Historically, brand owners and agents have retained minimal information about the sales, products and royalty income generated by their licensees. However, having this kind of information is more important than ever for businesses that want to establish a strong, long term partnership between licensees, licensors and agents.

It is quite difficult to track important metrics like sales volume on individual products or specific licenses when the global market is so vast.

In 2018, global retail sales of licensed merchandise increased by 3.2% – hitting over $280 billion. While 58% of these sales occurred within the US and Canada, significant sales numbers also came from Western Europe and North Asia. Furthermore, nearly 44% of global sales were for entertainment and character licenses. Corporate and brand sales followed, along with fashion, sports, and publishing.

Source

In today’s business environment, licensors and agents need to collect as much information as possible to improve their business intelligence, strategies, and day-to-day operations.

In this whitepaper, we will cover:

• Why online applications for licensees are the best solution
• The benefits automation offers for licensees
• How to properly train licensees and enforce specific protocols through
  digital tools

AN ONLINE APPLICATION PROCESS IMPROVES INFORMATION COLLECTION

Requiring licensees to complete an online application makes it possible to collect information for:

• Trademark management & IP registration
• Licensee & contract approvals
• Licensed products
• Sales down to SKU levels
• Royalty reporting
• Marketing plans

Data coming from such areas helps the licensor evaluate the strength of each partner and streamline numerous aspects of licensing business processes.

Typically, collecting and managing data can take days, weeks, or even months. Having a brand licensing management system allows brand licensing companies to gather all the information they need for more informed decision making.

APPROVAL AUTOMATION OFFERS SEVERAL BENEFITS

Automation in product development and approval management allows both licensors and licensees to collaborate through an online system and maintain creative compliance.

Approval management software helps companies keep track of important information, such as:

• Product sample submissions.
• Comments and/or updates made by everyone involved.
• Reminder notifications to check pending submissions.
• Reminders for finalized approvals/denials on products.
• Complete data on approval statistics and history.

ONGOING TRAINING TO FOLLOW STANDARDS

One of the risks that brand licensing companies face is the potential of misrepresentation of their brand from licensees. In order to expect licensees to understand the essence of your brand and create meaningful products for your consumers, you must provide quality resources, artwork and ongoing training materials.

An online instruction manual or style guide is a great tool providing important information about the brand’s main colors, position of characters, fonts, trademark notices, and any other visual details. A well-made style guide that includes detailed instructions and approved images can also eliminate unnecessary approval steps to improve efficiency.

This will help you to properly educate licensees on the expected procedures and operations, which will help them to truly succeed and represent your brand name. This is where brand licensing software makes it convenient for brand owners, their licensees or agents to share brand licensing digital assets, related information and communicate instantly, potentially eliminating the issue of coordination of time zones.

Licensees and agents can revisit information or find answers to FAQs all in one place. As incremental artwork campaigns get released, licensors can keep their partners informed of all changes. Storing updated images in an online content library is the best way to give licensees access – without clogging up your email servers with attachments.

While brand owners can get by for a while using cloud storage backup in dropbox.com or box.com, they should certainly upgrade to an industry tailored digital asset management system as their licensing operation grows bigger and better.

Training your licensees with a comprehensive licensing management solution presents a prime opportunity to expand the knowledge base in many critical areas, such as managing contracts, product development, approval workflow and royalty reporting.

The importance of training new and experienced team members cannot be overemphasized.

Effective training of all partners results in who:

• Become more efficient and can save time.
• Feel more prepared and knowledgeable about their duties.
• Get off to a good start if the licensees are new to your company.
• Lower your chances of misrepresentation of your brand.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Keeping track of licensee information is crucial for licensors and automated system in place allow licensors to instantly gather, share
  and organize key information and streamline the product development and approval workflow management.
• Online training systems are needed to help licensees learn the proper protocols and educate new employees.
• Brand licensing software can organize contracts and keep licensees conformed with brand compliance – making it easily accessible within a comprehensive system.
• Empower your brand licensing company to make smarter decisions and take control of licensing operations through quick accessibility.
• Share information with licensing partners to ensure that everyone is working together to protect intellectual property and building strong partnerships.

Call Dependable Solutions at +1 877-289-8431, +1 424-213-6663 and +44 203 882 3370 (UK) or email us at sales@dependablesolutions.com to discuss how you can setup a secure online brand licensing management system for your company. Our team is here to answer any questions and guide you in the right direction.