Hancom CEO Kim Yeonsu aims to rally developers, confident to leave mark on global SaaS market

Hancom is a title ubiquitous to Koreans as Samsung and LG.

As one of South Korea’s oldest software package organizations, it is identified for its Hangul term processing application, the country’s remedy to Microsoft Phrase. Hangul introduced in 1989 and is until now the 2nd most employed word processing application at the rear of the US enterprise. Hancom literally stands for “Korean and Laptop.” As of 2021, Hancom was worthy of all over $350 million on the Korean inventory marketplace.

Today, Hancom CEO Kim Yeonsu, has an formidable objective: to make the Hancom name ubiquitous outside of South Korea as well.

“My desire is for just about every respectable software package developer in the entire world to know Hancom, even ahead of I meet them deal with-to-confront when I go abroad,” she explained, who became CEO of Hancom in August 2021 and is heiress-apparent to the small business group. She joined Hancom Group in 2012 and rose as a result of the ranks to just take up vital government positions, largely liable for mergers and acquisitions, as well as management of subsidiaries, in advance of using the prime task of the group’s flagship.

According to Yeonsu, Hancom has started a shift from its preceding set up-centered application organization design to a cloud-centered, membership service organization design. The enterprise is giving its Hancom Place of work in program-as-a-support (SaaS) format, which is remaining employed additional and extra by international audiences on a daily foundation, the CEO explained.

The South Korean computer software firm has also been aggressive in acquisitions to broaden globally. Its Singapore-based mostly subsidiary Hancom Alliance will finish the acquisition of Taiwanese SaaS agency KDAN Cellular to grow in North The united states, Europe and Asia. Hancom is also taking into consideration building a strategic investment in Southeast Asian HR SaaS organization Swingvy. “We program to promptly broaden in the global cloud current market as a result of acquisitions of promising SaaS companies like KDAN.”

“Hancom is at present valued at all-around 400 billion gained my target is to increase this to 4 trillion won. I am self-assured that this can be attained.” In her to start with-at any time job interview, completely with ZDNet, Yeonsu, gentle-spoken yet agency, was trustworthy about Hancom’s challenges in advance, but also bullish when it arrived to the foreseeable future of the business.

A Table Set FOR Builders

The CEO and her top executives are setting up to choose section in Cellular World Congress 2023 kicking off afterwards this month. Yeonsu claims she will be searching for new small business opportunities and partnerships with developers.

And the primary giving will be Hancom’s SDK, or software advancement kit, for all the technologies and application on Hancom Business, the firm’s have edition of business suite that incorporates Hangul phrase processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and PDF editor.

“Our method due to the fact previous year can be summed up in just one term, advancement,” the CEO claimed, “and collaboration with world builders is crucial to that.” To use an analogy, Yeonsu reported Hancom will be location a desk complete of a variety of foodstuff for builders in North The united states and Europe to select every single in accordance to their preferences.

“To go world, we recognized that we cannot supply software packed with many capabilities that clients may well or may perhaps not want. So we are splitting what we have into parts of technologies so that the customers have the freedom to choose.”

Previous 12 months, Hancom became a shareholder of Taiwanese software package firm KDAN, which features alternatives for cellular PDF, e-signature, and animation. The Taiwanese business also has its personal AI doc management services that competes with Adobe Inventive Cloud. “We have power as an editor, but the distinctive formats we are modifying, from phrase to PDF, present different situations. Our abilities in the PDF structure was comparatively weaker. KDAN had that skills in PDF.”

Roughly 80% of KDAN’s revenue and clients are from North America and Europe, Yeonsu claimed, offering Hancom with an entry level for those people marketplaces as part of its world wide growth system. KDAN, established in 2009, also has recorded about 100 million downloads for its app in Taiwan and is a nicely-set up model there, she additional, allowing for Hancom to extend there as very well.

Hancom’s global growth will emphasis on North America and Europe as markets there normally have high paying out in computer software, the CEO claimed. On the other hand, conventionally, Asian marketplaces have to have a lot of customization from the software supplier to healthy the neighborhood market, Yeonsu stated, which involves a reasonably large nearby group for procedure integration. “So we want to supply the technologies we have to start with, then locate out what our customers’ desires are. That way, we can pick the technologies that are suitable for even more growth which we can sense confident about.”

This blueprint for world-wide growth mainly stems from Yeonsu’s experience from Hancom’s acquisition of Belgium-dependent PDF option agency iText in 2015 and later marketing the company in 2018 to private equity Crescendo Fairness Associates. Right after the sale, Yeonsu continued to handle iText as CEO and chair of the board for three decades.

“Throughout my tenure at iText, we attempted to uncover a job in the Asian industry as effectively. What we acquired was that we could not just offer the products and services of iText to these markets but necessary to give consulting products and services as well. So this knowledge formed how I feel a Korean software enterprise should solution growing globally. ‘We have these many systems this is our licensing plan,’ and support prospects obtain what they require.”

Aside from growing abroad, in phrases of the South Korean current market, Yeonsu reported that the corporation was looking for new small business prospects by using the amassed knowledge from providing the Korean language word processor software Hangul for 32 yrs. “For us this gathered document, or details, is an asset. We are considering of numerous eventualities, these as a comparison of how the Korean language was applied in an more mature doc to a additional the latest 1. We also want to increase the Hangul format alone.”

This utilization of information, which AI can aid in, is incredibly a great deal an ongoing homework for the CEO.”We deliver an editor: a instrument to document info in several formats, from word to PDF. Now far more than at any time, we are hunting at our editor as a container of info.

“So a single of the factors we think about is how to extract what details and how to use it so that we can remedy customers’ issues. AI is one of the equipment we use for this, but AI or not, we believe more in terms of what benefit the application of a distinct technology can provide for the prospects.” Yeonsu pressured that forming SDK collaboration with developers will also give Hancom accessibility to much more facts.

Culture Change

Yeonsu’s expertise abroad and managing international firms has also shaped her management type. She sums up her have fashion as pragmatic and to the stage. Her executives that I talked to described her as an entrepreneur who stresses the relevance of overcoming issues, freedom, brief choice-producing, and personal accountability. Communication would seem to be 1 of Yeonsu’s top agendas: quickly soon after she was nominated as CEO, in November 2021 Hancom despatched its first shareholder letter.

Most Korean firms even now are really hierarchical. Most personnel simply call just about every other by their final names blended with their positions, which are typically presented dependent on seniority and age. The Korean language also has honorifics, where by someone speaking to a different that is older or of higher standing makes use of specific nouns and verb endings.

Hancom under Yeonsu has done absent with considerably of this and staff members simply call each other by their entire names with out their positions. Yeonsu herself is named Yeonsu by her subordinates. Staff members use honorifics between every other irrespective of place, which is regarded extra polite than not using any honorifics. This sets an ambiance of regard for people but with boundaries.

“My encounters in North The usa and Europe have modified how I approach convincing and turning out to be welcoming with people today,” the CEO explained. “This is also the same for my employees. When I negotiate with them, when I convince staff to function with me, it is really about getting prevalent floor.”

In its place of a leading-down structure, Yeonsu strongly prefers forming a consensus. “I assume how a great deal consensus a intention has in the organization correlates to how successfully the intention was accomplished.”

Standard Korean organizations, related to their counterparts in Japan and China, have also in the earlier demanded staff to place the superior of the enterprise right before them selves, but this work lifestyle has shifted immensely all around the past five years by the world-wide debate above operate as well as the pandemic, and Hancom has also been impacted by these societal traits.

“Since I started out my vocation in Korean companies, I’ve also experienced the mentally of ‘everything for the job’ and expected the identical from colleagues in the past. I no longer strategy management this way.”

“Even before I turned the CEO, there was a rift amongst the older generation and the youthful generation, culturally talking, and there ended up attempts to bridge this hole by the firm even in advance of I took the helm. So I would say the Hancom lifestyle nowadays was fashioned partly from my path and the normal evolution of perception about function in South Korea.”

But Yeonsu also stresses the worth of particular accountability that each and every employee should have, if they want the so-identified as work and lifetime equilibrium. “The company’s part is to established a distinct normal of fashion to the worker and in between workforce. Also, a company have to give very clear roles and obligations to the personal. But following that, it is up to the particular person.”

“We have to imagine about the finish objective. The stop purpose of placing a function lifestyle is to talk and do the job superior alongside one another.”

Starting up this 12 months, Hancom is also scheduling to put into action a new process where by the corporation and workers on a mutually recognized purpose that will be evaluated at year’s end. This process was examined in small units last year but will now be executed in Hancom headquarters in South Korea.

When it arrives to culture and HR, on the other hand, the CEO said this also needs to be primarily based on wherever a certain procedure is based. For illustration, Taiwan will have its very own HR South Korea its possess as properly there will also have to have to be a International HR, Yeonsu mentioned.

Yet another transform the CEO built was what Hancom’s individual builders target on and how they approach function. “In the previous, our own builders largely centered on technologies associated to Hangul. But to coincide with our expansion, I have provided them extra liberty to pick out and produce the systems they want that in the end in good shape our conclude aim of delivering worth to buyers. Failure is Alright, as lengthy as there is something we can discover from it.”

“We have computer software builders with many years of practical experience. We have legacy property as a program company company that operated for a long time. I would say we are but to completely use these to their comprehensive probable and we are usually contemplating of ways to do so.”

FOR THE ALLIANCE: Additional ACQUISITIONS

Yeonsu said that Hancom is preparing for additional acquisitions of organizations that fit into the company’s total system. “You have to glimpse at what you have as a firm prior to you imagine about acquisitions. What we are superior at and the place that can just take us.”

The CEO also shared her thoughts on how she chooses candidates: “Most vital is the individuals. Who I perform with. I also stay away from providers that are wanting for a community sale.

“When it comes to acquisitions in the earlier, most of it came organically by our executives performing properly with their executives.”

Yeonsu reported after an acquisition, she presents evidently defined roles amongst Hancom and the recently acquired firm. “Sometimes Hancom will be capable to acquire a new arena from the obtained enterprise. Occasionally Hancom will perform with the obtained organization to secure new arenas.”

“For illustration, KDAN will be working with our Workplace SDK to start a KDAN Place of work in Taiwan. We wrapped our business motor and gave it to KDAN, which included UI and UX that match far better with the local market.

Hancom set up a subsidiary known as Hancom Alliance in Singapore previous calendar year in September, a corporation that will be hunting for strategic investments and partnerships with companies like KDAN.

The Hancom Alliance brand name will be subservient to the manufacturer of acquired or partnered corporations that are well founded in their respective sectors, Yeonsu reported. “I believe additional model worth is made from possessing numerous makes, alternatively of acquiring distinct brands abide by just one manufacturer,” CEO stated, which is markedly different from most South Korean conglomerates that like to unify distinct businesses less than 1 brand name, this kind of as Hyundai or SK.

She also helps make it obvious that the profitability of a company is really essential. “The software package sector in common receives a whole lot of enterprise money funding. But to me, how undertaking capitals can invest in providers with extensive losses is pretty frankly a mystery. I assume it arrives from [them] normally on the lookout for the outlier in their standpoint. In that perception, I guess the margin level I want from Hancom and the corporations it operates with can be perceived as over the market average.”

At the exact time, Yeonsu claims how she appears to be at profitability, revenue, and valuation general is nuanced. “Income may be significant correct now for a enterprise. But I imagine we have to glimpse at upcoming profitability and expansion. A organization with a great resume isn’t often rewarding. No matter what the problem is, a company’s benefit is identified I imagine by how it convinces its internal employees and exterior stakeholders of its visions and plans.”

The release of SDKs, the cultural shift, and acquisitions all have the conclude intention of propelling Hancom’s advancement. “We are regarded for the Hangul Business office in South Korea. I imagine there ended up lots of uncertainties about irrespective of whether Hancom experienced space for advancement.

“So what we are changing is promoting our Business office technologies, discovering diverse values from the doc remedy we by now posseses, and my job is to persuade the inner employees that we can expand.

“In the past, considering the fact that most of our prospects came from the general public sector, we had very little incentive to locate out the desires of prospects. But now our precedence is to find out deeply and correctly the requires of our buyers. This will aid us build a healthy ecosystem all-around our SDK.”