Many brands are under pressure from IP infringement and counterfeiters. As marketing and sales activities are increasingly moving online and consumers are becoming more digitalised, companies have focused their brand protection efforts on e-commerce IP enforcement. A recent UNCTAD survey has shown an almost 10% increase in online sales across most product categories during 2020. In addition, this research also highlights how such trends will most likely continue after the pandemic wanes.
However, companies cannot forget the fact that fake products must be manufactured, transported and shipped. Brand protection teams must work out how to apportion resources and capabilities to target the offline sourcing trade and imported counterfeited goods behind the online offers. To make the forceful impact, attack the source, once the products are exported, problems are multiplied.
Whereas online IP infringement is often handled by outsourced service providers, inhouse brand protection teams are directly responsible for offline IP infringement related activities and building the connection between online and offline world. In order to accurately and precisely manage every case of infringement, counterfeits or unauthorised use of IP, a purpose-built brand protection platform will boost your team performance. No matter what industry your brand operates in, it is becoming more difficult to manually keep track of cases, products and parties across multiple markets, communicating and collaborating with multiple touchpoints to various partners and stakeholders.
These days, digital platforms are being developed for specific industries and functions that are way smarter and more efficient than generic tools. Purpose-built software provides users with the features needed to get the job done and are not over-engineered or over-featured. Brand protection management software combines smart collaboration & communication, case & task management, investigation & identification, budget & finance, insights & analytics tailored for the modern brand protection team.
Here are five reasons why you need a tailored brand protection management platform that will supercharge your team efficiency and performance.
Avoid falling behind
In many cases brand protection teams are not provided with the correct digital tools. Conversely, they are constrained to rely on what is readily available to them (oftentimes more generic case management tools or document management solutions). People working with brand protection have a general higher academic education and are well paid, whereas not providing appropriate digital tools are a substantial waste of professional resources. This might not only lead to inefficiency but might also result in incorrect completion of tasks. Make sure that you keep up with the IP infringement complexity and everlasting change by providing your team with the proper and most effective digital tools for their job.
Data and feature consolidation
69% of workers waste up to an hour a day navigating between apps and brand protection professionals are no exception. Ask yourself, what are my objectives and what features would make me do a better job? Make sure key features and functions are purpose-built for brand protection professionals.
When key features and data are consolidated into a central brand protection management platform team productivity will be augmented and simplify the way you work. Furthermore, a single workspace will create consistency and transparency and enable further seamless automation and process improvements, while preventing problems like multiple data entry.
Stay organized, get the full overview
Stay organized by keeping cases, targets, products and communication together. Your brand protection projects become more focused and streamlined and no information is lost. All your team conversations, files, tasks, and milestones live together in a single shared workspace.
This not only gives the team members a full overview of their daily work but let them speed through common tasks faster and share information easier. Furthermore, having information and documents readily available in a single purpose-built digital platform saves time on sending documents back and forth, improving time-to-decision making.
The digital platform becomes a knowledge management platform for your brand protection team, but also for new team members. You can quickly get new team members up to speed and engaged in teamwork, regardless of where they are located.
Boost team communication and collaboration
Make collaboration easier by segmenting and assigning team members and stakeholders into different projects and working areas. Collaboration is not limited to the internal team but also includes people outside your company to empower seamless collaboration with their global service providers, in terms of test purchase, raid, litigation, product identification and so on.
Avoid communication and collaboration chaos and keep track of project status, conversations and updates on documents or tasks.
By using brand protection industry standard workflow, processes and terminology, the platform will boost team collaboration efficiency and avoid confusion and misunderstandings between internal and external team members. As a result, everyone involved knows the status of the projects and can collaborate and keep the activities and productivity flowing, helping you reach desired results faster.
Eliminates the guesswork, adding intelligence
A tailored digital platform for brand protection will enable your team to receive data-driven insights, as business critical data is stored in a single workspace. Once your team will collect and analyse data, you’re likely to find that it’s easier to reach a confident decision and act on the right directions. Data allows your team to better understand the impact that any decision will have on your business.
By moving towards a data driven approach, your team will be able to become more proactive, the data tells a story, and your team reacts to it.
Conclusion
These days, digital platforms are being developed for specific industries and functions that are way smarter and more efficient than generic tools. Make sure you keep up with the changing times by providing your brand protection team with the proper and most effective tools for their jobs. A purpose-built platform does not only increase productivity and efficiency but enhances employee experience and satisfaction.
Last year DH Anticounterfeit launched Origo, a tailored platform for brand protection professionals to support their everyday work in terms of collaboration & communication, case & task management, investigation & identification, budget & finance, insights & analytics. This purpose-built platform is ready to streamline and automate your brand protection processes, and provides your business with the capacity to scale your brand protection efforts.