Making Chinese Money

By LIU XINLIAN

Making Chinese Money

By LIU XINLIAN

Dutch-based information provider expands in China to tap new market

There are many secrets that foreign companies need to know before starting businesses in China. Wolters Kluwer knows a few of them.

“You can never expect business success by introducing foreign products or services on an as-is basis in China. We need to provide something special to meet the demands of Chinese customers,” said Shasha Chang,Wolters Kluwer China CEO.

“Localization has the final say in overseas success for multinationals like us,” said Chang on September 22 in Beijing at the launch ceremony for Wolters Kluwer’s latest product China Law & Reference, an online database that provides a bilingual reference of legislation and cases of the People’s Republic of China.

Starting as a bookseller in the Netherlands more than 170 years ago, Wolters Kluwer specializes in providing products and services to professionals in the health, tax, accounting,fi nancial services, legal and regulatory sectors.

PUBLISHING COOPERATION:Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer,receives an official membership award from Wang Zhongwei, Vice Minister of China’s State Council Information Office,on August 31, 2011. McKinstry was appointed as a foreign consultant,to promote the collaboration between Chinese and global publishers

Wolters Kluwer China was established in Beijing in 2009. The number of employees in the country has grown from just 30 to 300 today. Wolters Kluwer China’s revenue grew by nearly 30 percent in 2010.

One of the biggest highlights of Wolters Kluwer’s operation last year is its expanded global footprint through increased penetration into the global integrator product line in the corporate market and strong doubledigit growth in China and India, according to the Wolters Kluwer 2010 Full-Year Results released in February 2011.

The pace of change in China is impressive and the growth potential of the Chinese market offers Wolters Kluwer opportunities for expansion, said Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer.

Localized products

Wolters Kluwer has been serving professionals in the area of business law, tax,accounting and human resources in China since 1985. At that time, multinational legal publishers mainly targeted the Englishspeaking professional community in China.

But as the number of Chinese lawyers keeps growing, the professional community gradually prefers Chinese as the working language.

According to the Ministry of Justice, currently there are nearly 200,000 lawyers and 16,900 law fi rms in China. Wolters Kluwer expects that China will have 2 million lawyers by 2020.

“Since our entry into China, Wolters Kluwer has attached great importance to providing bilingual reference products,” Chang said.

Wolters Kluwer has been translating English-Chinese legal and regulatory content for years and has won wide recognition among its clients for its high-quality translations, said Chang.

The recently released China Law &Reference is the result of Wolters Kluwer China’s vigorous customer research initiative. Most importantly, it hosts all legislative sources in one central location in a concise manner, helping professionals to fi nd the answers they need quickly.

“With more and more Chinese enterprises going global, the legal services for them have soared in recent years. Our product has superior bilingual content that professionals have come to rely upon,” Chang said.

In addition to localization in content publishing, Wolters Kluwer is also committed to providing localized users’ experience.The Web page design for China Law &Reference is quite different from similar products for Western users, said Li Jiang,Technology Director for Wolters Kluwer China CCH brand.

Western users want the page to be simple, but Chinese users like to have all important keys on the main page, Li said.“We are proud that 90 percent of Wolters Kluwer’s staff are Chinese,” said Chang.

Ovid, part of Wolters Kluwer Health and a global leader in the development and delivery of customizable research information solutions for the medical, scienti fi c and academic markets, released its latest local language search portal, OvidChinese, in September 2011.OvidChinese allows healthcare practitioners,clinicians, students and researchers to search,browse and manage results of core Chineselanguage medical content.

More than 400 titles are currently available on the portal and the content covers traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and therapeutic areas such as surgery and regenerative medicine, among other disciplines.

“OvidChinese fills an important gap in this fast-growth market for Chinese medical publishers who want to broaden the reach of their content through our global network and for researchers, students and healthcare practitioners who want a reliable, ef fi cient way to search important Chinese medical literature to improve patient care, support medical studies and inform ongoing research,” said Karen Abramson, President and CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health Medical Research.

LIANG XU

Growth via partnerships

Since China’s publishing market is not adequately developed and foreign capital was restricted, establishing a strategic alliance may be the ideal way for foreign investment to enter, said Fang Qing, Associate Dean of Publishing Science Department at the School of Information Management of Wuhan University in central China’s Hubei Province.

Wolters Kluwer aims to expand in China through partnerships as consolidation in professional publishing accelerates in the country, McKinstry said.

Wolters Kluwer has engaged in two partnerships with Chinese publishers—Commercial Press and China Financial and Economic Publishing House.

In August 2010, Wolters Kluwer China announced that China Financial and Economic Publishing House will put all its Chinese tax and accounting content onto Wolters Kluwer’s IntelliConnect publishing platform.

On an annual basis, China Financial and Economic Publishing House launches 1,300 titles, covering major publishing interests in the area of public fi nance, taxation, auditing,fi nance, international trade, and accounting.

This partnership enables Wolters Kluwer to draw its global tax and accounting content into China, providing the Chinese professional community with world-class expert information and Web-enabled solutions,McKinstry said.

In December 2010, Wolters Kluwer China signed an agreement with Commercial Press, China’s fi rst print publisher dedicated to the translation and introduction of foreign laws and regulations, to translate and publish Wolters Kluwer’s legal titles for Chinese legal and business compliance professionals,academics and legislators.

“For our professional customers in the legal fi eld in China, it’s of great importance to have a comprehensive legal offering that can be leveraged across national and international borders,” said Stacey Caywood, CEO Wolters Kluwer Legal and Regulatory.

“The agreement is part of our continuous efforts in China to translate and co-publish leading international legal content for the Chinese market and to provide Chinese legal content for international markets,” said Chang.

As part of the company’s China growth strategy, Wolters Kluwer Health division entered a joint venture with the Sichuan-based Medicom, a leading Chinese drug information and services provider, on January 19,2011. The deal allows Wolters Kluwer Health to expand its market-leading clinical decision support and drug information business into the rapidly growing China market and creates a needed drug information infrastructure in China.

Going digital

When McKinstry took over as CEO of Wolters Kluwer in 2003, print accounted for about 70 percent of Wolters Kluwer’s portfolio. With a series of digitization efforts and investment in building software and online capabilities, the online and digital segments represented 70 percent of Wolters Kluwer’s total revenue last year.

It has now become a world leader in digital publishing and information distribution. McKinstry hopes that by 2012, about 75 percent of its total revenue will come from online, software and services.

Since China’s admission to the WTO in 2001, China has pledged to allow the entry of foreign capital in distribution of publications.

According to China’s WTO commitments, foreign investors can enter China through either sole ownership or partnership. Foreign companies can participate in the research and development of game and animation software. The technical fi elds of the media are accessible, including the network, digital, publishing and distribution technologies.

As a digital publishing and information distribution leader, Wolters Kluwer is sure to bene fi t from the Chinese market.

Official data showed that in 2010, the total revenue of China’s digital publishing industry reached 105.18 billion yuan ($16.32 billion), fi ve times 2006’s total revenue.

According to the 12th Five-Year Plan(2011-15), China’s total output value in digital publishing is expected to reach 25 percent of that of the whole press and publishing industry, and the overall size will be in the leading position in the world by 2015.

McKinstry believes China will quickly adapt to the digital publishing world and her company’s business technology will be a major timesaver for busy professionals.