Managing the Information Gap

In trying to remain competitive in Japan, foreign corporations face two challenges: where to find that crucial bit of information essential to successful management of the Japan operations, and how to help foreign staff keep up with what is happening in the market by providing them with access to the same information available to their Japanese counterparts. A solution to both difficulties may be online databases. The problem, however, is knowing what you need and where to find it.

What information?

When deciding what research strategies your company should undertake, you must first decide just what kind of information it is looking for. Information can be categorized in numerous ways, but one rough dichotomy based on form is factual (original) information and reference (secondary) information.

Factual information is material prepared by the original authors, such as that found in newspapers, journals, and books. This information is produced and distributed with help from editors and publishers and sold commercially. A corollary to this is "gray" (or nonconventional) sources, information in the form of government reports, proceedings of symposia, technical reports, etc., that is normally not commercially available. In other words, you can't walk into your local bookstore and buy it. Both kinds of factual information, though, can be found more and more in the form of electronic media, including CDROMs and online databases.

Reference information is data that has been abstracted from the original sources and made available in several formats, including indexes, bibliographies, and abstracts. Reference information is best for getting a broad overview of a topic, or finding citations to determine where needed factual information can be found.

The advent of computers, and the resulting ease of storing information, soon spurred the creation of electronic databases. Some databases contain factual information; others are compendia of reference information. By connecting with an online database (via telephone lines and telecommunications software), or by purchasing a packaged database on disk or CDROM, companies and private individuals can now access information databases much more easily than ever before. And the number of online databases (not to mention the amount of information in these databases) is growing daily.

One big advantage of online databases is that we end users no longer need to store massive databases of information; we can download and store only the data that we need. One disadvantage -- even more so in Japan with its per-minute phone charges is that we have to pay for time spent online accessing the database, and often for each item of data that we download from the database as well.

A language barrier?

A barrier that many foreigners cornplain about when dealing with Japanese information sources is its Form (i.e., the Japanese language). Some expats may glibly proclaim that it is not really necessary to learn Japanese when so much of the infermation is being translated into English or other languages; but any company that bases its strategy on this faulty premise may seriously damage its competitiveness. According to John Bukacek, former administrator of the Japanese Language Division of the American Translators Association, less than 25%, of technical and business information originating from Japan is available in English.

If you want full access to Japanese business data, you are stuck with the choice of learning Japanese or hiring competent translators. Neither choice will be easy. Few people in todays competitive business environment can devote the time needed for acquiring fluency in Japanese. And while there are many native speakers of Japanese who claim they can translate into English, if you select a translator on the basis of low price, be prepared to have the output edited heavily before it is usable. (For information about the translation industry in Japan, I recommend contacting the Japan Association of Translators (JAT), a Tokyo-based group with many native English translators who work with the Japanese language. JAT won't recommend individual translators, but the JAT directors can probably answer your questions about the industry and prevent some costly or time-consuming missteps.)

Japanese databases

The Ministry of International Trade and industry (MITI) releases an annual Database Directory, a report containing a wide range of information about databases in Japan. According to this directory, in 1991 there were 2,686 databases available in Japan, of which 892 were of Japanese origin. While the number of locally-produced databases is undoubtedly growing, it is obvious that Japanese database users are eager to get the information being offered by foreign companies or their Japanese representatives.

The MITI Database Directory breaks down databases into four categories: business (39.5%) of available databases), natural science and technology (29.6%), general (26.8%), and humanities (3.5%). Newspapers, journals, news reports, and "who's who" listings and information on organizations are contained in the general category of the MITI division. If you include such items as databases valuable for business use, then business databases would comprise more than 5O% of the total.

The Database Promotion Center, Japan, conducts an annual Survey of User Awareness of Database Services to determine the status of commercial databases and the problems encountered by users. According to the results compiled from a questionnaire sent out to over 2,800 companies in September and October 1992 (with 722 companies responding,a response rate: 25.7%), the top five ranking databases (based on usage by billing amounts) are the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology's On-line Information System (JICST/JOIS; used by 45.8% of the companies responding), Nikkei Telecom (39.4%), the Japan Patent Information Organization's PATOLIS (37.6%), DIALOG (35.0%), and the Scientific and Technical Information Network (STN; 12.8%).

Nikkei New Media surveys (every January and July) database companies and publishes a ranking list based on the number of contracted users. As of July 1, 1993, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., vendor of such databases as Nikkei Telecom and NEEDS (Nikkei Economic Electronic System), had 71,613 accounts jregistered passwords). The next largest database vendor was QUICK, provider of stock market infer mation, with 47,000 accounts. TKC, which supplies information regarding laws and ordinances, was next with 39,899 accounts. G-Search Corporation (a newspaper and magazine articles database vendor) and NEC Corporation (the C&C VAN database vendor) were fourth and fifth with 26,406 and 24,800 accounts, respectivelv.

Accessing data

The information is out there, and it is diverse. But as Thierry Consigny information manager of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, points out in the Centre's excellent Directory of Sources of Japanese Information, "The most difficult hurdle is not the diversity of Japanese information but the diversity of users, a reason why a universal approach to Japanese information is not possible." In other words, you need to ask yourself: What company resources and budget are available for Japanese information procurement? Do we need specialized or general information! Who will be using the information, and how.

To take the worst case scenario, let's say that your company has limited human resources and budget, but it requires a regular supply of information in a focused area. One option would be to have someone visit some of Tokyo's libraries, such as those of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), the International House of Japan, or the Japan Foundation (or even the National Diet Library -- but be prepared for a long wait). These libraries have a wide range of infermation in Japanese, and many of their stacks contain English-language materials and publications.

Another option might be to subscribe to an information provider who fares or mails specific information on a regular basis. There are many such companies in Tokyo, including Comline Business Data, Inc., Digitized Information, and Nikkei Fax. Comline and Digitized Information enable you to select the information POLI want from their various cate gories; Nikkei Fax will fax you excerpts of news reports together with the most important highlights of the day's news from the Nikkei Shimbun Japan's largest business daily.

A third option is to access relevant online databases. This is possible even if you do not have a modem. RUKIT is an electronic information library where the stacks contain PC terminals instead of books! As of March 31, 1913, RUKTT had made available to its members 1X terminals that could access 2,000 databases worldwide, as well as multirnedia in the form of CD ROMs. Some of the domestic data base services available through RUKIT are G-Search, C&C-VAN JOIS, and PAT<>I,IS.

If you have a modem, you can access hundreds of online databases in Japan. The largest and most comprehensive economic information system in Japan is the NFEDSS economic database. You can find this system, which provides selected information both in Japanese and English, on Nikkei Telecom. Another useful online database is G-Scarch, an inte grated database service containing i trillion articles, corporate information on 960,000 firms nationwide. and information from a wide variety of fields. You can either access G-Search directly or via a computer network like Nifty-Serve.

The future

An interesting trend to keep your eye on is the ability to access Japanese in formation via the Internet. (Computing Japan will investigate this in a future issue.--Ed.] This area of online access is playing an increasingly larger role in disseminating Japanese information. To cite just one example, using a World-Wide Web browser (an Internet tool for searching for information and sites on the Internet), I came across a 33-page listing of Japanese companies on the Internet. Each of these Companies provides some kind of access to information about their- company or the products/services they offer, most in Japanese, some in English.

Even if your company has almost unlimited human resources and budget, you most probably are interested in shortening the staff time spent collecting information. Directories listing the sources of Japanese information are useful resources for this purpose. One of the best directories on Japanese sources is Johogen, a directory put out by Kodansha Ltd. This 2,800 investment will put at your fingertips almost all the information you need about information sources in Japan, covering 23,000 sources of information in only 1,200 pages. The book is broken down into information resources on business, industries and services, databases, individuals and personalities, self-development, daily life, business events, government ministries, agencies, and business and professional organizations.

The suggestions for accessing information in this article are a start, but this being Japan, you may find yourself relying more and more on your "human network" for verifying or- clarifying information. But by making systematic use of the infermation available from databases, you will be able to find out more than mere human resources can offer.