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Building great software often involves a critical moment: realizing you need robust reporting and analytics features within your application, and you need them fast. For many product teams and companies, especially in scale-ups and enterprise environments, this triggers the search for an embedded analytics solution. If you're evaluating multiple potential vendors for such a complex project, the procurement process often involves a Request for Information (RFI) or a Request for Proposal (RFP) – a formal process designed to structure the evaluation for a specific project.
But here's the challenge: embedded analytics isn't a simple plug-and-play software purchase. It deeply integrates with your product's data, frontend, and user experience. Generic RFP templates fall short, failing to capture the specific requirements unique to embedding analytics and gather information.
This leads to vague RFP requirements, endless back-and-forth with potential suppliers, and misalignment between product vision, the final contract, and ultimately, project success. This guide aims to change that, providing a clear roadmap for writing a good RFP that helps you identify the best vendor and best solution for your specific needs.
Before diving into the specifics, let's clarify these common procurement process documents:
An RFI is typically used earlier in the process to gather general information about the capabilities of various vendors and possible vendors in the market. It helps you understand the landscape and narrow down a list of potential vendors before issuing a more detailed request. Think of it as initial research.
An RFP is a more formal document used when you have a clearer idea of your needs and want qualified vendors to submit proposals outlining how they would meet your specific requirements, including price, implementation plans (delivery timelines), and technical specifications. This often forms part of a competitive bidding process, sometimes followed by requests for a best and final offer (final offer) from shortlisted vendors.
Unlike traditional BI tools (like Tableau or Power BI) used primarily for internal analysis, embedded analytics becomes part of your product. This means evaluating factors like seamless UI integration, developer experience (SDKs), performance under your specific user load, multi-tenant security, and flexible white-labeling – aspects often missed in generic or BI-focused RFPs.
Defining the full scope and requirements upfront via a well-crafted RFP helps you determine the true fit for this unique use case.
A detailed RFP for embedded analytics should provide potential vendors with all the information required and context they need to propose the best solution. Here are key sections to include:
What to include: Describe your core product/application, its purpose, and the business problems you're solving. Explain why you need embedded analytics – what insights do you want to enable for your users? What decisions will these analytics drive? Outline the key project goals and the overall scope of the implementation.
Why it matters: Context helps vendors understand if their solution aligns with your vision and industry. It moves beyond features to real-world application.
What to include: Who will be using the embedded analytics? Are they internal teams, external customers, partners? What is their technical proficiency? Define different user roles and the types of insights each needs.
Why it matters: Different user types require different levels of complexity, customization, and data access controls. This heavily influences the required UX and security features.
What to include: Detail your primary data sources (databases, warehouses, APIs). Mention data volume, velocity, and structure. Is your data centralized or distributed?
Why it matters: Compatibility is crucial. The vendor needs to know if they can connect easily and performantly to your existing data infrastructure. This is a core technical requirement.
What to include: Specify the frontend framework(s) your application uses (React, Angular, Vue, etc.). Describe your desired level of UI customization – do you need full white-labeling to match your brand? Do you want to use pre-built charts, build custom visualizations, or enable end-user report building?
Why it matters: This determines the feasibility and effort required for seamless integration. True embedding means matching your application's look, feel, and user experience.
What to include: What development resources do you have? Do you need robust SDKs for specific languages (JavaScript, Python, etc.)? How important is comprehensive API documentation and developer support for the integration?
Why it matters: Embedded analytics requires development effort. Good SDKs, APIs, and documentation significantly speed up implementation and reduce long-term maintenance.
What to include: List your mandatory compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, etc.). Describe your user authentication system. How do you need to control data visibility based on user roles or permissions (e.g., row-level security)?
Why it matters: Handling user data securely within your application is paramount. The vendor's security posture and access control mechanisms must align with your needs.
What to include: If your application serves multiple distinct clients (tenants), explain your multi-tenancy architecture. How is tenant data separated? Does the analytics solution need to enforce this separation strictly and easily?
Why it matters: This is a critical requirement for most SaaS platforms. The vendor must demonstrate a robust and manageable approach to multi-tenancy without requiring complex workarounds.
What to include: Provide estimates for the number of users (concurrent and total), number of tenants (if applicable), data size, and expected growth over the next 1-3 years. Define performance expectations (e.g., dashboard load times).
Why it matters: Scalability isn't just a buzzword. Vendors need realistic numbers to confirm their architecture can handle your load now and in the future.
What to include: While you might not state a budget, you can describe your preferred pricing model (e.g., based on users, usage, features). Are you looking for predictable costs? How does the price need to scale with your own growth? Ask for transparency to avoid hidden costs. Aim for the best price relative to value.
Why it matters: Pricing models for embedded analytics vary significantly. Understanding how costs align with your business model is crucial for long-term viability.
What to include: Specify your needs for onboarding support, ongoing technical support, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), documentation quality, and training. Include any other requests related to support structure.
Why it matters: Implementation and ongoing project success depend heavily on the quality and availability of vendor support.
💡 Pro-tip:
Throughout your RFP, focus on describing your scenarios and desired outcomes, not just listing abstract features. For example, instead of "Must support dashboards," describe "Our account managers need a dashboard summarizing key client health metrics, updated daily, filterable by client segment." This gives potential vendors a much clearer picture and helps them decide if they can truly meet your needs.
Crafting an effective RFP takes effort, and acknowledging that the process can be time consuming is important, but pitfalls are common. Avoid these mistakes to streamline your evaluation criteria and bidding process:
Statements like "must be scalable," "must be secure," or "must be user-friendly" are too broad. Define what these mean in your context. (e.g., "Must support 10,000 concurrent users with dashboard load times under 5 seconds"). Provide important details.
Embedded analytics deeply impacts the product and requires engineering effort. Ensure product managers and engineers contribute to defining technical requirements and evaluating feasibility from the start. Don't let procurement run the process in isolation.
A long list of features doesn't guarantee a good fit. Prioritize how well the solution integrates into your user experience and how easy it is for your developers to implement and maintain.
Clearly distinguish between "must-have" and "nice-to-have" requirements. This helps vendors focus their proposals and allows you to score responses more effectively against your core project goals.
This is a major error. BI tools (like Power BI, Tableau) are designed for analysts exploring data internally. Embedded analytics is about delivering insights to your end-users within your application. The criteria (embedding flexibility, SDKs, white-labeling, multi-tenancy simplicity) are fundamentally different. Using the wrong template (even seemingly helpful sample RFPs found online if they aren't for embedded) leads to evaluating the wrong things.
Give bidding vendors adequate time to understand your detailed description and prepare thoughtful proposals. Rushing the RFP process often leads to subpar responses or vendors declining to respond.
Beyond describing your needs, asking targeted questions helps you differentiate different vendors and uncover potential challenges. These questions often reveal more than feature checklists and provide the crucial information required to make an informed decision:
Asking these types of questions encourages vendors to provide specific, evidence-based responses relevant to the embedded use case, helping you make a more informed decision. They subtly guide the evaluation criteria towards factors crucial for embedded analytics project success – like developer experience, customization, and seamless multi-tenancy – areas where solutions like Luzmo often excel.
At Luzmo, we understand that choosing an embedded analytics partner is a significant decision. When we respond to RFIs and RFPs, our goal is transparency and partnership.
We aim to provide all the necessary information required and address any other requests you might have. We focus on:
We believe the RFP process, when done right, leads to better partnerships and helps enable more successful projects.
Preparing an RFP or just starting your research? We're happy to review your draft RFP and provide feedback, or schedule a call to discuss your requirements before you even start writing.
Let's determine if Luzmo is the right fit for you.
Build your first embedded data product now. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
