ISG

Modernizing and Sustaining a Global Research Firm's Sitefinity Web Platform

Client: ISG (Information Services Group) Industry: Technology Research & Advisory Project Focus: Sitefinity CMS Modernization, Web Platform Engineering, Experience Design, Ongoing Technical Support

Overview

ISG needed a partner who could evolve their marketing website from a rigid CMS implementation into a scalable, well-governed digital platform — and then keep it running.

ISG (Information Services Group) is a global technology research and advisory firm serving enterprise buyers across multiple industries and geographies. Their public website, isg-one.com, is a high-traffic marketing platform built on Progress Sitefinity CMS. It supports multilingual content, event promotion, gated research articles, and integrations with Marketo and analytics tooling. The site is central to ISG's demand generation and thought leadership strategy.

The Challenge

ISG's Sitefinity implementation had grown organically over several years. Custom widgets were inconsistent, templates were hard to maintain, and the content model lacked the structure needed to support the firm's publishing velocity. At the same time, ISG needed to:

• Expand multilingual support without duplicating editorial overhead
• Integrate with Azure Search, Marketo, and GA4 in ways that were sustainable, not brittle
• Redesign key sections of the site to improve usability and conversion without a full re-platform
• Maintain site health, accessibility, and performance while the platform continued to evolve

The constraint: ISG did not have a dedicated internal web engineering team. They needed a partner who could operate across CMS architecture, front-end development, MarTech integration, and ongoing technical support — all under a single retainer relationship.

The Solution

We started with a structured audit of the existing Sitefinity implementation: content types, widgets, templates, search configuration, and front-end build pipeline. This gave us a clear picture of what to stabilize, what to refactor, and what to leave alone.

Sitefinity CMS Modernization

We reorganized the content model, migrated templates to file-based resource packages, and built custom widgets for events, articles, and advisory content. We configured multilingual content workflows so ISG's editorial team could manage translations without requiring developer involvement for each language.

Web Platform Engineering

We implemented Azure Search with faceting, synonyms, and document indexing to improve content discoverability across ISG's large article and research library. We integrated Marketo forms for lead capture, implemented GA4 and Tag Manager for analytics, and addressed security vulnerabilities including outdated JavaScript dependencies. We built event and calendar functionality with filtering, agenda display, and registration support.

Experience and Design Evolution

We executed a phased redesign of the homepage, article templates, advisory pages, and industry landing pages. Each phase focused on layout consistency, CTA clarity, and readability — improving the user experience without requiring a full site rebuild. Navigation and event module components were refined to support ISG's expanding content categories.

Ongoing Technical Support

We established a sustained maintenance practice covering bug triage, accessibility remediation, analytics monitoring, and Sitefinity infrastructure upgrades. This gave ISG predictable operational support and ensured the platform stayed current as Sitefinity released new versions.

Results

Over seven years of continuous engagement, the partnership delivered:

• Platform stability across multiple Sitefinity versions, with upgrades planned and executed without disruption to ISG's publishing cadence
• Multilingual content management at scale, reducing the editorial overhead for managing content across regions
• Integrated search, analytics, and MarTech stack that ISG's marketing team operates day-to-day without developer intervention for routine tasks
• Sustained accessibility and performance improvements, with ongoing monitoring and remediation as standards evolved
• A single-partner operating model that eliminated the coordination cost of managing separate CMS, front-end, analytics, and support vendors

What Changed

ISG moved from a fragile, developer-dependent CMS to a well-governed platform their marketing team can operate confidently. The shift was not a single big-bang project — it was a sustained sequence of modernization, redesign, and maintenance work delivered under one retainer. That continuity meant each improvement built on the last, and institutional knowledge compounded instead of resetting with each engagement.

About the Client

ISG (Information Services Group) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. ISG serves more than 900 clients, including 75 of the top 100 enterprises in the world. The firm advises private and public sector organizations on digital transformation, sourcing optimization, and managed governance and risk services.