InfoTorg – a one-stop shop for online information
InfoTorg is the largest online information service in Sweden. It provides access to a large number of databases, hosted by about 20 online services, to over 150.000 registered users based at about 6.000 clients. The clients are found within financial services, media, telecom, energy, distribution, legal, automotive and most other industries. Among the clients are major corporations as well as small and medium-sized enterprises, authorities, universities and libraries.
InfoTorg is operated by InfoTorg AB, a company which also operates the online service PointLex. InfoTorg AB employs about 60 staff and has yearly revenues of over EUR 40 million.
It is a part of Bisnode, a leading European publishing house within digital business information with services within market, credit and product information. Operations are conducted by some 95 companies in 18 european countries and the number of employees is approximately 3.000. Bisnode is owned by the listed private equity company Ratos (70 %) and the family-owned media group Bonnier (30 %).
Online services and databases
Some of the services are operated by InfoTorg and others by external operators, connected to InfoTorg by means of computer-to-computer communications and gateways.
InfoTorg is probably the most well-known abroad for the operation of the Swedish legal information system Rättsbanken consisting of more than 40 databases. They cover virtually all Swedish primary law as well as case law, literature, legal news, English and Swedish versions of CELEX etc. As regards legal information InfoTorg AB also own and run InfoTorg Juridik (PointLex), Swedens probably most important legal news service. Other well-known services are Personinformation, including the official Swedish population register SPAR, with information on all Swedish inhabitants, and Företagsinformation, including the company and organisation register BASUN, with information of approximately 1.7 million companies (including sole proprietorships), organisations etc.
Among the online services that can be accessed via InfoTorg by means of computer-to-computer communications and gateways are the official company register of Sweden/Bolagsverket, the Swedish trademark database Varumärken within the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV), the official automobile register of the Swedish National Road Administration (Vägverket), called InfoBil, and the official real estate register of the National Land Survey, called FastighetsFakta. Credit and business information from Bisnode-owned Soliditet and Svensk Handelstidning Justitia can also be accessed from InfoTorg. The above-mentioned Företagsinformation also gives access to a version of the Swedish business and news online service Affärsdata from Bisnode, covering about 40 Swedish media (newspapers, news agencies, business magazines etc) in full-text. Also accessible through InfoTorg are the Swedish Telephone Directory Online and the Postal Zip Codes Directory.
Communications and access
The most commonly used access to InfoTorg is via the Web. InfoTorg can however be accessed by means of a wide range of other networks and protocols. Information from InfoTorg may also be integrated in intranets and internal systems by means of program-to-program communications and protocols, e.g. Web services.
Register updating services
InfoTorg also offers register updating services under the name Ajour. The Ajour services are based on the information in SPAR as regards persons and in BASUN as regards companies and organisations. InfoTorg receives a copy of the client's customer register, which is matched against SPAR and/or BASUN. The client then gets an updated listing of the customers.
Ajour offers three services, namely announcements, updating and ID setting. Announcements offers regular updating on a weekly or monthly basis. Updating offers register updating once in a while. ID setting works by matching name and address against SPAR and/or BASUN. InfoTorg match to get clear hits, near misses and misses. After processing the near misses, in most cases 70-90 % of the customers are identified.