Everyone who tried knows how difficult it can be to express yourself exactly the way you want, and to find the right words.
- It all started with that I wrote a lot in English at my former job, says Ola Persson, CEO at WordFinder. I thought it was hard to always look up words in a dictionary and thought that there should be a product that is more accessible while you write on the computer. I produced a prototype and contacted a publishing house.
This is how it started, first with Prismas Swedish-English dictionary on the computer, then the English-Swedish. Now there are 120 titles and 14 languages available.
The product is aimed to everyone who write in foreign languages, including large multinational companies such as Volvo, Ericsson and Astra Zeneca - all examples of companies who use English as the language and who are customers of WordFinder. But among the customers there are also bank and insurance companies and - perhaps more unexpectedly, - schools and doctors.
Schools work with dictionaries in order for students to concentrate on formulating the content of their texts, but the doctors use the product as a tool to facilitate the writing of articles for publication, medicine is an area of research where it is quite accepted that the language should be English.
- Then we have our "super-users", says Ola Persson, who are the translators. They have in contrast to the large companies maybe only a license, but many dictionaries. They help us to continually develop new features.
WordFinder´s mission is to create understanding between people in global businesses, but the vision is – Reach out to the world!
There is no real competitor in Sweden, there are mostly free pages on the Web, pages that do not meet the same quality as real dictionaries. Ola Persson says that although there might be 1-2 companies with their own solutions for each country in other countries, so far no one has reached the quality that WordFinder offers. Moreover, it is both easier and cheaper for publishers to sell their dictionaries to WordFinder than creating their own similar products. In Sweden, for example, Nordstedts has put such a product and instead cooperate with Ola Persson and his company.
It is not more than 20 employees in the office in Gothenburg. The technical development is made in collaboration with outside companies that work according to the specifications Wordfinder sets. You get royalties for products sold, a solution Ola Persson is very pleased with. Basically, he cooperates in a similar manner with licensed publishing houses.
- 2008 was not as good as we had hoped, the last quarter reduced the numbers, he answers to the question about the future - but we have recently issued products in Chinese and Russian, as soon as the economic crisis has been reversed, we will provide Japanese and Arabic as well. It opens up entirely new markets for us. Among other things, in the U.S they are very interested in Arabic.
We are planning a franchise-office in the U.S., eventually perhaps in China as well.
WordFinder - a Swedish company that is well on track to meet its vision – Reach out to whole world.
For more information and contactThe head office in Gothenburg
WordFinder Software International AB
Box 2212
403 14 Göteborg
Visiting address: Västra Hamngatan 24-26
Phone: +46 31 719 62 00
Fax: +46 31 719 62 99
info@wordfinder.se
sales@wordfinder.se
www.wordfinder.se