Maria Montenegro in FastForward podcast: We create AI agents that are unique to each business area

Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Maria Montenegro talked with Ron Miller from FastForward on AI, innovation and M&A.

Our software development organization, called the Digital Experience Group (DxG), is the product development engine of Wolters Kluwer. It’s a central group dedicated to our individual businesses, helping them develop new products and features.

We’ve also had an AI Center of Excellence for about 15 years, so we have strong capabilities that we can use to build AI into our products. That’s why our main strategy is to build — but acquisitions complement that.

Sometimes we make what I call technology acquisitions. These are usually smaller companies with little revenue but with a capability that would take us too long to build. When they reach the right point, we can acquire them and plug them into our business.

Other times, we acquire larger companies. For example, three months ago we acquired a fantastic legal software company called Brightflag. They provide a mid-market spend and matter management platform that helps corporate legal departments manage their outside counsel spend — which, as you know, can be very large in the U.S., especially compared to Europe.

Brightflag already had a well-established business and a large customer base. For us, building a competing solution that could reach scale in a reasonable amount of time would have been difficult, because it’s already a very attractive market with a few strong players. Brightflag was clearly the leader, so it would have been too late for us to enter organically.

So we build around our existing products and drive innovation that way, but we also complement that with acquisitions.

Since the launch of ChatGPT, how has AI changed your role as a strategist, and how has it influenced what you build or buy?
Traditionally, we’ve been building AI into our products for at least 15 years. Now we’re entering the era of Agentic AI, where systems can plan, reason, and execute across workflows. That opens up new possibilities for our businesses in information services.

We use a taxonomy of ten agent archetypes that reflect how professionals in our markets actually work. These span different parts of the workflow — from data preparation to discovery, analysis, and execution. Each business uses specific high-value use cases, and we deploy those across our portfolio. It’s how we create and market AI agents that are unique to each business area. In many ways, it’s re-energizing our content and information businesses and strengthening our competitive moats.

Some people ask whether AI is a risk or an opportunity for a company like ours. We see it as an opportunity. Even before generative AI, about half of our digital revenue already used some form of AI, so we have a strong track record.

We also have important competitive advantages in this new world. We have trusted, proprietary data and content — the foundation for AI to deliver quality answers and insights.

Our cloud portfolio is another strength. Demand for our cloud solutions is very strong, with revenue growing around 15%. It’s also much easier to build, deploy, and orchestrate agentic AI capabilities on cloud platforms than in fragmented on-premise environments.

In the end, it’s the combination of deep domain expertise, proprietary content, and technology that’s really our secret sauce. So we see the AI transformation as a major opportunity — the glass is definitely half full.