How non-digitised & generic publishing systems prevent growth in analyst firms

Over the years, we’ve seen it all, from entirely manual publishing methods to heavily customised off-the-shelf platforms and internally built solutions. The shortcomings of these methods create common challenges that prevent growth in analyst firms.

Off-the-shelf platforms typically aren’t built for the modern analyst firm and lack the automation and integrations necessary to grow a successful analyst research business.

In-house legacy systems eventually develop complex admin processes with unstable customisations that require dedicated technical support.

Meanwhile, analyst firms persisting with non-digitised processes lack the time and capability to scale beyond the capacity of their team.  

In these instances, analyst firms must focus on keeping the lights on to the detriment of growth activities like innovating products and services.

Here are four common ways off-the-shelf content publishing platforms and non-digitised methods can prevent growth in analyst firms.

It takes too long to publish and distribute research

A typical non-digitised distribution method involves manually emailing PDFs to clients and/or sending log-in links to a shared folder. Time and IP protection are significant challenges for businesses using this method.

A publisher covering the life sciences market who used this approach recalls having to manually check email distribution lists to ensure IP was shared with the correct client. They also had to follow up every email with a call to ensure the large files made it through firewalls.

Furthermore, PDFs were easy to re-share outside of licenses. Locating previously shared files was also difficult, resulting in more queries directed to analysts and account managers.

Email provides instant access to reports but doesn’t facilitate content discovery, as TGaS described in our client case study. The limitations of PDF delivery made it impossible for TGaS to track content usage, and subscribers were less likely to explore their insights portal.

Off-the-shelf systems, not explicitly built for analyst firms, have their own challenges. Generic platforms often don’t cater to the nuances of a research business or integrate well with other systems, meaning they require customisations and workarounds.

Technical teams must prioritise fixes and workarounds over new features

The challenge with off-the-shelf customisations, or internally built platforms, is that they can become difficult to navigate if not designed to scale with content growth. Furthermore, uptime is critical for analyst firms and an unstable system makes meeting the four nines impossible for development teams. That is 99.99% uptime, which is essential for analyst firms. 

A team focused on maintaining an underperforming system or creating workarounds is also less able to focus on developing new features that enhance the subscriber experience.

Before adopting Content Catalyst, Oxford Economics had a high-maintenance content delivery system requiring dedicated support and admin staff to maintain it. Once liberated from repetitive maintenance work, the team could focus on improvements rather than “keeping the lights on or other operational matters”.

Uptime is critical for analyst firms. Acquisitions and integrations further stress a system, negatively impacting performance and overall navigation.

Integrations are either unstable or missing

Software integrations are essential for the modern publishing firm, yet we often meet businesses operating without essential integrations or with poor implementations. Missing or unstable integrations lead to more manual processes and a poor user experience.

For instance, a system managing subscribers in the thousands that’s not integrated with a CRM provides little control over how content is shared. It’s also more challenging to provide subscribers with immediate access to new information they’re entitled to or expand/personalise licenses.

Before working with Content Catalyst, Everest Group needed to conduct multiple manual tasks to give clients access to content within their licenses. They also couldn’t differentiate the access rights granted to individual subscribers from those who purchased single reports and those who accessed complementary content.

Manual processes and off-the-shelf technologies restrict the type of licenses publishers can sell and impact the bottom line.

Restrictive licensing options impact the bottom line

Adjusting or personalising licenses can involve multiple manual steps with non-digitised and off-the-shelf systems. Therefore, it’s simpler to sell broad licenses to large content portfolios.

This lack of flexibility means publishers cannot efficiently cross and up-sell to maximise per-account value, which is essential for revenue growth. Additionally, they cannot easily tailor licenses to individual accounts or subscribers or create pathways from trial to paying clients.

Futuresource Consulting faced this challenge with its adapted off-the-shelf system. They lacked the technical capability to control access to reports in the way they needed to and could only provide broad licenses to large swathes of their portfolio.

Software built with scalability from the start supports growth

In our experience, analyst firms facing the challenge of replacing a failing system consider building a bespoke system in-house at some point. While this may be a viable option for organisations with a specialist in-house software team, remember that no successful airline ever built its own aeroplane.

Analyst firms are unique, but what they need from a content management platform is not. With over 150,000 users of our system, we’ve identified the specialist needs of the research industry.

Benefits for Content Catalyst users include:

• Automation and workflows replace time-consuming manual tasks. Generative AI search gives subscribers a faster and more immersive search experience.
• Integrations with sales and marketing tools, including CRMs like Salesforce and supporting tools, facilitate up and cross-selling.
• Advanced licensing enables flexible licensing models such as trials and personalised packages.
• Content Catalyst is customisable and scalable, supported by development and customer success teams dedicated to maintaining and innovating the platform for the benefit of all clients.

Investing in a scalable and resilient content publishing platform built for the research industry enables analyst firms to innovate operations and enhance the subscriber experience, increasing efficiencies, audience reach, and revenue growth.