White labeling is a must-have for successful embedded analytics
Application providers, including SaaS companies and ISVs, can benefit from buying an analytics tool to embed into their app, instead of building from scratch. Embedding analytics requires white labeling capabilities, which takes your user experience to the next level. White label analytics offer both better usability and differentiation that will set you apart from the competition and maximize your analytics ROI. In this article, we dive into what those capabilities are and why they matter, then list a few questions to ask to assess vendors’ white label capabilities.
What is White Labeling?
When you white label your embedded analytics, you make your charts, reports, and dashboards look like a seamless part of your software, instead of a third-party plugin. Additionally, entire apps can be white labeled. Relevant Software, an international software development company, writes, “White-label apps are built in such a way that they can be easily branded and customized, allowing you to change colors, logos, and other elements to make them look unique to your brand.”
Relevant outlines an example of a company building a food delivery app that multiple restaurants can customize with their own branding. Each restaurant benefits from going to market quickly with a fully supported solution with minimal investment, while maintaining focus on their core competency of hospitality. Additionally, the software development firm maximizes revenues by providing software to multiple customers.
Why is White Labeling Important?
In, “How to Select an Embedded Analytics Product,” author Wayne Eckerson writes about how BI tools have traditionally been used by only about one-quarter of the average organization. “Embedded analytics changes the equation. By inserting charts, dashboards, and entire authoring and administrative environments inside other applications, embedded analytics empowers business users with insights and dramatically increases BI adoption. The catch is that most business users don’t know they’re ‘using BI’—it’s just part of the application they already use. The best BI tools are invisible.”
White labeling, also often referred to as “customization,” is an important attribute for many BI tools. the Dresner Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study rates vendors using a 33-criteria evaluation model, including “customization and extensibility,” within the category of “quality and usefulness of product.”
The Benefits of White Label Analytics
White labeling increases user adoption and ease of use. With proper white labeling, you can deliver all the functionality of self-service analytics tools in a high-quality experience that fits your brand.
1. Maintain Brand
According to Vendasta, “The key to white labeling products is anonymity… Your brand gets all of the credibility, loyalty, and trust.” As a marketing professional, I’m a little biased on the relative importance of branding and reputation. However, I certainly recognize how vital the user experience is, and to maintain the user experience your dev team built, you must be able to fully white label analytics.
2. Consistent UX without Added Development
Product owners invest significant efforts into developing a user interface that’s easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and visually consistent. To maintain these efforts, embedded capabilities must be able to also maintain that same look and feel. White labeling capabilities affirms these efforts, without the need for your developers to rebuild significant components of the third-party analytics app. Such rebuilding would partially negate the value of purchasing a third party product in the first place.
3. Seamless Integration
You need responsive designs that automatically adapt to different screen sizes. Equally important is the ability for users to customize their experiences to display exactly the types of data they want; in the manner they want to see it. With white label analytics, you can integrate seamlessly, increasing user engagement so your SaaS app becomes sticky as users rely on it.
Why Many Analytics Tools are Difficulty to White Label
Mr. Eckerson writes, “Most BI tools were not designed for embedding; converting a stand-alone, commercial product into one that can be easily embedded in both single- and multi-tenant environments with full fidelity is challenging.”
While many BI tools can embed dashboards and some can embed individual widgets (charts), the functionality fails to meet the needs of SaaS providers. For example, many traditional BI tools rely on iFrames for their embeds. Others that do support JavaScript widgets, may lack customization options.
Choosing The Best White Label Analytics Solution
The ideal embedded analytics solution is built from the ground up with embedding in mind. Many analytics providers claim to have white labeling, but in fact just offer a few different themes and the ability to replace their logo with your own. True white label analytics solutions open up the entire user experience to customization, including colors, fonts, chart and visualization attributes, and much more. By providing granular control, developers can ensure your analytics look perfect in all environments and on all devices.
Effective white labeling also doesn’t interfere with self-service analytic capabilities. Users are still able to fully customize their analytics and dashboards to suit their needs, they just do so within the parameters that you, as the software provider, have defined, ensuring that the look and feel of your software is always maintained.
What Makes an Embedded Analytics Solution Capable of being White Labeled?
A proper embedded analytics solution should provide multiple components that are fully embeddable using JavaScript and avoiding iFrames. Components can include dashboard and chart widgets, dashboard and chart builders, data management, automation rule management. Embedding should include seamless interaction with the different components inside another software or portal.
Anonymity and Invisibility are the Goals
Vendasta, provider of digital marketing solutions, published, “The ultimate guide to white labeling, describing the practice, “White labeling software is like leasing or renting software from a provider branding it as your own.” Vendasta articulated this symbiotic relationship, “White labeling companies want you to succeed. Your success is ultimately their success.”
At Qrvey, we certainly advocate SaaS providers using our embedded analytics, but we also understand that your customers are using your tools. In most cases, they have no idea that the interactive dashboards and reports were built by Qrvey – and that’s exactly as it should be.
Questions to Ask to Assess White Label Capabilities
When evaluating white labeling, Mr. Eckerson advises, “What parts of the user interface can you customize without coding? The best tools let you create a custom graphical interface that blends seamlessly with the host application without developer assistance. The less coding, the quicker the project deploys.
“Here are some questions to ask:
What parts of the tool can you customize without coding?
How do you customize elements that can’t be configured?”
Implementing White Label Analytics
Implementing white label analytics doesn’t have to be a cumbersome process that will slow down your software development or analytics implementation. If you’ve selected a customizable option like Qrvey, your developers can simply use the provided styling tools and white labeling options to match the embedded analytics to your brand and the rest of your application. Once set up initially, most white label settings will not need to be adjusted later on as additional analytics are deployed throughout your software.
Want To Learn More?
Qrvey is the leading all-in-one analytics platform on AWS, offering analytics solutions built for embedded and white labeled use cases. Sign up for a demo today to learn more.
Want To Learn More?
Qrvey is the leading all-in-one analytics platform on AWS, offering analytics solutions that were built from the ground up for embedded and white labeled use cases. Sign up for a demo today to learn more.
