… and jogging is significantly reducing intelligence …and information really helps our customers.
I just went through a speech, which Neil Postman held back in 1990, where he cited people from even 50 more years back in time. And I find it hard to refute his central claims, including: “Information is not part of the solution, but instead creates new sorts of problems”.
2013 is a critical year for Wolters Kluwer – critical in a positive sense; there will be many decision points all over the place where we as an organization can prove that we are ready for the next step. Decision points starting from economic implications from the financial crisis, the implementation of the new strategy life cycle announced by our CEO, via changes in the competitive landscape to finally substantial efforts in our local markets (e.g. Jurion or LOD2).
This year will not be a smooth year, but it will be a successful year when we will become a truly social Media company. As you can see, the “social” is not written in capital letters! I am not referring to a “Social Media” company, but to a social “Media company”. In order to be able to master the challenges ahead of us, we need to be even more proactive in socializing, networking, bundling our assets on a European, but also on a global level.
In his latest post, Tom Callaghan was looking back to the impressive progress the company made around UX design in 2012. Another good habit at the end of the year is to look forward and make some statements about the future – just in case 21st December 2012 will not be the end of the world!
The use of quantitative prediction continues to shake up numerous professional services industries by automating or semi-automating tasks previously performed by experts. Professor Daniel Katz (Michigan State University) has offered up an analysis of how quantitative prediction is already changing the legal services industry (Quantitative Legal Prediction – or – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Preparing for the Data Driven Future of the Legal Services Industry, 62 Emory Law Journal ___ (2013) (working draft)). Although Katz’s analysis focuses on legal services, the trends discussed can be applied to other professional service industries, including tax planning and accounting services. Quantitative prediction promises to automate or semi-automate many core questions asked by professionals and their clients: Do I have a case? What is our likely exposure? How much is this going to cost? Are these documents relevant? What will happen if we leave this particular provision out of this contract? How can we best staff this particular legal matter? Read further >
Companies continue to be excited about the possibilities of big data, including how data on their customers might reveal new patterns and insights. Although a lot of attention has focused on the benefits of big data, less attention has been paid to the new ethical complications big data presents. An upcoming book, Ethics of Big Data: Balancing Risk and Innovation (O’Reilly), will attempt to address these ethical issues. Howard Wen at O’Reilly Radar does a good job of highlighting some of the most prominent ethical issues which the book is expected to cover. The primary ethical issues involve the privacy expectations of those from whom the data is collected. Read further >
In a previous post I spoke about the enhancements Wolters Kluwer Italy integrated into BigSuite, a fiscal premium product, following the principles of the continuous improvement. One of the new functionality which is offered are the so-called ‘suggested searches’. Read further >
Last week, more than 300 experts and executives from German publishing houses met in Berlin near the famous Brandenburg Gate in order to talk about the current situation and the challenges within the publishing industry in Germany.
The conference widened the scope this year and invited quite a number of speakers from the US, Canada and the UK, which was very fruitful for the discussions going on.
I think that three different areas were in the center of the presentations and workshops:
In my previous post I spoke about the enhancements Wolters Kluwer Italy made to BigSuite, a fiscal premium product. To progress in the competitiveness one way passes through continual incremental improvements in the areas of product quality and process efficiency, as already stated by Joe Gornick in one of his posts. But implementing the continuous improvement process is not an easy task. Read further >
Content produced for research products for professionals has traditionally been heavy on plain text, such as an explanation of the reasoning behind a legal concept or how a particular tax is applied. Beyond the use of a few tables (perhaps more than a few in the area of tax and accounting), little of this content could be described as “visual.” The idea of presenting content in a more visual style has traditionally been limited to graphic design that might make the text more readable (e.g., margins, bullet lists, asides). However, the concept of visual learning suggests the use of more visual-oriented alternatives can more effectively communicate content to customers. Read further >
In my last post I stated that user satisfaction is key in retaining customers and in achieving competitive advantages. Here I will discuss a different aspect of the same topic. We aim to offer the best products to generate user satisfaction. When launching a new product however, sometimes you need to focus on the time-to-market variable and speed up the release, which can lead to having to compromise on offering some functionality and/or the complete content you estimated at design time. This is a very delicate decision to take, indeed. Read further >
