No matter the industry, businesses of all types and sizes today are embracing the power of digital transformation. What is digital transformation? Being able to promote your solutions and connect with audiences across an array of digital platforms, social media channels and apps. It’s not only necessary for growth, but also a requirement to remain competitive in today’s increasingly digital world.
Brightspot improved the quality of life for our editorial team, who can now manage sites, collaborate, and publish experiences faster and more seamlessly than ever to meet the demands of our audience. It also empowered our development team, giving them total control over the look and feel of our platform.
A digital transformation requires a lot of content and communication, whether it's creating web pages about your offerings, multimedia assets including video and audio, an e-commerce platform, or an engaged community of users that share ideas. To power all of that content, companies need a back-end solution to help manage the workflow of content teams, keep digital assets organized and accessible, and streamline the look and feel of your brand across multiple platforms and channels.
Brightspot has answered the digital transformation technology call for a variety of enterprise organizations from media companies and fintechs to professional associations and others looking to capitalize on digital transformation trends. Here's a snapshot of how four companies have better positioned themselves to succeed in the digital reality.
Taking political news to the digital masses: POLITICO
POLITICO is a digital publishing powerhouse, averaging 25 million monthly unique visitors and 114 million monthly page views and publishing over 5,000 newsletters in 2021 alone. It features articles, podcasts, and interactive content across brands such as POLITICO Pro and its AgencyIQ data service.
But behind-the-scenes, production wasn't always the well-oiled content machine it is now. The production and editing teams were constantly having to switch back and forth between different content types, for starters.
Finding a solution to help curate, create, editorially manage, and distribute its content was crucial if POLITICO wanted to stay relevant and competitive—especially as audiences have become increasingly more engaged in political news.
POLITICO turned to Brightspot in 2015 to help with its digital transformation and has stuck with them through several site redesigns and enhancements. Today, the entire team uses one shared article model for all its sites. They communicate well and are more accountable with deadlines and project tasks thanks to Slack integrations and CMS alerts. And they can reuse and repurpose content since it's all housed and easily searchable in one centralized content repository. Article production is also more streamlined with integrated-search connections to access digital assets in AP and Getty image libraries.
POLITICO by the numbers
Enhancing the auction experience online: Sotheby’s
Sotheby's knew back in 2018 that creating a robust online experience for its users is what would help the renowned auction house thrive in the digital age. While auctions have always been an in-person experience, Sotheby’s realized that providing a media-rich platform for collectors to learn more about its 600 annual exhibitions would provide more engagement than its traditional print catalog. A digital transformation—or more accurately in this case, a customer experience transformation—would allow for all different content types including video to bring exhibitions to life.
The challenge was the legacy platform it had been using wouldn’t be able to handle these digital initiatives. Brightspot checked all the boxes for a CMS solution that could execute Sotheby’s digital vision. Since the start of 2020, Sotheby’s has shared more than 900 digital catalogs, 5,000+ articles and 2,200 videos with end users. In fact, by 2021, 85% of auctions transitioned to digital-only catalogs, saving millions of dollars in printing costs.
The digital transformation vastly improved the user experience as well. Customers can filter, sort and search for information about upcoming auctions and exhibitions and view a dynamic calendar. And Sotheby’s global audience can enjoy the content in multiple languages built by the CMS with corresponding URLs and metadata.
The results of Sotheby’s digital transformation include a 95% increase in user sessions, 44% growth in returning visitors and a 78% increase in luxury goods sold.
Sotheby's by the numbers
A digital transformation hole in one: Indigo Sports
As one of the largest privately owned golf course management companies in the country, Indigo Sports is constantly growing, adding new golf course locations. Every time a new one opens, a new site needs to be created to give the facility a digital presence.
The problem is at one point, Indigo Sports was using 15 different CMS to power its sites, and when new pages needed to launch, a content workflow bottleneck held everything up. As tasks became backlogged, the company realized that a digital transformation was in order.
Brightspot was able to migrate 15 CMS platforms into one, making it much easier to manage updates and launch new sites. The CMS now manages digital assets for 130+ Indigo courses totaling nearly 3 million pieces of content. More than 350 users work within the CMS, and new launches that used to take weeks or months can now be expedited while staying consistent with the Indigo Sports brand. The platform also facilitates event registration for thousands of events hosted at Indigo’s courses.
Thus far, following its digital transformation roadmap has had impressive results. Indigo reports site health improvements of over 40% when launching new courses, as well as growth in organic search rankings.
Indigo Sports by the numbers
A bilingual media company’s digital message is no longer lost in translation: Televisa
Televisa is a media company sharing content in both English and Spanish. Its multilingual team was working across nine disparate CMS platforms, making for a confusing and expensive publishing process. There also wasn’t a true brand feel since each site was run separately.
To get everyone on the same page and ensure a successful digital transformation could take place, Televisa partnered with Brightspot to re-platform all of its sites onto one multisite, headless CMS. The goal was to combine the back-end functions and allow Televisa to have a more cohesive brand look and feel. They also needed a CMS with built-in translation capabilities so teams could seamlessly switch between Spanish and English.
With a new and improved publishing and content sharing platform, Televisa was able to reduce overhead costs and have a more efficient workflow.