How the ITA turned its data into a 24/7 member intelligence portal

For members of the International Tin Association, getting hold of the right data used to mean sifting through reports or contacting the ITA team and waiting. Now they need only log into the Tin Desk, an online portal with ITA’s full suite of tin market intelligence based on its unique primary data. The difference has been transformative, says the ITA team, and has brought in new audiences.

Now members, investors and other stakeholders can not only see our data, they can search it and interact with it.

“Our portal – the Tin Desk – has been received with delight. We’ve had very positive feedback from members. They used to contact us regularly to locate a specific piece of data for a presentation, which distracted our small team of analysts. But now members, investors and other stakeholders can not only see our data, they can search it and interact with it. Our Tin Desk is literally on their desk.”

So says Dr Jeremy Pearce, Head of Technology and Markets at the ITA, referring to the Association’s portal built on the Content Catalyst platform. 

Realising the potential of ITA’s data

The ITA is the global authority on tin statistics and market information, based on its unique access to information from members, who represent over 70% of global tin production, and its regular primary data gathering from tin users and other industry stakeholders. However, before the portal was created, neither the industry nor the ITA itself were getting the full potential value from this mine of information.

Jeremy explains: “We saw a huge opportunity to represent the tin industry better and extend its reach, and also to step up our revenue significantly, which is important for a small organisation like us. We’re a world authority on the material, we’ve got high quality data, and we saw the potential to become a 24/7 professional market intelligence business.”

We saw the potential to become a 24/7 professional market intelligence business.

The ITA used to email their reports individually to each recipient in PDF format. But when the Association started to develop new products, specifically Power BI dashboards, showing things like how tin is traded around the world, they found they couldn’t deploy them. Members and clients would all need appropriate Microsoft licences, which many did not have. Said Jeremy, “We had these wonderful products but no way to distribute them. We realised we needed a portal.”

Jeremy also noted that the ITA’s data was cropping up in all sorts of places, in consultants’ work and at conferences. “In some ways this is good”, he explained, “we want to support the industry with accessible, high-quality data. But we also want to be credited as the source and build new reveue streams, so we realised we needed to starting thinking about licensing and compliance too.”

To buy or to build?

Initially, the ITA began to build their own platform using a contractor, but soon hit problems implementing the dashboards. They found out about Content Catalyst’s solution. “I realised it was a quantum leap from what we were doing”, said Jeremy. “What we were building would have worked but it would have been basic – a kind of filing system with some e-commerce attached. With the Content Catalyst system, we realised we could deploy the dashboards interactively very nicely in a secure environment which people log into without having a Microsoft licence, which was a big deal for our members.”

I realised it was a quantum leap from what we were doing.

Jeremy worked with the Content Catalyst team to use the platform to create the Tin Desk – an online portal bringing together ITA’s full suite of tin market intelligence based on its unique primary data, including statistical reports, market briefings and interactive dashboards.

The benefits have extended well beyond the ITA’s membership. Jeremy explained, “By putting the platform out there, we started to attract people from all over the world, and for the first time we could see who they were. All kinds of people were registering and logging in. Investors are flocking onto the platform, and so are explorers and developers looking for data to support their work to secure funding for projects. So now we know who is interested and we can engage with them, invite them to conferences and be closer to our industry stakeholders.. The portal has really helped us increase our profile and talk to new communities.”

Content Catalyst helps you transform static research into a dynamic digital experience that increases member engagement. Explore our Spark offering for smaller organisations.