Customer-facing embedded dashboard earns its keep in a NARROW BAND: recurring clients + frequently-updating data-rich results + retention/differentiation lever + support deflection

Synthesis: A customer-facing dashboard (especially embedded in the website) earns its keep when ALL FOUR conditions hold:

1. The business delivers ongoing, data-rich outcomes to recurring clients who make decisions off that data.
2. The data is genuinely the client's own and updates often enough that live access beats a periodic snapshot.
3. Transparency / retention is a real competitive lever (clients who rely on in-product data are harder to displace).
4. Self-service deflects support / reporting requests.

This profile fits: agencies, SaaS, logistics tracking, portfolio / financial reporting, utilities — generally businesses with many client tenants or a product where analytics is part of the value.

It is overkill when: clients are few and want a periodic summary; data updates infrequently; there is no recurring decision on the client side; the SMB lacks capacity to maintain it.

Source: Synthesis across embedded-analytics vendor and practitioner literature.

Confidence: Industry-consensus.

Why this matters for Candid: Operationalises R3 — For customer-facing reporting, default to the lightest delivery first: scheduled PDF or shared reporting link; embed only when the four-condition narrow band holds. The right shape for recurring-revenue businesses where the dashboard IS part of the product, not for service businesses delivering occasional results to a handful of clients.