This blog provides a summary of our presentation at Solutions Review’s Data Demo Day, a virtual trade show where we had the opportunity to showcase Bold BI’s impressive data analytics. Data Demo Day was hosted by Doug Atkinson of Solutions Review, and our presenters were VP of Sales Brad Freeman and CEO Daniel Jebaraj. A recording of the presentation is embedded below, followed by an outline of the presentation and a transcript of the Q&A segment.
Presentation
How Bold BI started
Bold BI® was developed for internal use to evaluate the massive amount of data generated within Syncfusion over the last 20 years of business. We made Bold BI available to the public and have since added many features and updates requested by our customers.
Embedded excellence
Bold BI is built from the ground up to be embedded within your application, making it easy for deployment, customer use, and white labeling. Bold BI has also been recognized by Gartner as an embedded analytics vendor and was listed in the top 10 of G2’s top software development vendors of 2022.
Licensing
Bold BI features an industry-changing licensing model with predictable costs. There are no per-user fees or other hidden charges. We offer just one, simple flat fee so you can focus on growing your business. We also provide free analytical dashboards and reporting to small businesses and individuals under a community license program to help them grow with a little less stress.
Embedded vs. stand-alone analytics
- Stand-alone analytics: Customers bring in data, are able to create dashboards, and then share them with others for analysis and monitoring. Examples include Tableau and Power BI.
- Embedded analytics: The analytics platform becomes a part of your software application. Customers do not have to leave their system to go out and perform analytics.
Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Here are some side-by-side comparisons between the two.
| Stand-alone analytics | Embedded analytics |
| Target a small group of extremely advanced analysts. | Present a seamless, integrated experience to a large group of users. |
| Generally licensed per user, which can drive up licensing costs quick for a large set of users. | Better licensing costs for large groups of users. Usually a per-application or per-server fee. |
| Users are subject to the solution as provided. | Totally control the analytics experience. |
Bold BI highlights
- Deep integration: Every aspect of the UI becomes a seamless part of your application.
- 30+ widgets: Provides nearly every kind of visualization widget needed to display any kind of information. All fully customizable.
- Drag-and-drop designer: Anyone can easily construct dashboards and perform the analytics they need. All configuration, customization, and publishing is completely codeless.
- Connect to any data source: Currently supports over 150 connectors to popular data sources without the need for an intermediate data store. New connectors are added regularly, and custom connectors are supported.
- Use any server or client framework: Use any framework—.NET, PHP, Java, Rails—whatever you want to integrate Bold BI into your app.
- Multitenancy: Multitenancy is supported out of the box to simplify access for separate divisions, departments, teams, customers, etc.
- Single sign-on: Use Microsoft 365 or other third-party authentications to sign on for the server side and provide a frictionless experience on the client side.
- Embedding-friendly licensing: We only charge by project. No per-user or per-server fees, and no hidden scaling costs.
Demo
Watch the Data Demo Day presentation to see Bold BI in action. In less than 20 minutes, CEO Daniel Jebaraj creates a data source and a dashboard on the server side, and then embeds the dashboard in a custom ASP.NET Core application. Along the way, he showcases Bold BI’s volumes of customization options and even sample dashboards designed for specific industries.
Q&A
For the Q&A, questions were collected from attendees, curated, and presented by Doug Atkinson of Solutions Review, and answered by Syncfusion VP of Sales Brad Freeman.
What kind of support does someone new to Bold BI receive?
We have 24/5 support, and then we also have live chats. We have chat via the customer’s Bold BI account, where they can submit an incident online and get an answer pretty rapidly. Our team has the availability to arrange live demos and live calls at any time, so they’ll walk you right through your issue.
Every new customer gets full onboarding. They receive a full training with the support team to help them get up and running and build their first dashboard. That’s a big help. Most people pick it up pretty quickly, but if you need it, the support’s always there. That’s the biggest thing we’ve been known for going on 20 years now.
Is the Community Edition still available?
Yes, it’s still available: Bold BI Community License.
What integrations are available?
We have over 130 direct connects currently, and then we have a Web API, so you can connect to most other things. With a lot of connectors, we build them on demand. So, if a customer comes to us and they need to connect a database that we currently don’t support, we’ll just build it for them. It might take a couple days, but we’ll get it connected for them.
What sets Bold BI apart from other embedded analytics solutions?
The biggest difference between Bold BI and other solutions is we’re not just someone you buy from and never hear from again. Our success is built on our customers’ success. We are only as successful as they are, so we ensure they’re successful. That’s why our support is so in depth. If you have an issue, we’re going to be there. If it takes all day, we’ll be there, whatever is needed. That’s what makes us who we are.
I think that’s a big thing that a lot of people don’t realize is still available out there in this world: live people to talk to, and someone that actually cares about your business.
Can you speak a little bit about how Bold BI deals with data security?
It’s all housed and we do tons and tons of scans. With new customers, a lot of times they come to us and want another particular security scan. So we add it into the implementations and update that for all our other customers as well.
We try to stay as far ahead of the curve as we can. There are a lot of items that we’re actually in the process of implementing, like HIPAA certification and many, many others.
What sorts of organizations are you seeing traction with right now for Bold BI?
General finance is a big one. Another is inventory tracking, particularly for people who want to look at how to track their inventory on different scales and different models. For example, a business that might not have had the funds to track their smaller line of inventory is now able to with Bold BI.
How does an implementation go? What’s the full cycle from first contact through ultimate implementation?
We usually start off with a trial and we do a live demo with the potential customer. We walk through, answer their questions, and get an understanding of what their needs are. We then help them get up and running. Once they’re actually ready to move, we set up an onboarding call. We have an entire team dedicated that: our client success team.
The client success team reaches out to the customer, sets up everything they need, walks them through everything. They do a live call with them to help them build up their dashboards and see what their needs are, then the support team designs and gives them samples. The whole process for a customer, depending on the depth, can be from three days to a week and a half. It just really depends. Some people get up and running the same day. If it’s a big embedded one, it might take a little bit longer with the programming, but it’s a pretty quick turnaround. Most people are up and running inside of a month, fully distributing and everything.
What should a business be preparing for if this is something new that they are stepping up to or if they’re moving from another system?
Preparation is primarily giving us ideas of what they want. The data sources they need, what their designs are, and what they want. Those things help us get them exactly what they need, because we’ve always operated based on customers’ references. If you come to us and say you need this kind of grid or this kind of chart, we’re going to get it there for you. It might not be there out of the box, but we have tons of components available from the Syncfusion side that we can build right into the dashboard for you. From there, understand that we are here to help.
What if a company’s data is a bit of a mess? Can you help them untangle all that?
Yes. We have a data migration tool that helps take the customer data in and bring it to the scenario they want. That’s available via our support. Messy data is something no one needs to fear.
What’s the best way for somebody to get in touch?
Via our website. Just go to boldbi.com. You can hop right on a chat and start talking to us live. We cover it 22 hours a day, so someone’s almost always there to answer questions.
Recommended resources (related links):
- Bold BI Video Tutorials
- Bold BI v5.1 On-Premises and Embedded Products Release Highlights [Blog]
- Introducing the Free Version of Bold BI for Community Users [Blog]
- Bold BI Webinars
To learn more about Bold BI’s impressive features, sign up for a free trial.
