Challenges and solutions for intelligence, insights, and research organizations

Content is king in any digital context, and this is especially true for intelligence, insights, and research companies. These organizations generate revenue by selling digital content, such as reports, analysis, and insights, to other businesses. It is likely that you operate within complex, high-value content ecosystems where you must seamlessly create, deliver, and distribute insightful content.

Due to the unique demands of the content, information-publishing organizations are caught between traditional and modern content management approaches. While everyone talks about “the digital era,” using PDFs alone isn’t enough to demonstrate progress. On the other hand, adopting a new CMS can be challenging, especially when development resources are limited. Striking the right balance between innovation and maintaining the status quo can be difficult.

Content lies at the heart of your organization, and any improvements in workflow efficiency can directly affect the bottom line. Despite this, many leaders of information-publishing platforms lack the insights needed to optimize their processes. Having helped intelligence, insights, and research companies find solutions to their content challenges for many years, we know the unique demands of this sector very well. Let's identify key obstacles and explore solutions so you can overcome them effectively.

#What’s so special about managing intelligence, insights, and research content?

Intelligence, insights, and research companies produce industry reports, trend analyses, market data, and consumer insights, meaning content directly generates revenue or builds authority within the industry, making content quality a cornerstone of success.

The content is often highly complex, featuring data, charts, and analytics that require regular updates. Beyond the content itself, factors such as the presentation of reports on the website, the effectiveness of internal search functions, and the relevance of displayed content are critical to ensuring user engagement. A seamless, engaging experience is necessary to retain visitors and grow the audience.

Given these requirements, a solid content management strategy is essential, with a Content Management System (CMS) at its core. A CMS allows users to create, organize, and manage digital content in one place while publishing it across multiple platforms. For information-publishing companies, a CMS should enable agile workflows, flexible content architecture, reusable data, and more.

However, many of these companies struggle to prioritize innovation, often lacking sufficient development resources. A study found that 65% of content leaders don’t regularly measure the effectiveness of their content, even though those who do report significantly better results. Additionally, our State of Content Management report revealed that 64% of respondents face challenges reusing content stored in their CMS.

#Top challenges faced by intelligence, insights, and research companies

Does this sound familiar? Your analysts identify key insights and create reports using whatever tools they find most compelling (usually Microsoft products). Editors then compile these reports into PDFs and upload them to the CMS. From there, analysts review, and editors publish the final content. Meanwhile, a small IT team keeps the website running. Throughout this process, there are countless opportunities for improvement, but knowing where to start can feel overwhelming.

Identifying the right problems is the first step to finding practical solutions. That’s why we’ve outlined the top 7 challenges intelligence, insights, and research companies face today.

Lack of development resources

Most intelligence, insights, and research companies prioritize their research efforts, often leaving their IT departments small and underfunded. This creates a constant challenge in developing modern portals and maintaining website accessibility. Many use a traditional or custom-built CMS, which makes it even harder to keep up with rapid technological changes. Modeling and managing content in a structured way and building a fast-loading frontend is nearly impossible, let alone enhancing search features or advertisement placement. As a result, it’s a struggle to deliver content that meets user expectations and stays competitive in the industry.

We want to make the content formats more “digital”, more accessible - to enhance search, to enhance display, to use AI for summaries across content types.

Siloed business units

The typical content operation process of information publishing platforms leaves departments in siloed business units, which can significantly slow down workflows. Content creation typically relies on Microsoft products, with analysts drafting reports in Word, processing data in Excel, and then sending them for editing, followed by a copy editor who adds the final touches before the content is compiled into PDF and uploaded to the CMS. This manual, multi-step process delays production. PDF generation is done manually rather than automated, further hindering efficiency. Analysts, who rarely interact with the CMS, are disconnected from the system. This lack of integration and communication between teams prevents them from working efficiently.

Slow publishing cycle

Relying on PDFs for everything isn't the most efficient way for information-based businesses to operate. Uploading PDFs can slow things down, which can directly hurt revenue. Trying to get those PDFs into a content management system (CMS) is often a tedious manual process, prone to errors, and a real bottleneck when you're trying to scale. And if something goes wrong – even a small mistake – it can bring the whole workflow to a screeching halt, leaving editors at the mercy of the IT team. Also, homebrew CMSs are difficult to integrate with other systems, especially if they have complex, nested structures. Things get even slower when the CMS has complex roles and permissions, creating hurdles for managing sensitive content and adding unnecessary administrative work.

We need to see the tools we use for content as enablers and technology that can set our creativity free.

Lack of content repurposing

When reports are delivered as downloadable PDFs, content management is largely reduced to simple PDF uploads for editors. However, these reports contain various components—like charts, tables, and data—that are frequently needed for reuse. Unfortunately, when the final output is only PDFs, it's nearly impossible to repurpose this content, which ends up in silos in Word, Database, Powerpoint, etc. Content silos also mean that, to update the content, you must update it manually everywhere it appears, further reducing content velocity. To increase workflow efficiency, we urge organizations to ditch PDF uploads and adopt a better way to present data, as 74% of digital leaders agreed that better exposing content and data could reduce operational costs.

We want to divide content into smaller consumable reusable pieces. To create new content products, to distribute content to the right audiences.

Metadata inconsistency

Intelligence, insights, and research companies often struggle with metadata inconsistency. Without the right tools, teams struggle to keep track of crucial information about their content. This lack of organization makes it difficult to find and reuse valuable materials. For example, inconsistent tagging across different types of content can make it challenging for users to find relevant information through searches. This not only hinders content discoverability but also creates a frustrating user experience.

Hard to incentivize upsell

Information publishing companies generate revenue by expanding their subscription base. However, many struggle to develop effective strategies for upselling and cross-selling. They either fall behind in creating new subscription models that offer users fresh, relevant content, or their development teams can’t provide smart search features and personalized content that keeps users engaged and encourages them to buy more.

Scalability and adaptability concerns

Intelligence, insights, and research companies often struggle with scalability and adaptability as they manage growing volumes of localized content across various formats, including articles, videos, and interactive media. This complexity makes it challenging to maintain a seamless, personalized user experience, which is essential for building trust and engagement with their audience. On top of that, security becomes a major concern as they scale. Handling sensitive data across different platforms and locations opens them up to potential risks. If these vulnerabilities aren't addressed, it can damage their reputation and put them at odds with regulations.

#Solutions to effectively overcome these challenges

Buy over build

If your IT team is already stretched thin, building your own content management system (CMS) from the ground up is rarely the best approach. Instead of reinventing the wheel, consider cloud-based solutions. They often offer better value for money in the long run and are much easier to scale as your needs grow.

Think of it this way: with a cloud-based CMS, you let the experts handle the technical nitty-gritty. This frees your team to focus on what they do best – creating amazing content and growing your business.

Sure, migrating to a new CMS like Hygraph might require some initial effort. But once you're settled in, you'll find that managing your website is a breeze. You can streamline your workflows and devote more time to other important IT projects. Many successful companies in the information publishing industry, like BioCentury, Statistics Finland, and TechInsights, have already made the switch to a cloud-based CMS and seen significant benefits.

Centralized content management for team efficiency

A headless CMS empowers teams to collaborate seamlessly. With features that allow IT teams to build content models, editors can quickly add, edit, and delete content without needing constant technical support. Analysts can review content directly in the CMS, approve it, and leave comments. This centralized approach not only makes the editorial process smoother but also streamlines version control and approval workflows, ensuring that multiple drafts can be managed efficiently.

With features like user roles and permissions, you can control who has access to create, edit, or publish content, keeping everything secure and organized. The intuitive editing interface speeds up work and boosts overall productivity. Building these capabilities on your own would be a significant challenge, but a CMS like Hygraph offers these features out of the box, ensuring your team’s workflow is as efficient as possible.

Hygraph contains all the metadata and relations of the content. Publishing is controlled within the CMS and synchronized with our other systems, and then accessed through microservices in Azure.

Move away from PDF and embrace reusable content blocks

With a headless CMS, you can finally leave behind the limitations of PDFs and embrace a more flexible, modern approach. Unlike traditional CMSs, headless CMSs offer content models that let you create content blocks for various types of information, whether it’s tables, charts, or expert reports. These models can be reused and easily updated, making content management far more efficient.

By allowing for the creation of custom content types and relationships, you can adapt your CMS to fit any need and scale as your content complexity grows. The flexibility of content modeling in a headless CMS enables dynamic content delivery that is both more organized and far easier to manage.

My eyes lit up at how intuitive content modeling is. Hygraph gives unlimited possibilities of what we can connect and build.

Leverage API for technical performance

As your website grows, you need to make sure your content loads quickly for visitors around the world. A headless CMS like Hygraph uses a powerful network called a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver your content super fast. This means your website can handle a lot of traffic without slowing down, even when you have a ton of users.

Plus, a headless CMS is hyper-flexible. It can easily connect with other tools and platforms using something called APIs. This makes your website faster and more efficient overall, no matter how big or complex it gets.

Personalization and multiregional support

Personalization is key to keeping users engaged and driving more revenue. A headless CMS can help you deliver custom, relevant content based on user preferences, behavior, and region. With multilingual and multiregional support, you can offer content tailored to different languages and adapt it for various geographic markets. This flexibility helps your business expand and better serve a diverse user base.

Additionally, the ability to federate content—bringing in data from external sources—can help create even more relevant and targeted content. Third-party integrations allow you to connect your CMS with other platforms like CRM or marketing tools, providing even more opportunities to personalize content and enhance user experiences.

#What’s next?

In this article, we've talked about the challenges facing intelligence, insights, and research companies – limited resources, silos between teams, and the slow, frustrating process of getting content out the door. These hurdles can really slow down your whole operation and make it tough to keep up with the competition.

But what if there was a better way? A system that lets your team work together smoothly, makes it easy to update and reuse content, and even helps you personalize the experience for each of your readers? That's where a headless CMS like Hygraph comes in. Hygraph's capabilities in managing complex and dynamic content types, along with fast content velocity, meet these needs perfectly.

Ready to see how Hygraph can transform your content operation? Request a demo today and discover the possibilities yourself.