Tessitura Network De-Risks Its Embedded Analytics Project with Sisense

Executive Summary

Tessitura Network empowers users across hundreds of leading international arts organizations with data-driven insights embedded right into their unified enterprise CRM solution. With both on-prem and cloud offerings, Tessitura Network provides a completely automated and integrated embedded analytics solution crafted and developed with their key customer requirements in mind. By implementing the right processes, engaging the right stakeholders, and customizing their analytics software to meet their specific needs, Tessitura Network successfully launched and grew their embedded analytics offering—all while maintaining a low-risk profile.

About Tessitura Network and Tessitura Analytics

Tessitura Network is a non-profit organization founded by leading arts organizations. Their aim is to advance the success of 650+ premier arts and cultural organizations worldwide with a unified enterprise CRM solution while continually delivering innovative technology. A key part of their delivery strategy is Business Intelligence (BI), which is baked into their value proposition. Tessitura Network has offered embedded dashboards since 2008. They soft-launched their next-generation analytics solution with Sisense—Tessitura Analytics—in the winter of 2018 and officially launched it in the summer of 2018.

Watch the quick two-minute intro video on Tessitura Analytics to see what it’s about.

Tessitura Network provides analytics to their members embedded within their CRM system. They deploy Sisense with prebuilt dashboards and models, and also enable members to build their own dashboards.

The Deployment

Tessitura Network’s clients either deploy their Tessitura software on-premises or on the cloud through Tessitura Network’s Managed Services.

Sisense is bundled with Tessitura’s CRM software and has been white-labeled “Tessitura Analytics.” Tessitura’s white-labeled implementation includes a fully integrated installer, Single-Sign-On (SSO) integration, custom widgets, plugins, Elasticubes, and dashboards.

The Planning Phase

Critical to any successful project is a well thought-out plan. Before moving into the implementation phase of the project, Tessitura identified and thought through the following key areas:

1. Goals and Strategy
   •  Identifying target audience
   • Understanding value
   • Defining the goal
2. Project Plan
   • Defining clear objectives
   • Understanding and limiting the scope
   • Identifying resources available
   • Listing the deliverables
   • Setting milestones
   • Thinking through assumptions
3. Key Personas
   • Digging into their challenges and motivators

Deriving requirements from customers is a key next step. It is important to go out there and speak to customers, partners, and field-facing colleagues. Ultimately, everything built has to provide value to the end-user and the best way to identify these needs is by asking them directly.

• Brainstorming workshops and focus groups
• One-on-one interviews

Tessitura Network held extensive workshops and interviews across the world with their user groups and drove requirements from their internal field facing teams. While speaking to customers, they also found it useful to introduce the identified personas and find out what specific questions and metrics matter to each persona.

Sisense Tip:

Check out the webinar with John Jakovich, VP Business Intelligence at Tessitura Network, on Using Customer Requirements to Drive Your Embedded Analytics Strategy to better understand the specifics of what Tessitura Network did.

 

Agile Developement

Once the requirements, project plan, and resources are in place, the next step is to build the Minimum Viable Product and run alpha and beta programs with select partners who are committed to helping iterate the solution. Tessitura Network tested their embedded analytics software with a few of their key network members and iterated the solution over the course of the next 6 months to refine and build a robust analytics offering.

Ensuring a Smooth Internal Rollout

It is critical to secure buy-in and train internal teams so that they’re comfortable with the product and prepared to support it during launch and beyond.

Tessitura Network held internal webinars and hands-on workshops using ElastiCubes (Sisense Data Models) and dashboards that were purpose-built to facilitate training. These initial workshops included 15–25 participants and consisted of an instructor walking the participants through exercises including widget and dashboard creation.

What made this process even better? The internal training content served as pilots for their external client training sessions. Tessitura Network utilized the internal sessions to hone their training content.

Maximizing Value for Customers

While the technical teams were building out the solution and internal stakeholders were being onboarded, the BI team at Tessitura Network also worked with their Marketing and Consulting teams to build a launch plan.

For example, they hosted half a dozen webinars on the new Tessitura Analytics platform, utilizing Sisense. John Jakovich, VP of BI, traveled to Tessitura user groups worldwide to demonstrate the upcoming functionality. Tessitura Analytics was a new, exciting offering, and Tessitura wanted to build momentum and get clients excited about the benefits and capabilities of this new functionality.

Tessitura Network officially launched Tessitura Analytics at their annual User Conference (with thousands of users) in July 2018. But they didn’t just launch at the User Conference. They also trained over 350 end users on the new Tessitura Analytics capabilities.

Tessitura then repeated this process at their Australian and London Conferences. During their 2018 conferences alone, Tessitura Network trained over 500 people on their new analytics solution.

Building a Tribe

Tessitura Network was dedicated to building expertise across the organization. The entire company has been trained on the technology, functionality, and business value of Tessitura Analytics. For instance, evangelism at Tessitura User groups isn’t delivered exclusively by the BI team. Instead, presentations and demonstrations are delivered by staff from across the Tessitura Network.

Don’t Forget Support, Documentation, and Training Tools

No product launch should happen without the support systems in place to ensure its adoption and success. Tessitura Network put a range of processes and services in place to support their customers.

Support

Before launch, Tessitura Network made sure that their support teams were trained and were ready to be the front-line team for all questions and issues related to Tessitura Analytics. This was a critical step to ensure that Tessitura Analytics would be supported using existing procedures, rather than building out a wholly separate support structure for Tessitura Analytics.

Client Onboarding

Once a client has Tessitura Analytics, Tessitura staff delivers a bespoke “Analytics Orientation” where they review the solution and show the client how to personalize their dashboards. These sessions serve as a valuable introduction to the new capabilities Tessitura Analytics delivers.

Additional Services

If the client wants more services and does not have the bandwidth or resources, Tessitura Network also provides consulting services to help clients customize their analytics.

Documentation

The importance of good documentation cannot be understated. Tessitura Network provides white-labeled Sisense documentation to their clients to ensure that clients are well equipped for success.

Training Videos and Webinars

As a part of their user portal, clients at Tessitura Network can access frequently published webinars, tutorials, and videos on Tessitura Analytics and how to leverage it to their advantage.

Making It Easy to Get Analytics—Tessitura Integrated Installer

No matter how great the service is, the product has to be easy to use and deliver value from the get-go. The first few steps of interaction with the product have to be smooth. One of the first interactions for an administrator with Tessitura Analytics is the installation and deployment process.

In order to make the installation process seamless for the System Administrators, Tessitura Network fully integrated the Sisense silent installer with Tessitura’s CRM system installation. All of the required Sisense components are delivered via a single integrated installation, including the cube server, data models, and dashboards.

The less friction between the user and the analytics capabilities, the faster and better the adoption.

Building Analytics that Address Customer Requirements First

While data and analytics are cool, it also needs to be a tool that helps drive decision making and, ultimately, actions. Identifying and addressing critical requirements is key to de-risking the embedded analytics project.

Tessitura Network surfaced a few key areas that needed to be addressed in order to ensure the success of their Analytics Solution.

The Data Dictionary Plugin

An important consideration that surfaced in Tessitura Network’s requirements gathering was maintaining trust in the underlying data. Their clients wanted full visibility into the data pipeline all the way from the original source, without having to leave the dashboard.

Tessitura Network leveraged the Sisense JavaScript APIs to build a Data Dictionary Plugin to solve for this unique need. Through the Data Dictionary Plugin, they provided a way for their clients to understand exactly where the underlying data was coming from.

The Dynamic Data Security Layer

Another critical requirement was real-time dynamic security configuration. It was important that each user‘s data security be updated in real-time when they logged into Tessitura Analytics, ensuring the user only sees the data they have access to.

In order to facilitate this, Tessitura Network leverages the Sisense REST API to integrate their external security settings with Sisense on the fly.

The Save-To-List Write-Back Plugin

Another important feature that clients needed was a way to close the “BI loop” and write back a specific set of data into Tessitura’s CRM application. Tessitura programmed a “Save-To-List” plugin that lets users import data from Sisense into their CRM application for segmentation purposes.

Tessitura Network leveraged the Sisense JavaScript APIs, REST APIs, and manipulated Sisense JAQL to achieve this functionality.

Other Custom Widgets

Client requirements can be varied and unique. Tessitura Network leveraged Sisense APIs to extend and customize Sisense to meet these needs outside of the standard out-of-the-box features including building a customized iFrame widget to render SSRS reports, adding new D3 and viz.js visualizations, and enhancing existing Sisense visualizations and functionality, among others.

Conclusion

Embedding analytics as part of a product offering has considerable risks. There are three main areas that can cause failure. First is not identifying the right problems that need to be solved. Tessitura Network took the time to build a detailed project plan and derived their requirements from their customers directly. Once key requirements are identified, it’s important to build a solution that meets these key needs and provides analytics in a seamless and efficient way.

Tessitura Network leveraged all the capabilities of Sisense—from its analytic and visualization engine to its customization and instrumentation capabilities—to ensure that Tessitura Analytics met their clients’ needs. Lastly, building the right product is only the first step in de-risking the embedded analytics strategy. As an OEM, it is also important to create processes and support systems that ensure continued customer success and encourage customer adoption. Tessitura Network not only built strong awareness and training within their organization but also developed content and support structures for the customers. On top of that, they also executed a marketing and training plan to create excitement and provide knowledge. Ultimately, Tessitura Network worked to ensure that their customers were fully equipped to leverage their sleek, new embedded analytics offering to its fullest.