Case Study
Market Research · B2B Portal
Building an Enterprise
B2B Research Portal
GlobalResearchMarket needed to replace a chaotic Google Drive setup with a secure, scalable portal for distributing market research reports to enterprise clients worldwide.
Timeline
4 Months
Team Size
4 Engineers
Reports Migrated
10,000+
Client Onboarding
3 Days → 1 Hour
The Client
Who is GlobalResearchMarket?
GlobalResearchMarket (GRM) is a B2B market research firm that produces industry reports across sectors like Fintech, Healthcare, and Manufacturing. Their clients are enterprise buyers — procurement teams, strategy consultants, and investment analysts — who pay $500–$5,000 per report.
With a catalog of 10,000+ reports and a growing client base across 40 countries, their existing workflow — shared Google Drive links sent over email — was breaking down. Reports were being shared without authorization, clients were frustrated by slow delivery, and the internal team was drowning in manual work.
The Problem
What was broken?
- ✕No access control — paid reports were being shared freely via forwarded links
- ✕Publishing a new report took 3–4 days of manual formatting and email distribution
- ✕Zero visibility into which clients were reading what — renewals were guesswork
- ✕Site went down every time a major report launched due to traffic spikes
- ✕Client onboarding required manual account setup taking 2–3 days per client
Engineering Decisions
Key Challenges & How We Solved Them
Problem
Legacy system was a shared Google Drive folder
Impact
Clients had no access control — anyone with the link could download any report
Solution
Built role-based access with per-report permissions, watermarked PDFs, and audit logs
Problem
Report publishing took 3–4 days manually
Impact
Analysts spent 60% of their time on formatting and distribution, not research
Solution
Automated ingestion pipeline: upload Word/Excel → auto-format → publish → notify clients in under 10 minutes
Problem
No visibility into client engagement
Impact
Sales team had no data on which clients were active or which reports drove renewals
Solution
Built real-time analytics: page views, download events, time-on-report, and renewal risk scoring
Problem
Site crashed under load during report launches
Impact
Major report releases caused downtime, damaging client trust
Solution
Moved to edge-cached Next.js with AWS CloudFront, auto-scaling Node.js workers, and Redis queue for heavy jobs
Architecture
Tech Stack & Why
Every technology choice was deliberate. Here's what we used and why it was the right call for GRM's scale and security requirements.
Frontend
Next.js 14 (App Router)
SSR for SEO, ISR for report pages, fast client navigation
Backend
Node.js + Express
REST API for portal, WebSocket for real-time notifications
Database
PostgreSQL + Redis
Relational data for reports/users, Redis for caching & job queues
Search
Elasticsearch
Full-text search across 10,000+ reports with faceted filtering
Storage
AWS S3 + CloudFront
Secure report storage with signed URLs, CDN for fast global delivery
Infra
AWS ECS + RDS
Auto-scaling containers, managed Postgres, zero-downtime deploys
Delivery
How We Delivered in 14 Weeks
Week 1–2
Discovery & Architecture
Stakeholder interviews, existing system audit, data model design, and tech stack finalization.
Week 3–5
Core Portal & Auth
Next.js app scaffold, role-based auth (admin / analyst / client), PostgreSQL schema, and CI/CD pipeline on AWS.
Week 6–9
Research Engine
Report ingestion pipeline, full-text search with Elasticsearch, automated PDF generation, and version control for reports.
Week 10–12
Analytics Dashboard
Real-time usage analytics, client engagement tracking, custom chart library, and export to Excel/PDF.
Week 13–14
QA & Launch
Load testing (2,000 concurrent users), security audit, UAT with 12 pilot clients, and production deployment.
Outcomes
What Changed After Launch
Report publishing time
Client onboarding time
Access control & logging
Platform stability
Report distribution
Engagement analytics
"RapidStackLab didn't just build us a portal — they understood our business. The automated publishing pipeline alone saved us 20+ hours a week. Our clients noticed the difference immediately."
Rahul K.
Head of Product, GlobalResearchMarket
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