How Owlery cut time iterating on Embedded Analytics from 2 Days of engineering to 2 hours in CS

The Challenge: Owlery had been relying on a custom-built system for their in-app dashboards and reports. However, as they grew, they faced significant challenges in terms of efficiency and scalability. The process of creating and maintaining dashboards was resource-intensive, often requiring engineers to spend days fine-tuning each report. Given the size of their team, this approach was not sustainable.

The Solution: Owlery chose the embedded analytics SDK for React for a few key reasons–The SDK offers maximum control over UX and component interactions with a great developer experience; the user-friendly UI lets non-technical customers run their own reports with confidence; and hands-on technical help with implementation from the Customer Success engineers.

The Results: For Owlery, the embedded analytics solution aligns directly with their long-term product vision to support supply chain teams. As they continue to evolve, they plan to leverage Metabase’s SDK to build even more advanced features and integrations.

"We’re extremely happy with our decision to go with Metabase and use the SDK. It’s given us the control we need to build the future of our product, while also providing our customers with the best analytics experience possible. "

Travis Downs
Co-founder at Owlery

Why Metabase

After evaluating several embedded analytics solutions including Tableau, Looker, Sigma, Thoughtspot, and others, Owlery decided the Embedded Analytics SDK was the best fit for their needs.

Travis explained, “We knew we wanted control over the entire user experience. The iframe embedding just didn’t offer enough customization for what we envisioned. The SDK gave us the flexibility to integrate analytics seamlessly into our product and give our customers a more personalized experience.”

The SDK allowed Owlery to embed Metabase’s analytics directly in their app, ensuring that dashboards and charts felt like a natural extension of their product. They could control the layout, presentation, and functionality to match their specific use cases, which is critical for aligning with their long-term product goals.

The implementation

To meet growing customer expectations for faster, more flexible insights, Owlery knew they needed a solution that would allow both their team and their customers to create and manage dashboards without constant engineering involvement.

“We wanted to be able to shape the experience for our customers in a way that felt natural to them. With the SDK, we had the flexibility to integrate analytics exactly how we wanted,” Travis explained. “It wasn’t just about embedding charts; it was about embedding an experience that fit seamlessly within our product.”

As Owlery grew, they faced several challenges with their custom-built analytics solution:

• Engineering bottlenecks in dashboard development and iterations
• Time-consuming back-and-forth between analysts and developers
• Limited ability to quickly respond to customer requests for dashboard modifications
• Resource-intensive process for implementing features like filtering and PDF exports

“When you make a dashboard, it’s never what you think it is the first time,” explains Travis Downs, Co-founder at Owlery. “You look at the data and realize you need to slice it differently, view it by month, or shift the KPIs. Those time-consuming iterations with our engineering team made me pause and think there had to be a better way.”

Owlery’s implementation focused on security and ease of use:

• The embedded analytics SDK was configured to maintain a consistent look and feel with their application
• Row-level security ensures customers only see their own data
• Authentication integration was prioritized during the initial setup

The results

The switch to Metabase’s embedded analytics SDK delivered significant improvements:

• Big Time Savings - Modifications to dashboards have been reduced from 2+ days of engineering time to about 2 hours of customer success time. This vastly improves their response time to customer requests, eliminates back-and-forth between teams, and lets their engineering team focus on their core product. “It’s gone from an engineer spending a couple days on a dashboard, to our Customer Success team spending a couple of hours on it,” notes Downs. “That efficiency gain has been transformative for our small team.”
• Everyone can use data - The self-service functionality not only saves engineering time but also allows Owlery’s customers to take more ownership of how they access their data. “Now, customers can make their own decisions based on real-time data without waiting for us to make changes,” Travis explained. “This is a huge benefit for both our team and our customers.”
• Enhanced flexibility and scalability - By switching from hand-rolled reporting to Metabase’s embedded analytics SDK for React, Owlery can now scale their solution with a fraction of the effort, allowing them to manage permissions, security, and performance without worrying about individual dashboard builds.

“The ability to embed Metabase with the SDK allowed us to scale our analytics much more easily. Instead of building dashboards for each individual customer, we can now provide a flexible, customizable experience that meets the needs of every user, all while maintaining robust security and permissions management.”

“Our product vision has always been to empower users with their supply chain data,” Travis emphasized. “The Metabase SDK gives us the foundation to continue building on that vision. We can evolve our product, add more features, and continue providing a rich, customizable analytics experience as we grow.”

Why Metabase’s Embedded Analytics SDK for React was the right choice

For Owlery, the decision to choose Metabase’s SDK over iframe embedding was about having control over their user experience, customizing the solution to fit their brand, and ensuring scalability as they grew. The SDK has enabled them to deliver rich, personalized analytics to their customers while saving time and resources on development and maintenance.