White-label Apps Make You An Instant Rockstar!

Speed to market is more important than ever. With the tech curve exponentially accelerating we are all on a rocket ship to the moon, it's hard enough to keep up today and it will be harder to keep up tomorrow. Trying to maintain total control of your digital products by operating on an island is no longer going to cut it. Current customers and future opportunities are fluid and fleeting; you need to get your brand out there, deliver value to your customers, and carve out your digital claim quick. You need to act now! What to do?

It's simple, you can either entrench and custom develop or you can partner. Let's face it, unless your business is very very unusual/unique it makes sense to partner with a tech provider that has the financial backing, larger development team, access to the broader community, and the savvy to keep up with the latest tech trends and styles.

The easiest method, and by far biggest bang for the buck, remains deploying a "white label app" from a SAAS provider that caries your logo/branding and can be configured, within certain parameters, to your requirements. It's win-win; their tech, your brand/config, you're the rockstar!

Upon gathering requirements from your business and synthesizing them into the must-have's and the nice-to-have's, it makes sense to conduct a mini gap analysis against the major white label app players that align with the service that you plan to launch. Don't worry, if you identify some gaps; it's ok. Remember, the biggest part of choosing a white label app from a SAAS provider is the company behind the solution.

While there will certainly be some identified gaps, are any of them large enough to entice you back to going-it-alone via in-house or outsourced dev? Also, keep in mind the value of being one of many. It may seem contradictory to your instinct, but when it comes to tech; it almost always makes sense to operate on a platform where many other customers are constantly making demands for new features as well. While you operate in the present with some insight into the future, others are doing the same, and by being on a joint platform you can benefit from the great features that others request that you didn't think of.

One of the greatest instant success stories for me was the selection and deployment of DoubleDutch; a very progressive white label and SAAS player in the events app space. While it was enticing to develop a custom app to drive the ULI Events app globally, it would have been the wrong move. The pace of change in the events space is staggering; with infinite upside to drive more value to attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors it would have been all but impossible to move at the speed of the market without partnering. Don't go-it-alone, partner instead; be an instant rockstar!