How white-label business intelligence wins customers in six steps

As outlined by Gartner, business intelligence (BI) comprises the “applications, infrastructure and tools, and best practices that enable access to—and analysis of—information to improve and optimize decisions and performance”.

In short, business intelligence enables businesses to gain insight from data, and to use that data-derived insight to drive the best decisions for the company.

As such, when opting to upgrade their digital strategy, many businesses want a business intelligence product to be a part of their new software stack. However, regular BI tools aren’t very customizable in terms of branding, feel, or function.

This is where white-label business intelligence comes in.

Unlike a traditional third-party provided BI tool, white-label business intelligence is able to be imbued with a company’s branding, embedded seamlessly into a product/system and customized to match the feel and function of the rest of a product.

For these reasons, among others, white-label business intelligence enables SaaS companies to win more customers and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.

White-label business intelligence does this in six main ways.

1. Produces a higher quality product.

To achieve many of the benefits offered by white-label business intelligence tools, many businesses opt to build their own business intelligence features in-house.

However, this is no small feat and demands a significant amount of time and effort from your software engineers. Not to mention, business intelligence features can cost a lot to build.

Therefore, building a BI tool in-house often results in resources being directed away from your core product.

On the other hand, by partnering with an external business intelligence provider, you and your team can focus 100% on creating the highest quality product.

What’s more, since business intelligence is the specialty of third-party business intelligence providers, it’s likely that their business intelligence tool is higher quality than one your company is capable of creating—since this probably isn’t your team’s first area of expertise.

But, why white label business intelligence?

A characteristic of a high-quality product is that it feels seamless and easy to use, users’ workflows aren’t disjointed, and it allows them to operate at maximum efficiency.

When businesses opt to work with an external business intelligence provider, the result can be a BI tool that makes users navigate away from the rest of the product to a third-party platform or to a business intelligence feature that doesn’t feel or look like the rest of the product.

However, white-label business intelligence tools are embedded within the system or product itself, so that users don’t have to disrupt their workflow to use the business intelligence feature.

What’s more, white-label business intelligence doesn’t appear ‘Frankensteined’ when embedded into products, because the tool can be customized to match the feel and function of the rest of the system.

So, your customers don’t have to switch gears or have to embrace a learning curve to get used to the way the business intelligence feature works, making it easier and more efficient for them to use.

All in all, employing white-label business intelligence results in a better product—and a better product wins more customers.

2. Attracts investors.

It’s critical for startups to be able to attract investors, both as they’re developing a product and as they’re attempting to scale up their business and attract more—and larger—customers.

A surefire way to attract investors is by creating a stellar product, which, as we’ve already discussed, is a lot easier with the help of an external business intelligence provider.

Moreover, white-label business intelligence earns the trust of investors in another way.

Since a great white-label business intelligence feature can be customized to be indistinguishable from the rest of a company’s product—and can be imbued with its branding—the tool comes across as though it’s been built in-house.

Building a stellar BI feature in-house is impressive to investors, who will have an increased trust in your business’s tech capabilities—faith in your product and in your business’ competency as a whole.

This will make them more tempted to invest, since they’ll have a greater belief in your company’s ability to be profitable to them in the long run.

The more investment a business gets, the more funding it has to play with.

Funding allows the product to be improved—and a better product equals happier customers—as well as scale up and enhance your marketing strategy to allow more people to find out about your product, giving you the opportunity to win more customers for your business.

3. Shortens time to market.

As discussed before, building your own BI tool in house depletes your resources—notably, time.

Startups and SMBs launching a product or service need to get that product to market as quickly as possible in order to initiate cash flow.

After all, you can’t work on—and perfect—your product forever. People need to get paid at some point.

A key advantage of using white-label business intelligence over building your own BI tool in-house—for a similar set of benefits—is that you can deploy your product months earlier, sometimes even up to a year earlier than if you built a BI feature to go with your product from scratch.

In a highly competitive market, this is essential, as SaaS and tech products are evolving all the time, and if you don’t get your unique, stellar product onto the market first, it’s very probable that someone else will.

By getting to your target market first—before your competitors with similar products—your company puts itself in the best position to win more customers.

4. Cultivates brand recognition and awareness.

A common gripe with using business intelligence tools from an external provider is that they can’t be imbued with your company’s branding, so they look and feel different to the rest of the product and don’t feel as though they have come from the same company.

On the other hand, white-label business intelligence allows the BI feature to be embedded seamlessly within a system and be customized to embody your product’s aesthetic.

White-label business intelligence tools can be embellished with branding features such as logos and company colours. Moreover, highly customizable white-label business intelligence allows companies to create custom themes—or upload their company CSS style sheets—to unify the whole aesthetic of the product and reinforce brand identity.

This facilitates greater brand recognition, as the more components of your product that are permeated with your branding, the more likely your brand is to be cemented into the minds of your customers.

So, when your customers think back to your incredible product with its stellar business intelligence feature, they can more easily recall your brand. This makes it more likely they’ll revisit your company in the future if they want to make a similar purchase or use more of your services.

5. Impresses customers.

White-label business intelligence presents a few different avenues through which to impress your customers.

As touched on previously, white-label business intelligence providers are usually more capable than your business—since they’re specialists—to create a stellar business intelligence feature.

However, thanks to extensive customization opportunities, white-label business intelligence providers offer superior benefits to traditional business intelligence tools.

By having your business intelligence feature seamlessly blend in with the rest of your product, it will appear as though you’ve built the tool in-house, in addition to the rest of the product, impressing customers with your tech capabilities.

This could even convey your brand as a top provider of business intelligence (even though you outsourced your BI tool)—something your customers will remember your company for.

More than this, as a component of white-label business intelligence tools’ customizability, many providers offer sub-branding capabilities, in which the business intelligence feature can be customized according to its end user.

This means companies can tailor the tool to even more specifically meet the needs of different types of end users, making it easy to use with maximum efficiency and efficacy.

What’s more, this personalization and attention to your customers’ individual needs will make them feel valued, generating loyalty to your brand, making customers more likely to continue using your products, and winning their patronage again and again.

6. Boosts word of mouth marketing.

Since customers can more easily recall your brand—and have been impressed by your amazing product—they’re very likely to provide recommendations to individuals in need of a product like yours.

Most marketers cite word-of-mouth marketing as the most effective form of marketing, as consumers trust other consumers a lot more than traditional marketing methods—and many rely on their friends, family, and trusted acquaintances to guide them towards a great product.

As such, by ensuring you provide your customers with a great product that fulfills their needs—and your product is thoroughly permeated with your branding so that your brand stays ‘top of mind’ when they think of the type of product/service you provide—you’re sure to generate some great word-of-mouth marketing for your product, and win more customers as a result.

In turn, these new customers may do the same for your business, creating a domino effect and allowing more and more people to find out about—and love—your product.