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The databases provide professional customers such as corporate lawyers, barristers, solicitors, fiscal specialists and HR officers with country-specific content and related information, in their native language, tailored to the local legislative and tax situation. With the construction of a common database and access infrastructure, the cluster will realize genuine cost savings in production processes and boost the speed of time-to-market of new products by one third. A taskforce initiated by Jean-Marc Detailleur, cluster CEO and Member of the Executive Board, and lead by Area Manager Roelant Hazewinkel and cluster CTO Ton Schoonderbeek, will coordinate the project.
Legal, Tax & Business Europe's research reveals that its professional customers want comprehensive, authoritative, reliable, and up-to-date content, specific to their country of residence. The cluster has therefore developed a strategy to use overall technology knowledge combined with country specific professional content requirements, providing the customers' content in their native language, and tailored to the local legislative situation. This results in a very user-friendly system.
'We focus on highly qualified professionals, who are working in specific markets and therefore have very specific information needs,' says Jean-Marc Detailleur, member of the Executive Board of Wolters Kluwer responsible for Legal, Tax & Business Europe. 'Lawyers, fiscal specialists or HR managers in Germany expect localized content and so do their counterparts in France, in the United Kingdom, etc. So our essential knowledge must come to these professional customers in the user-friendliest way, in the format they need. With our new technology platform we will be able to deliver them what they want and at the same time realize cost savings and improved product development by reducing our time to market.'
Several sites were launched: www.juriforum.nl (the Netherlands, legal), www.hrnet.nl (the Netherlands, human resources), www.axperta.de (Germany, legal), www.overheidsforum.nl (the Netherlands, government-related information), www.taxforum.nl (the Netherlands, tax), www.taxforum.it (Italy, tax), www.juriforum.de (Germany, legal), www.orinfo.nl (the Netherlands, human resources), and www.arboonline.nl (the Netherlands, human resources). Scheduled for launch in early 2003 are: Juriforum Spain (Spain, legal), HR Today (Belgium, human resources), Tax Today (Belgium, tax), Liaison RH (France, human resources), Jur@ (Belgium, legal library site).
The development of legal databases for all European activities is a result of the further implementation of the growth strategy of Legal, Tax & Business Europe. LTB Europe - with 2001 revenues of EUR 1,345 million and 8,335 employees the biggest cluster of Wolters Kluwer - focuses its activities on the growth potential of six customer segments: legal; fiscal/financial; human resources; public & government administration; health, safety & environment (HSE); transport. The cluster's objective is to forge or enhance leading positions in each of these areas.
Note for the editor:
Wolters Kluwer is a multinational information services company with annual revenues of more than EUR 3.8 billion, employing almost 20,000 people in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. The company's core activities are Legal, Tax & Business, Health, and Education. The Wolters Kluwer shares are quoted on the Euronext Amsterdam. Preliminary results will be announced on January 29, 2003. The financial results for the year 2002 will be announced on March 11, 2003.
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