelihood that you already have working personas that
perhaps have been developed by your product marketing
team. It’s important to remember, however, that the
addition of analytics requires new considerations.
For example, are the problems your core product
solves the same issues you’ll be addressing with your
analytics capabilities?
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 4

5. How does the addition
of analytics impact your
user workflows? How do
their needs translate into
product requirements?
One of the best avenues you can
take in adjusting your product
strategy for an embedded
analytics launch is to reach out
to your existing customers.
Doing so offers you the
opportunity to gather qualified
input from users already familiar
with the strengths and the
limitations of your existing
product. At GoodData, we’ve
established a Customer Advisory
Board (CAB) to assist us with
developing our long-term strategy
and our product roadmap.
Customer Advisory Boards
can be an excellent resource
for gathering the insights you
need to successfully define,
and launch, an analytics feature
within your product. As a SaaS
company ourselves, we recognize
that product innovation simply
can’t happen in a vacuum—
especially when profitability is linked
intrinsically to customer satisfaction.
In fact, neglecting to establish
customer value is one of the
key reasons that 72% of all new
products fail to meet revenue
targets, according to a recent
global study conducted by
Simon-Kutcher & Partners and
the Independent Professional
Pricing Society.
If your organization already has
a CAB in place, you’re already
one step ahead of the game.
If you don’t, and you have the
runway necessary to establish
one in advance of your launch,
consider treating this exercise as
the inaugural activity that will lay
the foundation for a long-term,
mutually-beneficial relationship.
In the event you cannot tap into a
CAB, customer focus groups can
also be of help.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 5

6. Pragmatic Marketing recommends selecting
participants based on their ability to represent
specific market segments, avoiding placing competitors
in the same room. Look for those that can serve as
bellwethers for their industries, instead of focusing
purely on the “loud-but-big” customers usually
suggested by sales.
Try to get a spread of business sizes, including
customers on both ends that are sure to test the
edges of your solution post-launch. This approach
will help you form a more comprehensive view of
your landscape of potential users, rather than just
a picture of the “average” user.
When working with your customers to define your
offering—remember to give them something to
respond to, instead of a blank canvas. Their experience
with analytics is likely to be limited. Start with initial
KPIs and functionality to inform your MVP. This will be
an ongoing conversation, so don’t feel compelled to do
it all at once, give yourself some room to iterate as
you, and your customers, educate one another.
Read on for some of the ways investing in customer
input in the early stages of your planning process
can make your launch a success.
LEARN HOW
TO DIFFERENTIATE
WITH ANALYTICS
DEFINE
YOUR PRODUCT
REQUIREMENTS
REDUCE
RESEARCH TIME
& COSTS
INCREASE
SATISFACTION
& LIFETIME
VALUE
FIGURE
OUT YOUR
STARTING
POINT
CREATE ELECTRICITY FOR YOUR UPCOMING LAUNCH, TAPPING INTO THE POWER OF YOUR CUSTOMER BASE
Get feedback
on what’s
working and
what’s not with
the core product,
and how analytics
can address
customer
challenges.
Confirm or correct
existing assumptions
within user personas
to ensure delivery of
customer value.
Develop a
deeper understanding
of unique requirements
by industry, market,
geo, or company size.
Let your customers
teach you how to
pull away from the
competition with early
input on features and
capabilities.
Map requirements
to real user needs
and researched
workflows to improve
usability and adoption.
Get targeted data
at a fraction of the
cost of traditional
market research and
persona development.
Increase customer
revenues by
upwards of 9%,
while building
goodwill and
driving retention.
UNDERSTAND
CUSTOMER
WANTS & NEEDS
GAIN INSIGHT
ON KEY
INDUSTRIES &
MARKETS
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 6

7. Momentum Swells ::
Setting the Stage for
Rolling Launch Success
Nothing kills a new product’s momentum like the “lightning
bolt” approach to launches that many companies fall victim
to. It’s the big ramp of inflated expectations to the
“Ta-Da” moment where the big reveal is made, followed by
a freefall into the trough of disillusionment and the eventual
resumption of business as usual. Successful product launches
happen in stages, building momentum with a series of
market wins that validate your product’s value.
We’re all familiar with the “lightning bolt.” Everyone working
around the clock towards the deadline—when the press
announcements go out, the analysts are briefed, the webinars
take place, and the sales force starts aggressive outreach.
Troops are are rallied. Chests are thumped. Expectations blown
to gigantic proportions. And then what? Reality, not lightning,
strikes. The market is not as excited as you. The coverage,
not what you had planned. Sales...below expectations.
And everyone is left wondering “What went wrong?”
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 7

8. What are a few of the differences between the lightning bolt and rolling thunder approach to launch?
ROLLING THUNDER ::
Take Advantage of Beta Testing with Trusted
Customers & Prospects to Announce V1
LIGHTNING BOLT ::
Announce Your Upgraded Capabilities As
If They Are Fully Defined & Baked
LIGHTING BOLT ::
Market, Before Proving the Value of Your
Enhanced Solution
Setting the stage as if your new analytics capabilities are fully developed
and ready to rule the market is a critical misstep of most lightning bolt
launches. The reality is, you’re going to need time to test and adjust.
Setting expectations too high will lead to conflated results and market
feedback, stalling your momentum before it even gets started. Take a
lesson from Sir James Dyson, who tested 5,126 prototypes of his vacuum
cleaner before introducing it to the world...practice makes perfect.
Your first launch should be before your big launch. Take advantage of your
CAB, or another select pool of customers to beta test your solution’s new
capabilities, building in time to adjust before the big reveal. Dial in packaging
and pricing; ensure an excellent customer experience with the product;
and optimize onboarding and training procedures. Finally, gather and incorporate
critical feedback—before you expend calories on marketing and PR.
Lightning bolt launches often rely on firm deadlines. Deadlines that don’t
allow much time for real market validation to occur, lest the magnitude of
the “Ta-Da” moment be diminished. The challenge is that consumers are
more educated than ever before in the information economy. 75% of
customers do research online before making a purchase. Launching a product
without real proof points or success stories to illustrate the value of your
offering will not only diminish your ability to cut through the clutter, it can
permanently damage your credibility with prospects.
ROLLING THUNDER ::
Gather Real Validation from Real
Customers to Establish Credibility
Choose the right customers for your beta launch—looking not just at a spread
across markets, industries, geos and business sizes, but also a willingness
to co-market—ensuring you’ll have the right proof points to establish early
credibility when you go public with your new capabilities. Address feedback
quickly, and allow enough time to gather preliminary results and testimonials,
all of which can be incorporated into launch messaging, collateral, press and
analyst materials. Collaborating with customers early on will give you the
opportunity to fine-tune messaging, while feeding off and augmenting one
another’s efforts.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 8

9. Standard
Advanced
Premium
Elite
Interactive
reporting
across products
Advanced
reporting,
dashboards
and ad-hoc
analysis
Benchmarking
across industries,
geographies
and more
Additional
data sources,
including
ERP and
third-party
LIGHTING BOLT ::
Steal Your Own Thunder by Announcing All
Your Product Tiers at Once
ROLLING THUNDER ::
Work Your Product and Your Customers
Up the Analytics Maturity Curve
One thing you don’t want to do is back yourself into a packaging or pricing
corner that you can’t get out of. Again, this is your MVP. It’s OK to announce
just your standard capabilities at this time. Steal your own thunder by
prematurely rolling out advanced capabilities before you’ve had a chance to
learn from your more basic tiers and you could get it all wrong—functionality,
features, messaging, value propositions, pricing and more—turning the
market against yourself.
As valuable as early feedback is—the reality is that most customers aren’t
100% sure what they like, until they actually try it on for size. Start customers
at your basic tier, then walk them up the analytics maturity model, using
measurement tools like GoodData’s GoodSuccess to keep track of usage
trends, identifying areas of opportunity for future releases. Some things you
might consider are creating tiers for ad hoc reporting; monetizing benchmark
data gleaned across customer instances; and integrating third-party data—
all of which are enabled by GoodData’s multi-tenant cloud architecture.
Here are a few sample tiers to guide your planning process. For a deeper dive
on packaging strategies, check out our guide: Explain it to Me like I’m a VP of
Product: How to GTM with Embedded Analytics.
NEW REVENUE STREAMS BY TIERING AND MONETIZING ANALYTICS
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 9

10. Thunder Rolls :: Delivering Ongoing Value
with Embedded Analytics
Rolling thunder is not just about executing on a
series of planned launched phases. It’s iterating
with agility in response to customer and
market feedback. When it comes to launching
embedded analytics products, “once and done”
is a recipe for the new “F” words: “Failure. Flop.
Fizzle.” Successful embedded analytics launches
require outside of the box thinking on new ways
to monetize your data, unlocking the value that
already exists within your core product.
Of course, you know all about the phased general
rollout. But have you thought beyond the traditional
market introduction and delivery of your product
tiers? When you choose to buy embedded
analytics, instead of build—a whole new world
of launch options opens up to you. How does
partnering with a leader in OEM analytics help you?
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 10

11. Amplify your Impact with
an Established Partner
Without question, one of the highlights
of partnering with an established OEM
analytics provider is the immediate seal
of credibility it lends to your product.
Any questions about capabilities,
performance, and reliability can be
immediately dismissed with market
evidence and firm SLAs. GoodData’s
product is tried, tested, and recognized
as one of the leading distribution platforms
for OEM analytic—offering not just robust
product capabilities, but fast integration
(with most launches occurring in <90 days),
and an engaging user interface with an
adoption rate that—at over 30%—rivals that
of most consumer apps.
Furthermore, creating a relationship with
a provider like GoodData offers you the
opportunity to join forces to amplify marketing
and PR efforts—creating shared value with
press announcements, webinars, event
speaking opportunities, and more.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 11

12. Create Tiered Analytical
(and Product) Value
When you partner with GoodData,
you don’t just buy into the product,
you buy into a dedicated team
of professionals that are here to
support you from the planning
phase all the way through launch.
GoodData offers deep GTM
expertise that will help you draft
your strategy, accelerating your
path to launch, and return. It’s one
of the reasons we won the 2015
Gold Stevie Award for exceptional
customer service.
Our product was designed,
from the ground up, to deliver
one-to-many analytics, with SaaS
customers like you in mind.
With GoodData’s secure,
multi-tenant cloud architecture
you can quickly provision,
deploy and update customer
workspaces using our automated
capabilities. Which means that
you can introduce new features
to customers in real-time—giving
you enhanced flexibility to manage
your product lifecycle and iterate
as you build out your capabilities
and your tiers.
We also offer enablement tools
like our GoodSuccess platform,
that allows you to do BI on your
own BI, evaluating customer
usage trends to evolve your
strategy. Tapping into resources
like these is essential to a rolling
thunder approach that will help
you capture and retain real
market share.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 12

13. Unlock New Ways to Monetize Your Data
In launching your new product, think outside of the
box on the ways you can structure, and monetize,
your embedded analytics offering. For example,
providing benchmarks to customers, or charging
for the integration of third-party data. Both of
these advanced capabilities can be delivered via
GoodData’s secure, multi-tenant cloud.
GoodData customer Zendesk, for example, gives
customers the power to measure themselves against
their peers. It’s a feature that has dramatically
increased customer engagement and stickiness,
motivating customers to track their improvements
over time. VP of Products, Sam Boonin, says:
“We’ve seen that being best-in-class really motivates
support teams, and it helps reinforce the case that
great service leads to happy customers.”
Another GoodData customer, ServiceChannel,
a cloud-based ERP system provider for management
of facilities like shopping malls—became a leading
source of industry insights when they combined their
own data with external data on weather patterns,
gas prices, and demographics. VP of Global Service,
Sid Shetty, explains: “We are empowering our
customers with GoodData’s tactical, operational,
and strategic insight to change how the industry as a
whole makes decisions.”
GoodData’s capabilities give you the opportunity,
not just to differentiate, but to become a visionary
in your space, becoming a leading source of macro-
indicators for your market.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 13

14. New Horizons :: Partner with a Disrupter and
Change the Landscape
The final, and perhaps most important, element to a successful embedded analytics launch is choosing
the right partner. A partner that can deliver seamlessly integrated analytics, distributed at scale;
a highly-engaging end user experience that guides customers of all skill-levels to insight quickly;
and the expertise and organization support
you need for a successful launch.
We think we’re that partner. Gartner* has
recognized us for OEM analytics in their October
2015 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence
and Analytics Platforms.3
Similarly, Forrester has
named us a leader in The Forrester Wave™:
Agile Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2015.4
GoodData offers an industry-leading business
intelligence platform and deep Go-To-Market
expertise. The Powered by GoodData partner
program helps ISVs quickly create new revenue
streams and increase customer retention—
embedding advanced, self-service analytics
directly into existing SaaS solutions.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 14

15. Related Assets
•• Explain it to Me like I’m a CEO: What’s So Great
About Embedded Analytics
•• Explain it to Me like I’m a CFO: What’s the ROI of
Embedded Analytics?
•• Explain it to Me like I’m a VP of Product: How to GTM
with Embedded Analytics
•• Powered by GoodData: Monetize Data with
Embedded Analytics
Suggested Resources
•• Powered By GoodData On Demand Demo
•• Growing a Cash Crop: How to Turn Data Into Dollars
•• CITO Research: A Guide to Data Monetization
•• Blue Hill Research Report: GoodData’s Role in the Next
Era of Analytics: Data Monetization
Customer Success Stories
•• Travel: FCm Travel Solutions
•• Health: MediGain Billing and Reimbursement
•• MarTech: Autopilot, Demandbase, Influitive
•• Operations: Zendesk, Bolder Thinking
GoodData delivers the market’s
most complete multi-tenant analytics
distribution platform, coupled with
a hyper-intuitive user interface your
customers will love. With fully-responsive,
embedded analytics customized to meet
your (and your customers’) brand and
business needs—GoodData guides users
to fast discovery and adoption using
interactive recommendations.
Discover why SaaS leaders like Zendesk,
SendGrid and Demandbase are choosing
GoodData as their analytics partner.
Contact GoodData today to learn more.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 15

16. 1
“Application Adoptions Trends 2015: The SaaS Boom Continues As Businesses Demand Agility”, Forrester
Research, Inc., April 24, 2014
2
“Digital Innovation Reshapes The Future Of Business Applications”, Forrester Research, Inc., July 17, 2015
3
Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms”, Rita L. Sallam, Bill Hostmann,
Kurt Schlegel, Joao Tapadinhas, Josh Parenteau, Thomas W. Oestreich, 23 February 2015
4
“The Forrester Wave™: Agile Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2015”, Forrester Research, Inc., September
25, 2015
*Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not
advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner
research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed
as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research,
including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCH AN EMBEDDED ANALYTICS PRODUCT 16