Thomson Group is a globally recognized provider of electronic solutions for the education, business and professional markets, and is listed in Toronto, New York and London, Canada (ticker symbol TOC). From 1998 to the present, Thomson Group has been maintaining a strong upward momentum: in 2002, Thomson Group's fiscal year revenues reached an all-time high of $7.8 billion. The diversification strategy implemented by the Thomson Group is fully reflected in the existing industrial structure and business composition.
From the organizational chart of the Thomson Group, we can clearly see the veins of its business composition and the extension of its value chain. The multi-level and complex organizational structure fully reflects Thomson Group's diversified business strategy, and the business varieties that are closely linked to the organizational structure are even more so. Currently, the Thomson Group's main business includes four parts:
1. Laws and Regulations: Providing comprehensive information and solutions mainly for legal, tax, accounting, intellectual property and business practitioners. Law and regulation is the most important part of the Thomson Group's business. In 2001, Thomson's Legal & Regulatory revenues amounted to US$2.8 billion, with more than 170,000 people working in the company in more than 30 countries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
At present, the Thomson Group engaged in the legal and regulatory business of the brand enterprises include West (West), Aranzadi (Aranzadi), Brookers (Brookers), Carswell (Carswell), Dialog (Dialog), ELLIS (ELLIS), lOB, Lare (1d Ley), Lawbook Co. Company (Lawbook Co.), RIA, Sweet&Maxwell, and Thomson&Thomson, among others.
2. Education: provides integrated learning products, services and solutions for individuals and continuing re-education providers and similar businesses. Thomson Group's Education business focuses on increasing internationality and profitability while investing significant, capital in the strongest academic and lifelong learning market sectors. Thomson's Education business, which consists primarily of student, adult and professional education, concentrates 84% of its sales in the North American market. 2001 revenues from Thomson Group Education amounted to US$1.9 billion, making it the Group's second largest business.
Currently, the Thomson Group's brand companies engaged in the education business include CourseTechnology (CourseTechnology), Delmar (Delmar), Education Direct (Education Direct), Cale (Cale), Heinle (Heinle), Nelson (Nelson), Prometric (Prometric), Southwestern (Prometric), and other companies. Prometric), South- Western Publishing, and Wadsworth, among others.
3. Finance: provides integrated information and business process solutions to financial institutions and 170,000 financial professionals worldwide. Finance is the third largest business of the Thomson Group, in 2001 the Thomson Group financial sector revenue reached 1.6 billion U.S. dollars. There are now 9,200 people working in this part of the Thomson Group in more than 70 countries and territories around the world.
At present, the Thomson Group's brand enterprises engaged in the financial business include AutEx, Disclosure, FirstCall, IFR, ILX Systems and 1nvestext.
4. Science, Technology and Health: provides comprehensive information, services and solutions for researchers and practitioners in the fields of healthcare, medicine, science and technology
. Technology and health is the fourth largest business of the Thomson Group, and in 2001, the Thomson Group's revenue in the field of technology and health amounted to 697 million U.S. dollars. More than 3,800 people work in this part of the Thomson Group in more than 130 countries and territories around the world.
Currently, Thomson's technology and health brands include AmericanHealthConsultants, Derwentlnformation, 1SIWebofScience, MICROMEDEX and Physicists Desk Reference (PDR). Physicians' Desk Reference (PDRPhysicians'DeskReference). Thomson Group has always emphasized customer orientation, and the company's employees value customers and focus on them - an important prerequisite for Thomson Group to win the trust of customers and achieve success. Thomson Group's current President and CEO Richard J. Harrington (Richard J. Harrington) has said: "Our goal is to transfer the right information to the right person at the right time with the right tools to help them make faster and better decisions."
To this end, the Thomson Group maintains "everything you need" as a central and important aspect of its service philosophy. Our customers need to be informed," says the chairman of the group's board of directors. In a sense, the success of business, organization and research is closely related to the speed of decision-making. Thomson Group strives to provide its customers with the information they 'need' at a depth and speed that no one else can. Our active development and application of a wide range of information technology tools is designed to ensure that the information our customers need is 'there'."
As a globally recognized education solutions provider, Thomson Group meets the needs of its customers through its customized, "Discover-Learn-Assess" trilogy model based on the concepts of discovery, learning and assessment. As a globally recognized provider of education solutions, Thomson Group meets the diverse requirements of its customers through its customized "Discover-Learn-Assess" model, which is based on the concepts of discovery, learning and assessment. The so-called Discovery, Learning and Assessment refers to the fact that, regardless of whether it is a comprehensive or single subject study, in the discovery phase, learners put forward their learning requirements according to their own needs and obtain source information through the Thomson Group's e-learning solutions; subsequently, the Thomson Learning Solutions will provide different learning methods and modes to help learners learn the relevant concepts and skills; and finally, the Thomson Learning solution also helps learners to evaluate learning effectiveness in order to improve learning methods. This is a complete and effective education solution. Looking back at the history of the Thomson Group, it is easy to see that the words mergers, acquisitions and disposals have been used throughout. In fact, the core businesses of the Thomson Group today have all been acquired through mergers and acquisitions. Mergers are the basic means by which the Thomson Group realizes its multiple operations.
Thomson Group's four existing core businesses have all been formed through acquisitions. Similar to the acquisitions and mergers of other publishing companies, the mergers and acquisitions of the Thomson Group in recent years have been characterized by the following:
International mergers and acquisitions have become more and more frequent, reflecting the tendency of the Thomson Group to develop into an international media group; The scale of mergers and acquisitions has become larger and larger. At the same time, from the perspective of the development history of Thomson Group, Thomson Group according to the characteristics of the times and market conditions, and constantly adjust their business management strategy, to Thomson Group education branch, for example, its after the 1990s went through three different business strategy stage, just in six years, Thomson Group's business structure has changed a lot, in 1995, accounted for the largest proportion of the travel and newspapers were In 1995, travel and newspapers, which accounted for the largest share, were abandoned by Thomson in the restructuring, and "doing what you do best" became Thomson's biggest business strategy, even if the business that accounted for the largest share of income was not abandoned. It has been proved that after abandoning travel and newspapers, Thomson Group quickly acquired Prometric, which has a leading position in European and American examinations and education assessment, laying a foundation for Thomson Group to consolidate its leading position in education. In addition to the diversified business philosophy and people-oriented service concept, in order to adapt to the progress and requirements of the times, the active application of information technology, the provision of various types of e-solutions, and the active expansion of the international market have become important development concepts of the Thomson Group.
In fact, the Thomson Group is currently one of the few international media groups that actively applies information technology and has been successful in the actual market, at this point, the Thomson Group is a good proof of the huge market potential that e-learning solutions have. Of the Thomson Group's total revenues of approximately $7.2 billion in 2001, $3.9 billion was generated from electronic media and $1.1 billion from the Internet, both of which accounted for the bulk of the Thomson Group's total revenues. In the words of Thomson Group President and CEO Harrington: "...... At present, more than half of the overall business of the Thomson Group are used in an electronic way, and only this way to realize the Thomson put forward the 'have it all ' and maximize customer satisfaction."
1. Laws and regulations. As of today, the global market for laws and regulations is solid, stable and mature. With the advancement of technology, there is an expansion trend in providing legal and regulatory information online. Geographically, North America remains the largest market in the world, followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America. The trend of internationalization will also profoundly affect the publication of laws and regulations. At present, the important tendencies of law and regulation publishing include: (1) The convenience and reliability of the Internet has become an important source for people to choose to obtain law and regulation information through the Internet. (2) More and more assistance between countries is bound to promote the proliferation of the law and regulation publishing market.
In response to these trends, the Thomson Group is actively developing a business model for the provision of legal and regulatory information via the Internet. At the same time, based on the trend toward internationalization, the Thomson Group will further advance its internationalization and seek to gain more revenue in multiple markets.
2. Education. The Thomson Group's education business focuses on three basic markets: the student education market, the adult education market and the professional education market. Overall, the biggest adversary that Thomson Group has faced is the economic recession. For example, the economy was less than robust in 2001, and although revenues from higher education were virtually unaffected in absolute numbers, they actually declined overall compared to high enrollment rates. Then there's the Gale Group, for example, where lower library budgets have reduced the purchase of paper books, while enthusiasm for electronics has increased in relative terms.
The U.S. Department of Education predicts that college enrollment in the United States will continue to rise, and by 2004, the nation's enrollment will reach 16 million students. At that time, teachers, students and libraries will gradually increase their use of electronic devices for teaching, learning and research. Therefore, for Thomson Group, the future development of the education business should focus on distance learning and electronic solutions.
3. Finance. Thomson's financial business has been severely tested and challenged in recent years. This stems mainly from the fact that the margins of customers and investment firms targeted by financial information services have declined considerably. Despite the overall decline in the financial business, customer demand for comprehensive, high-quality information has risen sharply.
The Thomson Group's response to this has been to improve the quality of its integrated electronic solutions and to try to expand into new areas. The Thomson Group will also continue to accelerate the construction of financial information databases in order to become a leader in the provision of financial market information. Thomson Group's specific future development strategies for finance are: (1) to strive to improve the quality and increase the quantity of its products in the face of massive growth in information; (2) to provide more add-on types of services to its current products and services; (3) to keep abreast of the market and continually adjust the direction of its products; (4) to develop new information services to suit the type and characteristics of users' work; and (5) to expand its distribution channels.
4. Technology and Health. Over the past few years, a number of trends have emerged in the technology and health markets that have influenced customer consumer behavior, notably:
(1) Given the increasing number and sophistication of customers' information needs, and the efforts of corresponding organizations to find ways to access the Internet and to provide information that can be queried and ****enjoyed. In this way, the Thomson Group is actively developing and expanding electronic solutions. The company's current focus in health is on building a database system that can be ****enabled by hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.
(2) Intense competition in the technology and health industries has led to a boom in industry research and a rise in demand for information. Currently, there is an urgent need for market-specific and product-specific information. In response to this situation, Thomson Group actively organizes and establishes various special groups to strengthen the collection and supply of information in different fields.
(3) At present, pharmaceutical companies have reduced their investment in pharmaceutical advertisements and increased their investment in medical education, and the health education market is expected to receive a huge boost in the near future. Therefore, the acquisition of Gardiner-Caldwell in 2001 can be considered a wise move. For the future, Thomson Group intends to further strengthen its position in the medical and health information supply market.
(4) With medical errors on the rise, databases that can help enable online co-diagnosis and can act as a strong support are what all hospitals and other related organizations are looking for. And this will undoubtedly be Thomson's next development focus and revenue growth.
Overall, there is still a lot of market potential in the medical and health field, and Thomson Group will intensify its efforts to tap into this area.
From the business areas mentioned above, we can see that the active application of electronic information technology is an important concept for the future development of the Thomson Group, and at the same time, it is not difficult to see that the strategy of internationalization follows. As a matter of fact, in addition to the rapid development in the United States and Europe, Thomson Group has also established offices or organizations at all levels in Asia, Latin America and other regions, and the business in these regions has also brought Thomson Group a considerable amount of profit. From the interview with Robert Cullen, President and CEO of Thomson Education International, we can also appreciate the importance of internationalization strategy in the development of Thomson Group.