Restrict Grey Market Sales with Successful Brand Protection Solutions

Many brands suffer from enterprise gray market activity and counterfeit piracy theft; they are serious concerns that have a negative impact on customers who are expecting the original manufacturer’s warranty. Gray Market is where branded products have been sidetracked from the authorized supply channel within a country or are imported into a country without the approval or awareness of the manufacturer. These are usually sold at lesser prices than those proposed by the legitimate distributors; the pricing disparity amongst various legitimate markets generates an opportunity for products to be procured at discounted prices.  E-commerce is considered the primary driver in the mushrooming of the gray market and of counterfeit activities.


Over the past few years with the advent of online shopping there has been an increase in the percentage of scams, frauds and gray market sales, more so for the unsuspecting buyers. Gray market sales, indicates an individual or a website selling goods through certain distribution channels that are not authorized or intended by the original manufacturer.


While different techniques are needed for combating the different forms of piracy, in every case, tightening supply/value chain controls and processes is a critical element in eliminating gray market leakage. In order to combat gray market and its adverse effects, service providers of brand protection solutions have introduced SaaS-based software having a proprietary search capability. This helps companies to find out where and at what price their products are being sold. It also provides real-time monitoring for selling listings goods, making use of advanced search agents that can successfully track detailed market inputs from various sources.


Consumers are always looking for a good deal online and the differential price does influence the customers, having a negative impact on the manufacturers. Therefore, it is essential for manufacturers to invest in anti-counterfeiting and brand protection solutions. This will protect them from revenue loss, increased liability risks and brand erosion. Keeping this in mind, service providers specializing in online brand protection solutions have introduced efficient brand anti-counterfeiting solutions to put an end to brand counterfeiting.


Not only a problem in emerging markets, gray market sales are a global problem that needs a global solution.  It is important for successful companies to launch an ongoing program for designing and executing short, medium, and long-term fixes. Invest in a solution that enables you to proactively recapture lost revenues, market share, and brand reputation through tightening your value chains. Such solutions provide real-time monitoring for selling listings goods, making use of advanced search agents that can successfully track detailed market inputs from various sources.


Read More About: enterprise risk management, brand management

Making Brand Management Easy With Anti-Counterfeiting Solutions

Brands are among the most important assets that a business can own, and strong brands can ensure business success in times of difficulty. Maintaining a strong brand worldwide is the key to increasing and maintaining a strong customer base. Every organization needs to be protective about its brand image, which is much more than just a trademark or name. A brand is an enterprise’s identity that reflects its intrinsic nature and character. Therefore, any compromise with the brand’s image and reputation can result in huge losses.

 

Global brand management has become tough for manufacturers with e-commerce facilitating the growth of counterfeiting and gray markets. A large number purchase decisions are based on brand reputation alone, so when inferior and cheaper counterfeits of your products flood the Internet, it impacts the perception of your brand worldwide. Intelligent counterfeiters tarnish the value of the brands they counterfeit. As low-quality, inexpensive imitations inundate the market and as more and more customers are deceived by bogus goods, the market demand and market price of a particular brand are adversely affected. With counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property growing rapidly, it becomes difficult for companies to innovate and create breakthrough solutions that bolster the economy.


When products are counterfeited or sold on the gray market, it affects the brand reputation of the company. Often such companies lose significant market share because they are unable to find a solution that can protect their brand reputation effectively. It is also imperative that top management realize the importance of brand reputation management and how it can impact short and long term revenue goals. Brand protection technology also brings the marketer so much more actionable information. Every business is aware of the need to implement effective measures that produce convincing and compelling results. Thus, a complete end-to-end brand protection solution that includes investigation and enforcement services can identify and stop online counterfeiters and gray market offenders.


Although protecting your company’s brand from counterfeiters seems like a daunting task, a brand protection solution can ensure effective global brand management. Invest in SaaS-based software that searches the Internet 24/7 for violations, and can prioritize and analyze them. In today’s competitive environment, companies need to be wary of counterfeiting, gray market, trademark infringement and much more in order to stay afloat. Enterprises must deploy brand protection solutions to protect their brand and trademark from exploitation. All enterprises, irrespective of the industry that they belong to, require a reliable anti-counterfeiting solution that provides visibility into exact products that are being counterfeited.


Read More About: Anti-Fraud, enterprise risk management

Manage, Prioritize and Implement Viable Ideas Using Idea Management Software

Wikipedia defines innovation as “the development of new customer value through solutions that meet new needs, inarticulate needs or old customer and market needs in new ways. This is accomplished through different or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society.”


This holds true in the case of product companies where innovation is not just about creating new products but reinventing, restructuring and reengineering business processes, workflow management, market trends and even new markets where unaddressed and unfulfilled needs exist. With untapped markets, ideas and customers always present, what is required is to find the right idea and introduce it at the right time in the right market.  


For product companies, innovative ideas are a necessity to ensure the growth of the top line revenue, to make the bottom line efficient, to differentiate from their competitors, and to stay relevant and on their toes. For example, take the case of Dell, one of the largest technological corporations in the world. It firmly believed that its customers have the power to make a real and enormous difference to the company's profits. Hence, it came up with the innovative idea of a community to reach out to millions of its customers. Named as IdeaStorm, this community interacts with millions of its customers in more than 100 countries and asks them to share ideas and collaborate with one another to tell Dell what new products or services to develop. The result being that in two years, Dell has gathered more than 11,000 innovative products ideas.


This interesting piece of information highlights the fact that innovative ideas can change the destiny of a company.  Though innovative thinking is important, idea management is equally important to roll in the profits. Hence, what is required is an idea management system to channelize, prioritize, manage and implement viable ideas. Here is a look at some of the benefits of deploying idea managementsoftware:


  • New competitive products and services

  • Process improvements

  • Improved collaboration and decision making across teams

  • Competitive advantage

  • Identify hidden talent and new areas of growth

  • Enhanced Brand Value and Brand Loyalty


Thus with idea management software, product companies can look to promote employee inclusivity ensuring more ownership of tasks from current employees thereby enabling them to keep both themselves and the company updated and aligned with the changing market.


Read More About: idea management solutions, innovation products, capture ideas

 

Engineering Services Outsourcing - Meeting Engineering Demands

Engineering services, one of the largest sections of the industrial world provides design and support  across the complete product life cycle for various industry verticals from Automotive to Telecom,  Aerospace, Electronics, Pharmaceuticals etc. With all core engineering functions having an accompanying service activity the enterprises benefit from the support  in areas of  design, modeling, analysis, prototyping, automation, embedded system development, manufacturing as well as vendor management. With an estimated value addition of $ 750 billion per year, this industry is close to a trillion dollars in size.

 

 

However, technological innovations have led to greater demands from the customers leading  outsourcing  of engineering services .  For the enterprises this  helps to focus on their core functions  as the outsourcing partners take care of the support activities. Further, engineering services outsourcing also leads to reduction in project time lines and reduced labor costs besides improved quality of products and services. However, enterprise can enjoy immense benefits from engineering outsourcing which includes flexibility on manpower, faster time to market, reduced product development costs, knowledge retention, ability to enhance profitability and to transform into a global entity.

 

 

Efficient outsourcing of engineering services will help enterprises with an access to the expertise and ideas of domain professionals and knowledge of the industry trends. This also helps enterprises connect  to other  global engineering companies paving way for strengthening relationships for a better projects and assignments. The growth of reliable communication systems has changed the concept of  globalization from manufacturing anywhere to include services that can be  rendered anywhere.

 

 

Engineering Services Outsourcing has today emerged as one of the major domains of the outsourcing industry.  The growing need for  engineering services to be outsourced, has  brought an increase in the engineering outsourcing services. Leading engineering service outsourcing  providers through continuous and innovative initiatives help enterprises with overall product development. With their dedicated team of consultants these engineering service outsourcing enterprises help their clients  with design and detailing, engineering analysis , manufacturing engineering,  technical publications, sustenance engineering, embedded systems and plant process.

 

 

The consultants further helps the clients in project fields such as concept designing, designing civil structures, product realization solution, industrial products and oil and gas transportation. The operational benefits of engineering service outsourcing  is  that the enterprises are able to meet the changing innovative and engineering demands of their customers. Being cost-efficient, this gives the enterprises a competitive edge.

 

Related Links: global engineering services, oil and gas engineering services

Innovation Products -Combining Social and Business Challenge

Innovation is defined as the process by which an idea or invention is translated into goods or services for the benefit of the consumers and replicable at an economical cost. In the business scenario, innovation is the result of application of technical ideas to decrease the gaps between expectation of the customers and the performance of the enterprise. In a social level, this relates to devising collaborative methods, alliances, joint ventures leading to increase in  the buyer’s purchasing power.

Innovation  products  is  a combination of  information, imagination and intuitive thinking along with a number of processes making it different from the resource.  Innovative products can either be a new product or an improvement made on an existing one, by using new components or materials . Nevertheless, it is based on ideas that are captured from various sources.  

Further,  today’s aggressively competitive market,  challenges for every enterprise to gain  maximum market value. To meet this challenge, enterprises take up initiatives  such as  branding, advertisement, social media marketing to promoting 'out of box' thinking, strategies for innovative product development and idea management techniques. Such initiatives may lead  to development of  products that can  handle environmental issues, energy conservation or even bring about simple changes to make a product or service more comfortable and competitive.

To generate profitable growth of the enterprise and improve the consumer structure, Billerud- the Swedish packaging designer came up with an innovation product ‘Fiberform’ a by-product of petroleum that helped in reducing the consumption of plastics.  'Fiberform'- a biodegradable and recyclable packaging material took plastic out of all products; from food to cosmetics.  Made of renewable, fossil-free raw material,  this innovative product confirmed a reduction in carbon emissions in production by 39%, paving way for  increased market share for  'Fibreform' as a climate smart packaging solutions. This initiative contributed to the company’s profitability, while at the same time benefiting the global climate.

With 72 manufacturing and technology research centers and 73,000 employees, Whirlpool Corporation   promoted the concept of designing innovation products and redesigning business processes by building an idea management system  to capture ideas from its employees. This not only changed the culture of the company but also brought out products such as the revolutionary 'Smartcook' pizza oven, that can cook a pizza in less than one and half minutes, the Duet® Steam laundry pair that helps to save enough water in a normal wash cycle to fill a 16’ x 20’ x 6’ swimming pool over the course of a year or the Fabric Freshener which uses only nine ounces of water and 10 cents of electricity per cycle and removes odors from clothing while relaxing wrinkles without using chemicals or detergents.

All these innovation products  helped the company attract large number of consumers and generated more than $2.5 billion of worldwide revenue. This also gave Whirlpool a competitive advantage and the generation of a robust innovation pipeline of about $20 billion. Innovative products are the result of bringing together a diverse group with a common goal and applied processes with the right combination of tools and techniques.

Read More About: innovative management solutions

Comprehensive Anti-Counterfeiting Solutions to Protect Your Brand

The brand counterfeiting phenomena have almost become omnipresent with the advent of internet technologies. Even as companies spend millions to build global brands, the internet with its wide reach can easily put such brands at risk– resulting in not just undermining the marketing investments they have made, but also eroding the brand and its reputation and losing customer trust. It has been on the rise over the past few years and is considered as an acute concern across all industries.


However, with fraudsters growing more and more sophisticated, it’s important for businesses to clearly understand the nature of the threats that they face and also take the necessary steps to protect their brands and customers. Loss of revenue caused by counterfeiting of an enterprise’s brand and intellectual property rights is serious business. Enterprises need to be aware that their products are being counterfeited and should be proactive to get a solution and strategy to tackle the same. While some solutions merely scan the internet to detect any brand and trademark violation, most of the other brand protection solutions strives to constantly be one step ahead of the counterfeiter, by operating a series of intelligence networks and providing early warning on current trends and criminal organizations.


It becomes very difficult for legitimate manufacturers to prevent brand counterfeiting considering the sophisticated techniques that counterfeiters use. Ideally a successful anti-counterfeiting strategy needs to incorporate several quantitative methods to protect your brands against these threats. Organizations today need to resort to new brand monitoring solutions that will protect them from revenue loss, increased liability risks and brand erosion. There are several renowned service providers specializing in brand protection solutions who have also introduced efficient brand anti-counterfeiting solutions to put an end to this menace.


While every business is aware of the need to implement effective measures that produce convincing and compelling results, it is the right solution that makes all the difference. Look for a comprehensive anti-counterfeiting solution that has the capability to identify the most egregious offenders and deliver vital results. The solution you opt for must deter all brand counterfeiting attempts by launching an aggressive campaign. They must also keep a close watch on popular online auctioning sites, use automated processes for monitoring the activities of the suspicious online sellers and provide a detailed audit trail of website listings.


By choosing an efficient brand protection solution, businesses have the opportunity to stop the fraudulent activities from affecting their image and bottom line.


Read More About: enterprise risk management, brand management, gray market

Understanding Foreign Bank and Financial Account Report (FBAR)

With the governments acting tough, the tax evaders look at different means to evade taxes. One such way is to maintain foreign bank account/accounts. Such a move helps people to hide income generated or maintained abroad. However, today the federal government has made it mandatory for every U.S. citizen or resident and every entity (organized under U.S. law) to file foreign bank and financial accounts report with the U.S. Treasury annually.


Any United States person who has a financial interest in or signature authority, or other authority over any financial account in a foreign country must file FBAR. In FBAR, there are certain terms that need to be understood clearly in order to avoid confusion. Hence, given below is a glossary of such terms to understand FBAR clearly.


* FBAR


Foreign Bank and Financial Account Report (in short FBAR) is a form that IRS requires taxpayers to file to comply with the requirements of reporting Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts to tax authorities in the United States.


* United States Person


A United States person is a citizen or resident of the United States, a domestic partnership, a domestic corporation or a domestic estate or trust.


* Foreign country


A “foreign country” includes all geographical areas outside the United States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the territories and possessions of the United States (including Guam, American Samoa, and the United States Virgin Islands).


* Financial Account


A “financial account” includes any bank, securities, securities derivatives, or other financial instruments accounts. The term includes any savings, demand, checking, deposit, or any other account maintained with a financial institution. Financial account also generally includes any accounts in which the assets are held in a commingled fund, and the account owner holds an equity interest in the fund (including mutual funds). Individual bonds, notes, or stock certificates held by the filer are not a financial account nor is an unsecured loan to a foreign trade or business that is not a financial institution.


* Foreign Financial Account


Any account that includes checking, savings, demand, brokerage, securities accounts, or other accounts maintained with a financial institution or other institution or person performing the services of a financial institution that is physically located outside of the United States is a foreign financial account.


Like these, several other terms are there that need to be properly comprehended to understand the importance and requirements of  FBAR.


Read More About: IRS Amnesty, Tax Planning, Entity Formation

Importance of Curtailing Gray Market Sales

Gray market goods have a substantial impact on brand equity. The influence of marketing communications initiatives on brand equity has been gaining significant attention of late. This is due to the changing international accounting standards associated with the reporting of the financial value of tangible assets which in turn is a result of increased focus on the impact of marketing communication on brand performance. The marketing activities by gray marketers are beyond the control of authorized distributors and might not project situations consistent with those planned by the manufacturer or the authorized distribution network. Hence, it is essential to estimate the impact of gray marketing on the brand equity.

 

Gray markets have been a major concern for the retailers and manufacturers since the mid 1980’s. The international gray market size is somewhere estimated between from $US7 billion to $US10 billion.

 

Gray Market and Counterfeiting

 

Gray Marketing is not same as counterfeiting. According to Duhan and Sheffet, the term “gray” suggests an “almost black market”. Gray market activities involve selling the trademarked goods and products through distribution channels that are unauthorized by the trademark holders. When gray market activities take place across international borders then the term “parallel importing” is used. Gray markets results in loss of brand reputation as well as loss of revenue.

 

In order to combat the dangers of gray market activities companies specializing in enterprise risk management have come up with brand protection solution, in the form of a SaaS based software that can halt gray market sales. The software effectively monitors open markets on an end-to-end basis for buy/sell listings of products and part numbers with the help of advanced search agents. These search agents also trace detailed market information from a wide range of market types that includes:

 

  • Franchise and large distribution websites
  • Independent and gray market websites
  • Email-based forums that aggregate buy/sell listings
  • Trade boards
  • Auction sites
  • Chat
  • B2C sites
  • Blogs
  • B2B sites

 

Contrary to the generic brand protection solutions this Saas based software delivers data directly from a website to the end user in a complete, multi-dimensional market intelligence format. Referring to this format the users can have customized dashboards, custom report views and create user formatted export files. All vital information is accessible and can be used within a perceptive interface. This assists investigators to develop and manage case histories, evaluate evidence and understand the link between partners, suspect companies and other related contacts

 

Read More About: brand managementAnti-CounterfeitingAnti-Fraud

 

Deploy Effective Demo Loaner Management Program for Great Product Demos

In today’s competitive business environment, customers believe completely in ‘seeing is believing’. No amount of buzzwords and hype can induce them to make the purchase unless substantiated with real evidence. Hence, today the concept of "Try before you buy" is quite popular among marketers and customers. This time tested marketing mantra helps marketers to convince customers of a product’s effectiveness.

Product demonstration or evaluation system is a powerful marketing technique to

  • Show customers the actual features and capabilities of a product/products
  • Allow customers to see, feel and use a product/products
  • Capture the imagination of the customers
  • Convince the customers about product benefits
  • Persuade the customers to actually buy the product/products

However, a product demonstration is not an easy affair as it sounds to be. It involves significant logistical and operational challenges such as loss of demo equipment, monitoring problems, inadequately tested equipment, delayed delivery or mismanaged returns, and so on. This can lead to not just cost issues but also affect an enterprise’s prospects very badly. For instance, lack of proper management can negatively influence the potential sale of the product. However proper demo loaner management or field asset management comes at a price. The field engineers would have to spend a considerable amount of their valuable time in managing demo equipment, which could have otherwise been spent in front of customers convincing them about a product.

Therefore, what enterprises need is a world class and industry-leading demo loaner management solution that helps enterprises in building a customized program that suit enterprise needs, supported by world-class system integration, operations, warehouse, logistics, and distribution infrastructure. The following are some of the advantages of collaborating with a solution provider having expertise in demo loaner management.

  • Advanced Tracking Technology
The advanced tracking technology helps to reduce equipment loss by up to 80%.

  • Web-based Program Management software
The software helps to track Assets throughout all phases.

  • Extensive Support Team
It includes demo-loaner help desk, logistics management, equipment test and upgrade, demo pool management, demo pool turns optimization.

  • Managed calibration and update/upgrades
Trained technicians on-site, if needed

  • Reduce Costs and Add Efficiencies
Saves organization the cost of time, money, and effort in setting up a complete supply chain management solution

Thus, an effective demo loaner program helps marketers to get their demo products into customers' hands faster, cost-effectively, and more reliably. Besides that, such a solution also ensures that the marketers get them back to make the product ready for the next demo faster and more economically.

Know more about  -  supply chain  solutions

Staying Prepared to Counter Tax Hikes

By organizing finances in  a way that takes advantage of the many rules to maximize the amount of income, it is possible to be prepared to successfully handle any tax hike. Considering the fact that there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the tax codes, it is most likely  that before the end of the year, federal tax increases will go into effect the following year, increasing levies on income, capital gains, dividends, wages, gifts, estates, and more.


With a number of tax breaks  expiring and new taxes taking effect, most of the lower tax rates are set to expire at the end of 2012. Here are some of the key tax policy issues to look out for:


* The tax cuts enacted by Congress in 2001 and 2003 provided a broad range of tax relief, including lower tax rates on income, long-term capital gains, and qualified dividends. With cuts are set to expire on December 31, 2012, any action will come down to the wire as it did in 2010.


* Income tax rates need consideration. Without action, the 25%, 28%, 33%, and 35% tax rates will increase, and the 10% tax bracket will be eliminated.


* The tax rates on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, which are currently 15% (0% for taxpayers in the lowest two income brackets) are also set to change. Without action, the long-term capital gains rate would revert to 20% for most taxpayers and to 10% for those in the 15% income tax bracket in 2013. Qualified dividends, would go back to being taxed as ordinary income, so for some investors, the top tax rate could rise to 39.6%


* Although estate and gift taxes were part of the 2001 tax cuts, for 2012, beneficiaries need to pay estate tax on amounts over $5.12 million at a top rate of 35%. The exemption is scheduled to revert to $1 million in 2013, and the top rate will increase to 55%.


* The limitation on certain itemized deductions and the phaseout of personal exemptions also need to be addressed. These provisions have the effect of further increasing the tax rate of people in higher income tax brackets. While PEP and Pease are currently suspended, they are most likely to come back in 2013.


Many of these tax provisions including  others are certain to be  in play at the end of the year approaches. Taxpayers with the assistance of their tax advisors, should undertake a careful review of their personal tax situation to take advantage of any year-end tax planning opportunities for 2012. Maximize your tax-advantaged savings, seek the guidance of a financial professional with experience in income and investment planning strategies for minimizing personal income taxes.


Read More About: IRS Amnesty, Foreign Bank Account, FBAR, Overseas voluntary disclosure