Going Global: why market analysis firms are leveraging translation services to scale global reach

Translation tools have evolved to such an extent that they are unrecognisable compared to early iterations – they pose a huge opportunity for analyst firms looking to scale and grow their international reach.

The evolution of translation tools

Early iterations of digital translation tools were notoriously unreliable. Overly literal interpretations, an inability to contextualise phrases, and inaccurate representations of complicated tenses and sentences were the norm.

Today, the huge strides made in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) fields have transformed the quality of translation tools. Tech giants, including Meta, Google and Amazon to name just a few are pouring huge R&D budgets into developing comprehensive, reliable translation tools. They are highly accurate, can quickly generate translations, and easily integrate into content delivery systems.

These tools are now far better at identifying:

Context – the relationship between words, not just the individual terms.
Tone/style – these tools can distinguish between different styles i.e. formal or informal and translate text accordingly.
Cultural signposts – NLP systems have a greater understanding of the cultural and societal relevance of words and adjust translation to fit with these considerations.

The nature of NLP/AI development means that these tools will become ever more authentic, culturally aware, and accurate with time. As these systems are exposed to more data, the better they become.

This new generation of translation services presents an opportunity for market analysis firms looking to scale their global reach and strengthen client relationships.

Distributed Teams, Global Audience

Digital audiences today are truly global. Enterprise teams are no longer confined to narrow geographic regions and analyst teams must accommodate this new reality. While one enterprise account may be headquartered in an English-speaking city, such as New York or London, they likely have teams distributed in other major non-English-speaking cities, such as Tokyo, Paris, or Rome.

These teams may know the language spoken at company HQ but likely feel more comfortable reading a complex, nuanced report in their first language. Providing translation as part of your content delivery service increases the value of your offering to the whole account, not just those based in your linguistic area.

As workplaces become increasingly distributed, positioning your organisation as a global analyst firm keeps your organisation up to speed and opens your research up to a broader market. Greater linguistic inclusivity strengthens relationships with existing subscribers and attracts new users to access and consume your content.

Translation in a Report — An excerpt from a translated report in the Publish Interactive platform

Internationally renowned analyst team

Machine learning translation tools allow your analysts to be truly international in their reach. No longer restricted by linguistic boundaries, their analysis can reach beyond the confines of their first language and be read by information consumers around the world.

In the era of flat PDF delivery, international reach was not easily possible. Now, digital publishing platforms are enabling this change with their dynamic format compatibility and interactive functionality.

Not only does it render content more accessible, but your analysts can communicate and answer questions from customers around the world. Interactions with a broader audience open up the possibility of consulting projects, sales of new products and other revenue-generating opportunities that, in turn, grow per-account value.

Growing per-account value is essential for analyst firms looking to scale. After all, it costs up to 5x more to acquire a customer than retain an existing one. Offering additional membership services not only increases the value of your content, but also the perceived value of your company as an entity among your subscribers. Once customers realise the unique value you provide, you will see increased ROI, less subscriber churn, and fewer commercial overheads.

Translation tools already bringing success to global analyst firms

Content Catalyst clients are already utilising translation tools to improve content engagement and scale global reach.

Oxford Economics, a leading economic forecast provider, has a global audience and workforce. One of the unique selling points of their service is their international economist presence: their analysts are stationed around the world and provide hyper-specific economic coverage on over 8,000 cities and regions.

“For the first time, at the click of a button, clients can see a report in their chosen language – that was a big step forward”, comments Oxford Economics’ Chief Information Officer, Ben Nicaudie, on the impact translation tools have had on their international subscriber base who access the firm’s Publish Interactive-powered My Oxford subscriber portal. Improving linguistic accessibility was crucial for an organisation as global as Oxford Economics and planned development work will enhance the feature further, including the generation of email notifications in a client’s chosen language.

In-platform translation tools have transformed the My Oxford end-user experience and provide the framework for Oxford Economics to grow and scale its global reach.

Scale your analyst business with translation tools

Translation tools are now too easy to incorporate into your content delivery platform and too accurate to ignore.

Implementing AI or NLP-generated translation tools provides the foundation to scale your international reach, grow per-account value (PAV), and generate additional revenues.

Today’s information consumers are truly global and distributed. Remove linguistic barriers, which prevent a massive segment of your potential audience from reading your content in their first language and watch your market analysis business grow.

For more ideas on how to scale your market analysis business with publishing technology, download ‘The Future Market Analyst’ here.

21 February 202321 February 2023

Facilitating Growth: How Oxford Economics leverage Publish Interactive to scale content production and expand its global reach

Leading economic research firm Oxford Economics chose to partner with Content Catalyst and adopt Publish Interactive – its leading content delivery and subscriber management platform – to power the My Oxford portal. A global client base of cross-industry corporate entities now use the Publish Interactive-powered My Oxford portal to access subscription content and consulting deliverables.

Oxford Economics is the world’s foremost independent economic advisory firm. Starting as a commercial venture with Oxford University’s business college back in 1981, the firm soon spread to the four corners of the globe. Now covering over 200 countries, over 100 industrial sectors and 8,000 cities and regions, their international team of analysts deliver insights that enable businesses to make intelligent and responsible decisions faster.

Realigning organisational focus

To facilitate its wide-ranging coverage of international economic markets and ambitious growth targets, Oxford Economics needed a dependable, scalable content delivery solution to power the My Oxford insights portal.

Since the launch of the updated My Oxford portal, which, Ben Nicaudie, Chief Information Officer at Oxford Economics, described as the “smoothest deployment at this scale they [Oxford Economics] had seen”, the organisation has realigned focus back to its core principles: delivering exceptional economic insights and an innovative user experience for their over 2,500-strong worldwide client base, which includes household names like IBM, Visa, and Airbnb.

The solid foundation provided by the Publish Interactive platform enables efficient publishing workflow processes and reduces the previously heavy burden of website maintenance and general IT support on Oxford Economics’ development team. The firm now has a reliable, scalable technical infrastructure and more time to focus on innovative product development initiatives.

The My Oxford homepage – powered by Publish Interactive

“No longer focused on keeping the lights on”

Before adopting Publish Interactive, Oxford Economics had a high-maintenance content delivery system. Ben oversaw the launch of the new platform and explains how his team no longer require “dedicated support and admin staff to maintain the platform.” This new-found freedom from the shackles of repetitive maintenance work allowed his team to “spend a lot more time improving things as we’re not focused on keeping the lights on or other operational matters.”

For instance, updating content and their vast array of verticals was time-intensive. Oxford Economics provide analysis on a far more specified basis than their competitors and the new platform now helps them “achieve this coverage from a technical perspective.” Newly created verticals, including a ‘Global Climate Scenarios’ category, are configured quickly and easily, enabling Oxford Economics to scale its content offering.

In addition to the benefits of a more focused development team, Publish Interactive facilitates better connectivity across the business. With two key arms to their business: subscription content and consulting projects, the company previously experienced a degree of disconnect. “One of the success stories from the partnership has been our ability to integrate both sides of the business into one platform through the API connectivity,” says Ben.

A deep integration with Salesforce strengthened interconnectivity further. Linking the commercial operations of the organisation more closely with the research arm enabled all users, licenses, and purchases to be managed via the CRM.

Transformative HTML Content

Aside from improved organisational processes, “one of the biggest selling points was the ability to move to HTML”, asserts Ben. Oxford Economics’ emphasis on HTML content output hosted through Publish Interactive’s Interactive Docs feature, sets them apart from other market analysis firms publishing content in PowerPoint or static PDF format.

Leveraging an intelligent piece of custom development, Ben’s team developed a simpler process for authoring HTML documents and adding metadata direct from Word. This process has been well received by analysts and “switching to HTML has given a fresh, modernised look for all of our content – in fact, the ability to fully automate things like compendium reports has given us a new lease of life,” comments Ben.

This new lease of life benefits both analysts and Oxford Economics’ subscribers.

For analysts, automation has “saved a lot of time in the content production phase and allowed analyst teams to get more content out than before.” Ben has noticed the most significant benefits of automation with Oxford Economics’ data-driven ‘Cities’ content. The previous system converted analysts’ Excel worksheets into PDF format with no scope to deliver content as HTML or to include interactive data. Now, only one template is needed – leading to “virtually zero” tickets for IT support.

For subscribers, the HTML reading experience is far more engaging: “clients can now interact with the data and content to a much higher degree,” explains Ben. Given the complexity of Oxford Economics’ datasets and the prominence of data forecasts in their content, interactivity is a must. End-users can also compile pertinent sections of the content and export custom reports to the Microsoft Office suite.

“Switching to HTML has given a fresh, modernised look for all of our content – in fact, the ability to fully automate things like compendium reports has given us a new lease of life.”

Ben Nicaudie
Chief Information Officer
Oxford Economics

End-users are reaping the rewards

It’s not only increased interactivity that has improved the end-user reading experience, but also two key in-platform content engagement tools: search and translation.

Ben discusses a common headache for market analysis providers associated with building content delivery systems in-house: subscribers cannot always find the information they need in ways they expect. He admits that “it seems silly because we all just expect search to work but it is a very complex, technical area and getting it right is really difficult”. The firm previously worked with third-party organisations to hone and optimise their search system but to no avail; search returns were often “too smart” and came back with unintuitive results. Not the outcome an organisation with a content catalogue of over 50,000 technical, complex research products was hoping for.

“We used to get complaints from clients and from people internally that search was not functioning properly”, explains Ben, “but that’s completely gone away now.”

Given Oxford Economics’ global audience and workforce, in-platform translation tools have transformed engagement with content. “For the first time, clients can see a report in their chosen language – that was a big step forward,” comments Ben, who says further enhancements will follow, including the generation of email notifications in a client’s chosen language.

An innovation facilitator

Since the implementation of Publish Interactive, instead of dealing with support tickets, site maintenance issues, and complex publishing workflow processes the organisation is focused on what it does best: creating high-quality economic research and delivering a boundary-pushing reading experience for its international clientele.

Ben has ambitious plans for the My Oxford portal. Noticing the growing proliferation of AI-based technologies, he discusses his plans to train AI chatbots to improve accessibility of content using advanced natural language models. These intelligent bots will help answer client queries about content, further reducing the workload on account managers and analysts who no longer have to spend their time fielding simple subscriber questions. The shift from PDF to HTML-published content has facilitated this development. Content is now formulaically structured in the production phase, meaning AI can pinpoint recurring elements in each document and answer questions about specific sections of the document. This will “give us a huge advantage going forward”, explains Ben.

Leveraging the dependable infrastructure the Publish Interactive platform provides, Oxford Economics now has a strong environment in which to scale. No longer shackled by inefficient workflow processes, high-maintenance tech, and inflexible content formats, their international team of expert economists, developers, and commercial personnel can continue to forge the organisation’s innovative path.

“Having all the content in one place gives us the platform to make changes and we’ll be on that journey together with Content Catalyst as a managed service provider,” summarised Ben.

17 January 202318 January 2023

The Future Market Analyst: Six ways publishing technology equips analyst teams for future success

Download this whitepaper to discover the six ways digital publishing technology brings analysts closer to end-users and supports market insight providers as they keep pace with changing consumer expectations

Read the whitepaper now

Understand how to free your analysts from mundane tasks and arm them with the tools to help your organisation keep pace with ever-changing consumer expectations today.

According to McKinsey & Company, “COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point – and transformed businesses forever.” Their research shows that COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of digital technology by several years with distributed teams, remote working, and changes in employees’ perceptions of work-life balance forcing companies to adapt to new workplace trends.

Approaching three years since the start of the pandemic, these changes are undoubtedly here to stay.

Pandemic-fuelled advances in the quality, proliferation and accessibility of digital services have changed consumer expectations. We’ve now come to expect the same ease of use, convenience, and speed of service from all digital services, including from market analysis providers.

The Future Market Analyst explores why analyst firms must embrace digital publishing technology if they are to keep pace and meet the needs of the businesses they serve.

Access your copy of the whitepaper today and begin unleashing the potential of your analyst teams.

4 The pandemic has changed businesses forever

6 Breakaway from restrictive PDFs

8 Provide trusted, on-demand information for time-poor customers

10 Reclaim your most valuable assets – your analysts

12 Keep analysts informed on valuable topics

15 Make knowledge-sharing more efficient

16 Deliver research to a global audience with translation tools

17 What next?

Front Cover

Figures

Figure 1: Most effective sources of market intelligence for strategic decision-making

Figure 2: The shift from one-off reports sales to recurring revenue

Figure 3: The time and financial cost of manual re-formatting

Figure 4: How long does market analysis retain value for?

Figure 5: Maximise the value of your research through smarter updates

Figure 6: Example analyst activities that can grow per-account value

3 June 20213 November 2021

How B2B publishers use software integrations to enhance customer experience

Integrations are essential for B2B publishers wanting to deliver information to their subscribers in a timely, coherent manner.

How do we define integration? Fundamentally, it is the process of bringing together two pieces of software into a single, holistic system to solve issues with siloed data and isolated platforms.

It is a process present in almost all digital platforms, websites, and applications – and the world of B2B publishing is, of course, no exception.

For publishers, the rewards associated with 3rd party (often SaaS) integrations include richer engagement and simpler interactions with subscribers, a seamless user journey between platforms and the streamlining of authoring, editorial and commercial processes. Essentially, it is a process designed to enhance the quality and usability of a publisher’s digital offering and make life easier for both the publisher and their subscribers.

But in practice, what integrations can B2B publishers implement and in what ways can these enrich the customer experience and meet business goals?

Phased approach

The simplest, quickest, and most cost-effective form of integration is the addition of a link or button that connects a publisher’s marketing website to their research library and gives customers access to the informative content, intuitive workflow tools and interactive features available in their portal.

The flexibility of integration affords the option of quickly launching a content portal with a simple integration. Later, connections with the marketing website can be deepened as business conditions permit.

These deeper connections include integrations with CRM systems, eCommerce plugins, analytics dashboards, and marketing automation software, which, if done right, will work together to create a frictionless, seamless reading experience for the end-user and an intuitive administrative process for the publisher.

Mark Chadwick, Product Manager at Publish Interactive elaborates, “Integrations help to remove time-consuming manual tasks that often cause a delay in users getting the information they need. For example, an integration that automatically applies a license to a report or subscription as the customer makes a purchase means the customer can access the data and insights straight away. Or, if usage data is integrated into a CRM account, managers can understand a customer’s engagement level, without having to look elsewhere”.

One customer that successfully integrated its CRM system with Publish Interactive is Everest Group. The IT and engineering services research firm seamlessly integrates with Salesforce to ensure individual users were provided with relevant content access in an efficient manner.

Open, easily navigable content

Implementing a cohesive suite of software integrations also provides a flexible content delivery framework for both the end-user and the publisher.

For example, deeper integration between the marketing and content delivery platforms enables users to search for content on either site. Depending on the publisher requirements, the search functionality can then either direct users to product landing pages on their content portal or to product pages on their website. Metadata for individual products can be stored on a secured content platform and extracted with an API to populate product pages on an SEO-optimised marketing website.

“Integrations help to remove time-consuming manual tasks that often cause a delay in users getting the information they need.”

Mark Chadwick

Product Owner at Publish Interactive

Publishers can also provide access to their research library without the need for registration. Gated, premium content can be created and uploaded within a framework for those without a subscription so prospective customers can understand the depth and complexity of the publisher’s offering. This open site model gives publishers two options: allow new users to search first then ask for registration once they have found relevant content available for purchase or take prospective customers to their registration page prior to enabling search.

If CRM or eCommerce systems are integrated into this process, the user journey from an initial website visit with limited access to ‘freemium’ content to a fully-fledged subscriber should be a seamless one without the need for either sales personnel or account managers to manually grant access to these new users.

This flexibility creates fluidity between these integrated platforms, allowing publishers to test different content delivery processes and decide on the most suitable one for their business needs.

SSO access

As users move between these two interconnected platforms, there must be an integrated, unified identification tool ensuring users are securely and seamlessly travelling between the two sites.

Single sign-on (SSO) is a user authentication service that enables customers to access related, yet still independent web applications using just one set of login credentials and allows for frictionless navigation across an organisation’s digital offering. If a publisher has more than one website, or already uses a CRM system as the single point of customer truth, then SSO is recommended.

Tom Gibbs, Director of Operations at Publish Interactive expands on this point: “SSO ensures ease of access, whilst Publish Interactive’s extensive suite of APIs allow publishers to create, manage, market and provision content through specialist CRMs, marketing automation platforms and CMS”.

The key benefits of integration:

Branding continuity across all online assets
Cross and upsell opportunities within the platform
A seamless user journey across websites
A platform for premium content
Quick and simple functionality for new content
Offers a phased development approach

Examples of Publish Interactive’s API integrations

INTEGRATION WITH	OBJECTIVE	ILLUSTRATIVE BENEFITS	EXAMPLE 3RD PARTY INTEGRATION
EDITORIAL & RESEARCH
Survey data	Display survey data & charts alongside textual analysis.	Diversify content offering	Marketsight
Content Management System	Easily manage, access, & publish web-based content.	Streamline the authoring, production and editorial workflow	Kentico
MANAGEMENT/IT
Login systems	Provide a seamless user journey between different platforms.	Enhance the user experience	Okta
Analytics Dashboards	Track content usage.	Understand subscriber usage Data-driven planning of future publications	Google Analytics
MARKETING & SALES
eCommerce	Allow customers to make purchases of reports or datasets without having to contact a salesperson or account manager.	Increase new business opportunities	Wordpress
CRM system	Enable sales & account management teams to manage customer access.	Manage subscriber licensing Work on upsell / cross sell opportunities	Hubspot Salesforce
Marketing	Automate marketing operations & connect with existing marketing site.	Promote published content Drive new business opportunities	Marketo

14 January 202127 September 2021

Build or buy? Why in-house development of B2B publishing platforms rarely meets expectations

One of the key questions for B2B publishers is whether to build proprietary content platforms in-house or work with an experienced supplier. Edwin Bailey, Director of Marketing, assesses the risks associated of in-house development versus outsourcing.

In a competitive digital marketplace, efficiency is king. The right publishing solution is about timely access to authoritative research, data, and analysis to ensure that, as a research or an analysis firm, you’ve got the winning edge.

Add the invaluable ingredient of high-quality content as well as a suite of intuitive, user-friendly tools for simple and quick interactions, and that edge grows further still.

However, the critical question is, do you develop in-house or outsource? With so many variables to consider, we explore why building a proprietary system might not offer a feasible solution for anyone looking to gain competitive advantage.

The C Factor

Perhaps the biggest factor of all is cost. A publishing platform – in-house or otherwise – is in continual development, so surely removing the burden of developing a proprietary system while trying to constantly keep pace with the rapid progression of technology is a no-brainer?

Outsourcing not only removes initial capital expenditure and externalises the costs associated with development risks, updates, and over-runs but also ensures the availability of best quality technology at a fixed price. Outsourcing also paves the way for cost certainty, accurate budgeting, and the freeing-up of capital for use on other opportunities.

Streamline

In short: focus on what you’re good at. As a research or an analysis organisation, use your resources wisely and do not sway from your core competencies. Running a large internal development team solely for your publishing platform is, let’s face it, a costly distraction from your main business.

Outsourcing your publishing platform also offers you the flexibility and agility to respond to critical opportunities.

“It doesn’t matter how good your content is – if technology compromises its ease of access, both customer experience and competitive edge will dissipate.”

Time to market

Building a bespoke in-house system to match your business’ exact requirements and customers’ expectations is a bit like the holy grail. For one, your end-users may already be familiar with high-quality publishing platforms used by other providers and the high benchmark is therefore already set. In short, you are setting yourself up for a fall, perpetually stuck in development hell with technology that is fast becoming outdated.

‘Basic’ in-house amendments could routinely take four to six months and all those coding ‘tweaks’ will become increasingly difficult to manage, allowing your competitors to eclipse you. Any system that can’t rapidly implement new features made necessary by the wider technological ecosystem will quickly become obsolete.

This level of development and creativity demands big responsibility – as is managing the constant investment needed to fund the enterprise. Does your firm have the time and energy for this?

An outsourced solution will reduce implementation time and ensure industry-leading user and publisher experiences, as well as allowing research and analysis firms to publish reports quickly and easily.

And it doesn’t matter how good your content is – if technology compromises its ease of access, both customer experience and competitive edge will dissipate. A research or analysis firm’s platform should enhance content, as well as make it easy to find, understand and export in various user-friendly ways.

Sales impact

Creating a system that can actively help publishers improve sales can take years of development. Content Catalyst has been developing its content platform, Publish Interactive, for more than 12 years to the point where new partners can see tangible sales benefits within weeks. How long would that take if they were developing their own systems? The time frames are incomparable.

Furthermore, a publisher’s entire portfolio is also made instantly available, enabling researchers to find required information quickly and easily, leading to greater and prolonged use. Content analysis can help firms quickly identify popular content with great revenue potential, pinpoint any content gaps, and target content at specific users. Upselling and cross-selling opportunities are also enhanced, including the encouragement of ad-hoc buyers to become subscribers.

Freedom to thrive

Business information providers should ask themselves: do they want to invest time, money, energy, and focus equipping themselves with technology for tomorrow, or should they leave those tasks to the experts and concentrate on making their research the best it can be?

For further information, access our guide to choosing a publishing system:

Choosing the right research publishing software

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Best Practice

The 5 phases needed to launch an industry-leading research delivery platform

Best Practice

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Thought Leadership

Video content: 5 actionable use cases for modern market analysis providers

20 May 202016 March 2022

Choosing the right research publishing platform: A practical guide to selecting the best content platform

A practical guide to selecting the best content platform

Introducing the FAVER methodology

Have you ever wondered how the most successful companies ensure they choose the right supplier for their business?

Email me the handbook

Choosing a new software provider is a challenge for any organisation. There are multiple considerations to make around business objectives, functionality, security and cost.

Picking the right solution for your company is a complex process and will involve much consideration and many team members. At Content Catalyst we have helped hundreds of publishing professionals solve this challenge. We have been supplying software to market analyst firms and research publishers for over 16 years. Without being too boastful – we like to think of ourselves as experts!

We have complied our knowledge and expertise in publishing systems (at last count we had over 100 years’ experience!) and put together an essential 22-page guide to help publishers make wise choices. We have even designed a lightweight methodology called FAVER to help you lay the groundwork needed to switch to a new software supplier.

The guide is packed with useful advice from those on the sharp end of system deployment. By downloading and reading this guide you will be able:

Better manage your supplier identification project,
Specify the business objectives driving new system adoption
Ensure you have considered how to manage your customers’ experience,
Understand the resource needed to transition to a new system; and,
Use our handy checklist to track progress of your decision-making process.

By reading the guide we guarantee you will be much better prepared to tackle the process of finding a supplier and will be able to confidently reach a purchasing decision.

Overview
Who this guide is for
How to use this guide

Stage I: Needs & Planning
Why switch?
Success expectations
Team and stakeholders
Your customers’ experience
Workflow practices
Stage I: Recap

Stage II: System Specifications
Essential functionality
Your content
Search
Branding and white labelling
Access to information
Analytics
Integrations and APIs
Technical and security requirements
Stage II: Recap

Stage III: Supplier Selection
Maximising a demonstration
Cultural fit & experience
Time and resource
Training
Price and ongoing costs
Negotiating the contract
Contract length
Cancellation
Payment terms
Contract terms
Launch plan Stage III: Recap

Checklist
FAVER methodology checklist

About Content Catalyst Ltd

19 May 202021 September 2021

How business information publishers should plan for business post-Coronavirus

We explore six areas that management should focus on to ensure continuity and growth during the Covid era

Government responses to the Coronavirus pandemic are having a terrible impact on economic activity. Fortunately, unlike travel or hospitality, the B2B publishing sector is not in the immediate front line of the fallouts from government lockdowns. That said, as the economy rapidly weakens and confidence falls, there will be a longer-term impact on the sector and revenues will be bitten into.

Apart from live events, which are currently either cancelled or postponed to a future ‘normal’, not all is doom and gloom for publishers of high-value B2B information and data products. Aggregated visitor data to our publisher customers content platforms is showing no significant change in numbers since the crisis began. Perhaps we can conclude from this data that our publishers’ content and data (which covers many industries) is still valuable and needed by their corporate customers.

Further encouraging signals came from a recent survey by B2B media subscription consultancy Substribe, which indicated that over 80% of B2B publishers have seen an increase in customer engagement since mid-March. However, despite this robust percentage, only 40% are confident about growth from their subscriptions. Perhaps the survey question was incorrectly phrased – who apart from grocery stores and video conference tech providers are expecting growth?

So, what should B2B publishers and business information providers be doing to ensure they survive this economic crisis and come out the other side fitter and ready to take advantage of opportunities? I suggest six actions that all publishers should be considering right now.

1. Intensify focus on retaining your customers.

The old adage for choosing property (and name of a popular English television house hunting programme), location, location, location could be matched in the publishing world by retention, retention, retention. The winners will be companies that retain their customers through this crisis. Until now, churn is a way of life for subscription businesses. Acquiring new customers is going to be harder and unlikely to replace lost revenue. Think about it this way – zero churn is great for the bottom line because you are not having to replace lost revenue to stand still.

Holding onto a customer who is paying half of what they were pre-crisis is better than loosing them completely. So be nice, be smart and be proactive.

2. Understand the value of your content

As a first-year marketing student will tell you, value is not the same as price. In the intangible world of content and data the value of product is often very much in the eye of the beholder. Your data might be robust and your analysts’ opinion well regarded but understanding why your customers buy your product and what tasks they use it for is not easy. Start off by asking straight up why your customer values the content. Additionally, use analytics to see which content is being used. Be careful with popular content versus valuable content. Some subjects are popular (like articles on Tesla’s Elon Musk’s latest indiscretions!) but not necessarily useful in your customers’ tasks. In this crisis companies are looking for support to help with forecasting, understanding how competitors are responding and looking for competitive advantage to survive. It is important to convey that you are the trusted guide through this crisis in your messaging.

3. Invest in delivery platforms

The sudden move to homeworking has made access to paid content and data through the user’s browser an imperative. Companies still relying on terminals or IP-specific access will have to change. We live in an access-anywhere at anytime world and self-service content delivery platforms are a must.

In many cases your customers are performing tasks with your content and data. Will the “Zoom factor” change the way B2B information is packaged? Ask how you can help with their tasks and workflow and where they take place. This may open internal conversations about how the actual delivery of content could be improved.

4. Diversify your portfolio

Although virtually no sector is going to be left unscathed by the economic fallout from Coronavirus containment measures, some sectors are more badly affected than others. , while others such as transport or construction could suffer as companies in those sectors lose confidence and shed staff. Some information formats are suffering such as live events which are decimated, and advertising-driven publications are seeing sharp downturns. But, other forms such as news, market forecasts (however sketchy!) and peer advice are seeing upticks in engagement and readership.

This begs the following questions for a publishing company’s management. Should they:

Specialise heavily in one sector or publish across industry verticals?
Offer a range of formats with different type of revenue streams? and,
Look to repackage their content for a different audience?

However, whatever the sector or format, I believe the companies that will prosper are those that have a range of offers, solid subscription revenues and, above all, are trusted and valued by their customers.

5. Accelerate product innovation

Anecdotally the crisis is accelerating the pace of innovation and change in companies. Decision making is quicker and projects that were scheduled to take months are now being completed in weeks. Whether this ‘war footing’ can continue indefinitely remains to be seen, but creativity will become increasingly essential in finding ways to adapt. Companies with high exposure in the live events sector or from advertising revenue will want to quickly rethink the future of their offer. Some ideas I have heard floated could include:

Develop a freemium-type model to drive readership in the hope that a profitable percentage can be converted into customers when the economy recovers. For example, a regular, (sector specific) update summarising Coronavirus related news
Repurpose old IP (after all its creation is a sunk cost) into a new product. This idea has relevance for conference companies who might have stacks of old presentations.
There is a real sense that people are ‘lonely’ in business and want to be connected to those having similar experiences. Can this desire for social connectivity and community within the business world be an opportunity?
Look how to double-down on subscription revenues. Can you communicate more value or transition to a membership model with a more personalised offer?
Repackage content and sell at a different price bracket of to a different audience.

6. Prepare for a downturn and change in working patterns

Preparing for an economic downturn is gloomy but also pragmatic. Many sectors are and will experience a slump as the economy goes into recession. Instead of hoping that things will go back to normal (bit vague – what is normal?) all companies must prepare themselves for leaner times. Publishers will be exposed to the vagaries of their customers’ spend and will need to regularly reforecast, find efficiencies and reduce overheads. Additionally, in the short-to-medium term working patterns for staff will change with more homeworking and less face-to-face contact, which will change daily operations. On this point the future is unknown, but the successful companies will be those that develop new approaches rather than reacting with short-term solutions.

Looking to the future

In summary, I think the publishers and B2B info companies that will come through this crisis in good shape are those that work hard to:

Build personal relationships with their key customers and empathises with their needs,
Communicate the value of their product and reinforce why the content and data is trustworthy,
Deliver products that help the users complete a task (particularly important as so many are working remotely),
Develop a diversified product portfolio, by sector, usage and audience, and,
Think creatively about how to turn a crisis into an opportunity.

The cliched saying that we are living in unprecedented times is of course a truism. We are living in challenging times and are having to rapidly change the way we work. Publishers which will be most successful are those that adapt to this huge challenge facing humanity – a new challenge for everyone involved.

1 January 202027 September 2021

7 key trends for B2B research publishers in 2020

To mark the end of one decade and in anticipation of the next (is it really 20 years since the Millennium!) we have highlighted trends that are likely to shape high-value business-to-business research publishing over the next 12 months and beyond.

Our seven trends that forward-thinking research publishers should consider as we move into 2020 are…

#1 Continued emphasis on subscriptions

Publishers will continue to try and persuade low value customers to become subscribers that provide recurring revenues. There are multiple routes to this goal, including the development of membership programmes with dynamic pricing, or planning an upgrade path from first interaction to fully-fledged high-value customer.

Technology enables this process to run more smoothly by personalising the user journey and establishing a upsell mechanism that encourages single copy customers to develop a deeper relationship with the publisher.

#2 The customer at the heart of decisions

The next 12 months will see greater emphasis on customer centricity and developing this mindset across the organisation. This will mean publishers spending as much time as possible with their customers to really understand the value they provide.

Customer centricity isn’t just about cementing external relationships: product teams will be working alongside customer-facing teams to ensure products are on point. We anticipate that those in customer-facing roles, such as sales, should become more involved in product design and development.

#3 Embedding interactive data

We expect publishers to really start tackling the technical challenge of how to allow users secure and seamless access to different content types. Specifically, we are thinking about how interactive data can be made securely available alongside written analysis – or embedded within.

By making use of single sign-on systems and/or technical integrations, users can be provided with access to the specific content they need even more quickly and easily.

#4 Making use of accessible AI

In 2020 artificial intelligence and the computing power needed to run advanced algorithms will become more accessible than ever before.

Publishers will have the potential to develop search that understands what is contained in a piece of content and the nature of its relationship to other content types. Deepening the quality of search can help users cut through content noise to specific information that answers their questions.

#5 Shortening time-to-publish workflows

Customers of syndicated market research will increasingly demand more timely data and insight. This puts pressure on publishers to reduce the time spent developing, producing and publishing content. A digital-first workflow – enter-once-distribute-anywhere – will be the goal.

In 2020, publishers will start to look harder for efficiencies in the authoring and production process. This could take the form of automated content reviews, in-platform authoring or on-the-fly design.

#6 Differentiation through content design

We anticipate high-value publishers will place greater emphasis on content design as a branding mechanism. This should help create a sense of authority, value and quality that will set them apart from less compelling sources that are either free or low cost.

We expect content to be more specifically designed for screen consumption, rather than print. As such, data and storytelling content is likely to become more visual with fewer words.

#7 Analytics at the heart of everything

Readership and content usage stats will be increasingly used by publishers to manage their business. Customer usage data will underpin subscription renewal discussions as perceived use of content will be challenged by data on actual use.

Taking cues from the B2C world, editors will use data on topic or article popularity to help with content commissioning.

Life science advisory firm launches new brand to publish in rich formats for multiple brands

With Publish Interactive powering its new delivery platform, Science and Medicine Group is able to serve multiple audiences through a single site.

Science and Medicine Group is a leading research and advisory firm serving the life science, analytical instrument, diagnostic, healthcare, radiology, and dental industries. It provides research and business information through text-based sector reports and visually-rich slide decks.

After a string of acquisitions – and as part of a rebrand – Science and Medicine Group needed to create a single repository to aid the creation, distribution, and cross-sell of its research content.

Clients across its distinct brands have varied requirements around the type of content they receive. As such, Science and Medicine Group needed an online tool that could serve content in multiple formats, but with a consistent user experience.

The business also needed a solution that would allow it to offer a subscription service to its market report portfolio to simplify the purchase process for its clients.

“Having a start-of-the-art publishing distribution system in place will allow our clients to secure access to our business intelligence for their entire team or company. This will greatly streamline the effort required to identify and purchase market reports covering all of the topics of interest to their organization,” said Justin Dudash, Head of Marketing, Science and Medicine Group.

A single destination

With Publish Interactive powering its new delivery platform, Science and Medicine Group is able to serve multiple audiences through a single site.

“We now operate eight distinct brands, with five of them publishing brands. Bioinformatics, Instrument Business Outlook, IMV Research, Kalorama Information, and Strategic Directions International.each have strong brand recognition and reputation in their respective industries” added Dudash.

To maintain the independence of each brand, individual reports are categorized according to their specific publisher. In addition, Science and Medicine Group created a landing page for each brand within the platform, promoting the catalogue of market reports available and to encourage cross-selling opportunities for its clients.

The landing pages act as a key destination for highlighting content to users, while industry-specific categories enable Science and Medicine Group to make it easier for users to find and access content relevant to their interests.

Multiple formats

Different user expectations across its multiple brands means Science and Medicine Group is required to publish content in varied formats to suit these audiences.

“Our Kalorama Information brand creates and publishes content in Word, whereas our other brands create and publish documents of up to 1,000 pages in PowerPoint to allow their audiences to easily absorb charts and table-rich content. Publish Interactive’s technology elegantly handles both publishing methods which enables us to offer content in the formats our distinct audiences prefer. It also provides an excellent user experience where content is easily searchable, accessible, and reusable across all formats and content types.”

Subscriptions

The adoption of a single destination also allows Science and Medicine Group to highlight the depth and breadth of all its brands to customers for the first time.

While searching for content, users will be shown all related material – both in and outside of their licensed access. This will allow users to consider content beyond their current subscription and make ad-hoc purchases of additional material when needed to support their strategic planning.

In addition to selling brand-specific subscriptions, Science and Medicine Group can now also offer industry-specific subscriptions that span multiple publishers.

“Implementing Publish Interactive is helping us to democratize information within our client companies, such that the thousands of users on our platform have direct access to the business intelligence they need, when they need it.”

26 March 201930 September 2021

How an energy industry consultancy merged three research products into a single platform

Thanks to a partnership with Publish Interactive, WoodMac has been able to equip its Power & Renewables division to serve customers more efficiently and with a higher degree of user satisfaction.

Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac) is a highly-regarded global research firm for the energy, chemical, and extractive industries. It provides data and insights to inform business decisions, with new content published daily across the group.

Demand for market intelligence from WoodMac has led to the acquisition of two related industry-knowledge businesses in the Power & Renewables sector – but this left the business managing customers across three separate content platforms with varied user experiences, structures and functionality across the sites.

‘Having three platforms was a problem…’

Thanks to a partnership with Publish Interactive, WoodMac has been able to equip its Power & Renewables division to serve customers more efficiently and with a higher degree of user satisfaction.

“WoodMac has grown by acquisition, since 2016, we have taken on Greentech Media and MAKE to bolster our Power & Renewables offering, but this left us with three separate self-service platforms,” said Matthew DaPrato, Product Suite Director, Power & Renewables, WoodMac.

“Having three platforms to run was a problem. Similar products across the sites had different names, each platform had a unique structure, and functionality was varied across the sites, there was no consistency.”

WoodMac used Publish Interactive’s publishing and monetisation platform to merge the content of WoodMac, Make, and Greentech Media. Its Power & Renewables information is now published under the WoodMac brand through a single, customer-centric web portal.

“The Publish Interactive system is intuitive and it’s simple to use. Publish Interactive has elegant features; particularly its search, which has really helped our engagement, both internally and externally. We have also been able to align our structures and add consistency across our Power & Renewables content,” added Matthew.

‘Lots of customers didn’t know what content we had…’

With content spread across three platforms, WoodMac was spending a significant proportion of time dealing with queries as customers couldn’t easily find the content they needed.

“Many of our customers didn’t really understand the breadth of information we had,” said Matthew. “Now, we can organise around topics, subject categories, and even products to make it easier for customers find and access every piece of content that might be useful to them.

Making it easier for clients to understand the entire Power & Renewables content portfolio and to find and access content for themselves contributed to growing ‘per user’ engagement levels in the first three months of using Publish Interactive.” Matthew described this change as a “ very encouraging sign.”

‘It allowed us to move to market quickly…’

With 365 pieces of content published in 2018, WoodMac is used to creating and releasing new Power & Renewables materials almost every day. As such, it wanted to avoid a long implementation of publishing technology. It needed a solution that would satisfy its customers’ needs and that could be up and running in the shortest possible time.

“Implementation was critical for us,” added Matthew. “We wanted to do it quickly, we only had a tight window to bring new a platform online… considering all the technology and stakeholders we had to engage, we managed to get it done pretty efficiently.”

The speed of implementation allowed WoodMac to go to market quickly with its new unified brand and, in doing so, enabled its clients to engage with its Power & Renewables content in a new, user-friendly environment at the earliest possible opportunity.

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#1 Continued emphasis on subscriptions

#2 The customer at the heart of decisions

#3 Embedding interactive data

#4 Making use of accessible AI

#5 Shortening time-to-publish workflows

#6 Differentiation through content design

#7 Analytics at the heart of everything

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A single destination

Multiple formats

Subscriptions

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‘Having three platforms was a problem…’

‘Lots of customers didn’t know what content we had…’

‘It allowed us to move to market quickly…’

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