Why should start-ups white-label

For start-ups, developing a stellar product or service—and getting it out into the world as soon as possible—is a top priority.

For those developing a software product for businesses, it’s often a necessity—or, at the very least, a highly desired luxury—to include a business intelligence (BI) feature as part of their core offering, allowing businesses to derive insight from data and make data-driven decisions for their business.

As such, a start-up may consider a few options to enable them to provide business intelligence to their customers. These include: building a BI tool in-house, using a traditional BI provider to supply a business intelligence add-on, or opting for white-label business intelligence.

What is white label business intelligence?

White-label business intelligence is a form of embedded analytics whereby a business intelligence feature can be embedded within an existing product, system, or app.

More than this, white-label business intelligence can be customized to fit with the aesthetic, feel, and function of the rest of a system, so that it doesn’t look like it was ‘Frankensteined’ onto a product.

The customization capability of white-label business intelligence includes the ability to imbue the feature with a start-up’s branding, including the logo, colors, and fonts associated with the brand.

But why should start-ups choose white-label business intelligence over alternative business intelligence solutions?

Here are our top 8 reasons why start-ups should use white-label business intelligence.

1. Conserves time and resources.

Two things that start-ups often feel short of are time and resources.

After all, many start-ups are composed of a limited number of people, who need to accomplish a plethora of tasks to get the start-up off the ground.

Principally, developing the product.

When you use white-label business intelligence, the business intelligence tool can masquerade as a feature built in-house, without the enormous amount of time and effort required from your software engineers to actually build a business intelligence addition themselves.

This means that more time can be spent on getting your product as good as it can be—and on other essential tasks such as meeting with investors and marketing.

2. Decreases product to market time.

Along a similar vein, since your software engineers don’t need to build a business intelligence feature from scratch—which can take many months—you can get your product to market quicker, as you won’t need to wait for your team to develop a BI tool in addition to the core product.

With white-label business intelligence, you can add business intelligence to your product or system instantly, allowing you to get your product to market as quickly as possible.

This is essential for start-ups since getting your product to market means your start-up can finally generate some cash flow as customers begin to buy your product.

Many start-ups struggle to get their product to market because they run out of funds they need to finish their product, and because the longer the product is ‘in development’ the more salaries need to be paid.

White-label business intelligence improves start-ups’ chance of averting this disaster.

What’s more: getting your product to market more quickly allows you to get ahead of any competing start-ups that might be developing a similar product, ensuring you get to your target market first and have a greater pool of customers who have an unfulfilled need that can be satisfied with your product.

3. It’s budget-effective.

A number of factors make white-label business intelligence budget-friendly.

As mentioned above, since months of labor aren’t required to make your own business intelligence tool in-house, the cost to developing your core offering is lower, in terms of salaries paid and resources bought.

More than this, many white-label business intelligence providers offer flexible pricing models to suit businesses of different sizes, from start-ups to enterprises.

In practice, this means that, if you choose the right white-label business intelligence provider, you’ll only pay for what you need. Therefore, your budget is only used on the essentials rather than a breadth of business intelligence that you don’t really need.

4. Optimized for scaling.

Following on from the above, the fact that white-label business intelligence is typically offered as a subscription—often in a flexible pricing model—makes it really easy to scale as your business grows.

If you choose to build a business intelligence feature in-house, you’ll also have to develop and upgrade the feature as your customer base grows, as the volume of data the BI feature has to contend with explodes, and as the needs of your customers evolve.

This is a huge demand on the time and resources available to your start-up and can often present a huge bottleneck holding back your start-up’s growth.

On the other hand, specialist white-label business intelligence is built for scaling, making it perfect for start-ups and fast-growing businesses.

Many white-label business intelligence providers will allow you to instantly upgrade your subscription to fulfill your growing needs, meaning your business intelligence feature won’t be a hurdle to your growth.

5. Cements brand awareness.

The principal selling point of white-label business intelligence is that it allows an external, third-party-provided business intelligence tool to be imbued with a company’s branding and be seamlessly embedded into an existing product or system.

As such, no one using the business intelligence feature can tell that it hasn’t been built in-house—and this is useful for a few reasons.

For one, the fact that the whole of your product/system is comprehensively branded cements the aesthetic of your brand in your customers’ minds, making it easier to recognize, remember, and recall.

This allows them to recommend your brand to others—and return to your brand at a later date to make further purchases, as a result of making your brand memorable enough for them to recall in the future.

Another advantage of this is that your brand isn’t associated with an external company—and all of the associations that business has (or may have in the future)—protecting your brand identity from the reputation of an external brand.

6. It’s not your responsibility to fix.

Another possible bottleneck to progress presented by building your BI tool in-house is if your feature has problems, and you have to take the time out of other projects to fix it.

If customers begin to experience issues with the business intelligence software, this isn’t something that can be put off for long—your team will have to get to work to fix it right away.

Not only is this stressful for your team—and may make working overtime a necessity—but this may make you late for other deadlines and slow down progress towards your start-up’s goals.

With white-label business intelligence, on the other hand, it’s on them to fix any problems with the business intelligence tool.

Not only are problems less likely—since your white-label business intelligence provider will be a BI specialist—resulting in more satisfied customers, but fixes are likely to be made more quickly, since the business intelligence software is the provider’s sole focus.

All the while, your team is freed of the responsibility—and the time and energy drain—of fixing any issues with a homegrown business intelligence tool.

7. It’s impressive to investors.

When businesses use traditional business intelligence software to work alongside their system or product, it’s obvious that the business intelligence feature hasn’t been designed by that business—and that they have had to outsource their business intelligence needs to a third-party provider.

On the other hand, white-label business intelligence completely disguises third-party involvement, making your start-up seem capable of producing a smart business intelligence tool.

This gives potential investors one more reason to invest in your start-up and propel your growth, since they’ll have greater faith in your tech capabilities and the competency of your team and your start-up as a whole.

8. Ultimately, it improves your product.

White-label business intelligence facilitates the creation of a superior product in multiple ways.

For one, since your software engineers don’t need to spend time developing a business intelligence feature themselves, they can spend more time developing the core product.

It’s also likely that—since business intelligence is their specialty—a third-party provider’s business intelligence feature is better than one you could build in-house (though this depends on the individual start-up).

Moreover, unlike traditional business intelligence software, white-label business intelligence allows the BI tool to be embedded into the product and customized to match the aesthetic and function of the rest of the product.

This not only makes the design feel more unified, but it also makes the product easier and more efficient to use. Not to mention, users’ workflows aren’t disrupted by having to navigate to a third-party software or platform, as they would with a traditional business intelligence addition.

For these reasons, white-label business intelligence can be used to develop a higher quality product for your customers.