In all that Wolters Kluwer does, it strives to provide information, tools, and solutions to help professionals make their most critical decisions effectively and to improve their productivity. Through current, accurate, and expert information, leading-edge technology and software solutions, and superior customer service, Wolters Kluwer builds on its powerful brands and market positions to provide value to its customers. Here are some of their experiences:

Tailored tax solutions

“At an 80,000 foot level, our job is to identify what’s wanted and needed by the tax department’s customers and make sure that we are delivering it accurately and with world-class customer service,” says Shon Holyfield, Senior Manager of Tax with Cox Communications, Inc. “One of the many services the tax department provides is the execution of sales and use tax billing for its cable television and telephony customers.”

Sales and use tax in the United States does not exist at a federal level. Instead, each state determines and promulgates its own laws and regulations for this tax. Almost every state has sub-jurisdictions as well. This results in a high-volume of varied compliance issues if you are in the business of selling and buying goods throughout the United States – like Cox Communications.

“It’s not that any one state is terribly complex; it’s just that it’s so voluminous that it’s nearly impossible to get your arms around it all. That is why we are implementing CCH’s sales and tax use solution, CorpSystem ZIP Comm Database,” explains Mr. Holyfield. “We chose CCH to help us with our work in this area because they are comprehensive, their automatic updates of changes in tax rates minimize errors, and they deliver excellent customer service. A perfect example: we recently asked CCH to reformat their extremely useful ‘look-up tool’ to fit our system. Their response was simple: happy to assist.”

At the core of trademarks

A legal professional for over twenty years, Kristen Poggensee, Paralegal Associate with Motorola Inc., performs trademark searches as part of her daily work. With each research producing around 300 pages of information, using the highly interactive internet-based trademark clearance platform CT Corsearch has many clear benefits.

“CCH CORSEARCH Advantage allows me to perform my work far more efficiently than ever before,” explains Ms. Poggensee. “First, I order an online trademark search, specifying what the turnaround time is – whether that’s the same day or three days. When the search is complete, I receive notification by email. I can then log on to CCH’s site, no matter where I am, and review the search results via the very user-friendly, intuitive navigation. These results also are hyperlinked to relevant resources, so I’m never more than one click away from any information I need.”

Ms. Poggensee continues, “Another really innovative feature of Advantage is that I can insert my review comments in the same application. These comments can then be viewed by my team members, maximizing our productivity because we never duplicate work. I used to perform these searches manually, which was a far more laborious and inefficient process. The fact that everything is now stored electronically means that Advantage goes a long way to helping Motorola achieve its goal of a paperless environment, and put its vision of ‘Seamless Mobility’ into practice.”

Partners in growth

“The launch of Neurology Now, our new magazine for neurology patients and their families, would not be possible without the business and financial support of Wolters Kluwer’s Lippincott Williams & Wilkins,” states Chief Executive Officer of the American Academy for Neurology Press, Bruce Polsky. “Publishing expertise and readiness to invest in growth in the health market are critical elements that Wolters Kluwer brings to our partnership. Combine these with the Academy’s intellectual property and the loyalty of its membership, and we are confident that this publication – the first broad-interest magazine for neurology - will outstrip even the phenomenal success of our last joint venture, Neurology Today.”

“One thing that makes neurology so compelling,” continues Mr. Polsky, “is that something like one in six Americans is impacted by a neurological ailment of one sort or another, whether that be Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis or migraine. As many as 50 million people in the United States alone are affected by neurological illness.”

“Historically, neurology was an area that, once a neurologist was able to diagnose a disorder - many of which were chronic, debilitating illnesses - there was not much more they could do. The difference today is that as a result of a number of medical advances, there are treatments that can either help to slow the course of disease or make coping with neurological disease a lot more bearable. Given the pace of advances, and the efficacy of a number of new therapies, we felt that it was an appropriate time to launch a patient magazine.”

With almost 19,000 members in total, including 4,500 internationally-based, the not-for-profit American Academy of Neurology is the largest organization of neurologists in the world. Among the Academy’s missions is to provide continuing education to physicians, to advance the funding for and dissemination of research, and to draft evidence-based guidelines for the practice of neurology – but in all these initiatives, the ultimate goal is improving the quality of life for patients and their caregivers.

“We feel confident that Wolters Kluwer provides a strong, stable partnership for the Academy,” states Mr. Polsky. With twenty-five years experience in publishing, he is ideally placed to evaluate the services Wolters Kluwer provides. “There is a new esprit de corps at the organization and staff are unified and focused on implementing a number of strategic initiatives vital to the growth of our partnership.”

Neurology Now will publish quarterly both in print and online. The online version will be freely accessible in order to reach as many patients and caregivers as possible. A familiar practice by the Academy, Mr. Polsky explains, “The mission at the Academy is truly predicated on the well-being of patients and caregivers. It is our sense that making Neurology Now freely available to the public is an ideal way to advance that mission.”

To view the free online version of Neurology Now click here.

Revolutionizing content in context

What initially began as a six-month project to digitalize Ernst & Young’s internal documentation back in 1992, has now developed into an intranet that hosts a full-blown tax and legal electronic library. Containing over several million documents, the vast majority comes from leading Dutch publisher, Kluwer.

“When we started to expand the project back in 1993, we approached Kluwer with the idea of including their products, Vakstudie and Vakstudie Nieuws. Vakstudie has been ‘the Bible’ for Dutch tax law professionals for over a hundred years, so it was the obvious backbone for our information system,” explains Frans Rikhof, Director of the Centre for Tax and Legal Knowledge & Libraries at Ernst & Young. “At the time, the request we made was very unusual: we needed content that was quick, accurate, and dynamic, which is a huge difference to how things used to be. A real period of partnership followed, based on our requests for content that fits our particular context. It was revolutionary of Kluwer to meet this demand.”

That partnership continues to this day. “The solution that we have developed with Kluwer not only saves time, but the results are far more comprehensive as well. One of the big dangers in this business is missing information, but that also has now decreased dramatically.”