White-label HR software: people reports under your own brand
By Deibson Silva · Reviewed on
White-label HR software lets a consultancy deliver people reports, questionnaires and the platform itself under its own logo and domain, without building the technology. Before you sign up, check what carries your brand, how each client company's data is kept apart and who is named as controller to the people being assessed.
What is white-label in a people consultancy?
It means working with a provider's technology and presenting it under your identity. Your client opens a platform with your name on it, their people answer a questionnaire with your logo and the report they receive carries your brand.
For a people and HR consultancy there is a practical reason. The client hires you for your judgement, and a deliverable under another brand makes them wonder who is doing the work. And building an assessment instrument of your own takes years.
White-label changes the presentation. The method, the instrument and the infrastructure still belong to the provider, and your job is to be able to explain them.
What should carry your brand, and what should you check?
Ask to see it item by item, with your logo in place, before you sign. The table sums up what to look at in each.
| Item | What your client sees | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Individual and team reports | Your logo and name on every page | That the person assessed can receive and understand their report |
| Questionnaires | Your brand on the invitation and on the answer screen | That they say who is handling the data and why |
| Platform | Your domain in the address bar | That each client company only gets into its own space |
| Automatic messages | The sender of invitations and reminders | Which address they come from and whether you can edit the text |
| Method and instrument | The basis of what you measure | That you can explain what it rests on, without claiming it as yours |
| Privacy information | The controller and the recipients of the data | That it matches what you signed with your client |
Does white-label mean hiding the provider?
Not from anyone entitled to know. Article 13 of the GDPR requires you to tell each person, at the time their data is collected, the identity of the controller, the purposes and the recipients or categories of recipients.
Not from your client either. Article 28(2) stops a processor engaging another processor without the controller's prior written authorisation. The company that hires you has to know which providers will handle its staff's data, and accept it.
What the brand settles is the presentation. Who answers for the data is settled by the contract. The GDPR calls controller whoever determines the purposes and means of the processing, and processor whoever handles data on another's behalf. Put in writing with your client which role each party has in the project, and ask the platform for its processing agreement and its list of sub-processors.
The Spanish data protection authority's guidelines for these contracts give one section to subcontracting and another to what happens to the data when the service ends. Those are the two a consultancy should read first.
How is each client company's data kept apart?
Each client needs its own space. That is what lets you look after ten companies from one panel without any of them seeing anything of another, and give access to someone at the client without exposing the rest.
Check three things in the demonstration. That when you sign in with one client's profile, no other client appears. That you decide which modules each company uses. And that group results have a minimum number of responses, because in a small client a group of three people stops being anonymous.
Ask too who in your own team can see what. A consultancy with several consultants needs each of them to get into the clients they look after, and no others.
What changes in how you sell and deliver?
You stop selling loose hours and start selling a service with a shape: a map of the management team's profiles, a culture analysis by area, a calibrated 9-box grid with its succession plan.
The report under your brand is where your work begins. Your value lies in the reading you do with senior management and in the plan that comes out of it. A consultancy that hands over the report and says goodbye competes with anyone who has the same tool.
The relationship with the client changes as well. Performance cycles, pulse surveys and the annual succession review come round again, and that turns a one-off project into ongoing support.
What should you ask before you sign?
These questions spare you surprises on the first project.
Which plans include own branding, and in which is it a paid add-on? Can I use my own domain? How many client companies can I set up? Who supports my client if something fails, you or me? Which functions use artificial intelligence, and who checks what they propose?
Add two about leaving. What happens to my clients' data if I leave the platform? Article 28(3)(g) of the GDPR obliges the processor to delete or return it, at the controller's choice, and the contract should say how. And what happens to reports already delivered: do they stay accessible?
And one about documentation. Personality and behaviour profiles fall under the first criterion on the Spanish authority's list of processing that may call for an impact assessment. Ask what material the platform provides so that your client can carry it out.
Which mistakes should you avoid?
Presenting the instrument as your own creation. If a client asks what the profile is based on, the honest answer is that you use a specialist platform and know its method.
Promising business results. A profile report or a culture map gives information for deciding; what happens next depends on what senior management does with it.
Putting several clients in one space to go faster. The time gained is lost the first time someone sees data that is not theirs.
Leaving it undecided who replies when a person assessed asks for access to their data. Settle it with your client before the first questionnaire goes out.
Which plans include own branding?
It depends on the provider. Some include it only in their higher plans and others sell it separately. Check whether the price is published and whether the branding covers reports, questionnaires and the platform, or only part of that.
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Frequently asked questions
- Can I put my logo on the reports if I work on my own?
- Yes. At iPersonality own branding is included in the Practitioner Enterprise plan and can be added as an add-on to the other Practitioner plans.
- Will my client know which platform I use?
- They should. Article 28(2) of the GDPR stops a processor engaging another without the controller's prior written authorisation, and Article 13 requires each person to be told the recipients of their data or their categories.
- Can I use my own domain?
- At iPersonality, yes: the platform your client uses runs on your domain in the plans that include own branding.
- How many client companies can I look after?
- On the iPersonality Consultancy plan there is no limit on client companies in any of the three plans. Each has its own space inside your panel.
- Who decides about each person assessed?
- A person at the client company. The platform and your report bring data and criteria; the decision to hire, move someone up or prepare them is never handed to a tool.