The IT Insider News Portal

Overview

The IT Insider is a long-running end-user engagement programme from Arrow ECS and IBM, built to serve the IT channel with original and aggregated content across news, video, and podcast formats. Its role is to keep technology professionals informed, engaged, and connected with developments across the sector.

FWD Motion was brought in to refresh and relaunch the IT Insider website, enhancing the overall experience and future-proofing the platform for long-term growth. With extensive experience in news portal development, our team handled the redesign, technical rebuild, user training, and ongoing maintenance – creating a central hub for content delivery and lead generation.

A More Strategic Platform

As a longstanding partner on earlier iterations of the site, we were familiar with both the strengths of the platform and its untapped potential. The task this time was to build on what already worked, while introducing a more strategic structure, cleaner design, and features better suited to modern content consumption.

Key features delivered by our news portal website developers included:

• A full front-end redesign, with fresh templates for articles, videos, and podcasts
• A restructured content management system, tailored for ease of use by internal teams
• UX and accessibility improvements across desktop and mobile
• New functionality, including campaign pages, an interactive events calendar, and author bios
• On-site advertising modules to support partner and sponsor activity

By focusing on performance, ease-of-use, and long-term flexibility, we delivered a platform that could support regular content updates, integrate new formats, and offer greater value to users and stakeholders alike.

Making Content Easier to Publish

One of the core challenges with content-rich platforms is maintaining quality and momentum. As part of our news portal development services, we ensured that content teams had the tools and training to manage the platform independently and efficiently.

We delivered:

• Dedicated CMS training for editors and content managers
• Step-by-step guides for uploading articles, media, and layout blocks
• Ongoing technical support to keep everything running smoothly

Equipping Arrow IBM teams with the tools, skills, and confidence to update the news portal website themselves meant they could scale up their output and respond to campaign and industry developments quickly and without complexity.

A Platform Built to Evolve

With regular content, a robust digital presence, and a clear role in driving sales, the IT Insider portal is positioned for long-term success. The collaboration between Arrow, IBM, and FWD Motion continues, with ongoing support, updates, and strategic input to help the platform evolve in line with audience needs and digital best practice.

This post was originally published in June 2022 and has since been refreshed to reflect the full scope and lasting impact of the project.