Protecting Your Brand From The Counterfeiting Threat

Brand Protection is a key element for any successful company. A company's brand and trademark are worth protecting for the sake of employees, existing and prospective clients, and the future of the company. The  brand is one of the most important assets for every organization and like any other asset they need to be protected. Organizations irrespective of the type of business,  normally spends millions of dollars and years  of hard work to develop their brand. However,  as soon as they make it, counterfeiters come along and steal their intellectual property.  One of the most visible aspects of enterprise brand protection is the constant battle against the counterfeiters. Any successful brand runs the risk of someone producing a replica product using their styling, design or colors. 

An organization’s brand not only comprises of its trademark, but also its product range, trade dress and its marketing strategy. The intellectual property being one of the most critical components of intangible assets that a company owns, it is essential to secure the  brand from the adverse effects of trademark and  brand valuation and other forms of brand abuse. Today there are many who don’t understand the effects that theft of intellectual property have on a company. It not only represents potential lost sales, but also diminishes  the  value and truly tarnishes the brand. The bottom line is that you are taking someone else’s property without their permission. Theft is a theft. 

Why protection solutions have become a necessity 

The counterfeiting industry is booming and it’s not just the consumer goods market that is affected. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in counterfeit prescription drugs, car parts, and technology such as cell phone batteries flooding the market. It's important that any company that is investing in its brand make the effort to monitor their company, brand, product and executive names online. Withcounterfeiting of goods being  a huge problem for businesses, effective anti-counterfeiting solutions are essential.  As more companies outsource production to foreign countries, they lose control of their designs, plans, processes, trademarks and copyrights. The reason manufacturers work so hard to combat the counterfeiters is to protect their brand and keep their reputation for a quality product. 

Choose the right solution 

In order to overcome these issues, solution providers have come up with brand protection solutions. These solutions operate from a SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform offering a dynamic day-to-day visibility into a huge selection of market intelligence data that can be utilized to recognize suspect products and companies. This visibility helps in taking proactive measures to combat counterfeiting before it impacts the company’s bottom line. Ensure your brand retains its equity in the face of infringement, choose your brand protection solution wisely. 

Read More About: enterprise risk managementbrand managementgray market

Protect Your Brand from Counterfeits With the Right Solution

Every organization understands the importance of their brand and  are sensitive about their brand image, which is much more than just a trademark.  The production and sale of counterfeit goods is a multi-million-dollar business with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development approximating the value of counterfeiting to be in the range of $250 billion per year. The predominance of the counterfeit activities has been a major cause for all the brand dilution activities, as this results in  lack of consumer trust and satisfaction, revenue loss and a tarnished brand reputation. A brand is  an enterprise’s identity that reflects its intrinsic nature and character, and therefore, any erosion in the brand’s image is difficult to recover from.

Hence, companies today require effective anti-counterfeiting solutions to completely and effectively secure their brand. Many brand protection solutions that are available today are not equipped with detailed product anti-counterfeiting features and  merely scan the internet for any kind of brand and trademark abuse. Therefore, it has become crucial for organizations to realize the importance of their brand and need for  total protection from brand counterfeiting. Advanced anti-counterfeiting solutions have superior search capabilities and are appropriately designed for counterfeit detection in multiple industry verticals. Apart from detecting counterfeits they can also  successfully shut down illegal operations.

Not only do these solutions help in detecting and tracing the brand violators and responding accordingly, but these solutions are also equipped with innovative search capacities that are appropriately designed for   detecting counterfeits across industry verticals. Leading service-providers offer cost-effective brand protection solutions that use advanced search technology to monitor activity for any number of products globally. It picks up pricing, discount percentages, and quantities for each product and helps to quickly identify the companies that cause loss of revenue, brand and customer satisfaction.

Besides delivering competent and convincing results, these solutions are completely equipped to easily stop the revenue, profit and brand  reputation erosion caused by counterfeits as well as regain margins lost to channel violations. Genuine businesses encounter a delightful restoration of their operations without affecting their costs as these cost-effective solutions leverage the prospects for the genuine businesses to experience favorable returns. Therefore it is imperative to invest in an effective anti-counterfeiting solution that can be implemented without any delay. The solution must also enable end users to view this data in the form of user-configurable charts on their dashboards and provide an organized company risk index that marks the suspects and highlights them.

Read More About: enterprise risk managementbrand managementgray market.

 

How to Combat Grey Market Sales?

 

With the rise in online shopping and eCommerce, there has also been an increase in gray market products that are sold through these online portals. Simply put, gray market products are generally illegal and are sold outside the original distribution channel of an enterprise with no consent from the original manufacturer. Going by the nature of the gray market, it becomes complicated to keep  track of the exact sales at the source.

When you are browsing the internet for your choicest cosmetic product or mobile accessory you come across numerous websites selling them. At the first glance the offer might look attractive and authentic along with the discounts and services offered but the chances of these being gray market products are high. This indicates that there is a huge chance that the mobile, cosmetic or lifestyle good that you choose online might be faulty or have crossed the expiry date and have been remarked. Therefore, one needs to be cautious before purchasing them.

Gray market products lead to disruptions with the authentic distributions in the sales channel. The original partners loose revenue to the gray market sales. Furthermore, it makes an original enterprise lose its brand reputation, market share and consumer goodwill. Hence, companies today are looking for effective ways to combat gray market sales.

Industry Solutions to Combat Gray Market 

Service providers specializing in online brand management and protection solutions have come up with high-end SaaS based software that enables end-users to combat gray market sales. The software monitors the open market on an end-to-end basis for buy/sell listings of goods and part numbers making use of advanced search agents. These search agents track detailed market data from a wide range of market types that is comprised of the following:-

  • Franchise and large distribution websites

  • Independent and gray market web sites

  • Email-based forums that aggregate buy/sell listings

  • Trade boards

  • Auction sites

  • Chat

  • B2C sites

  • Blogs

  • B2B sites

This software has the capacity to directly deliver the data via a website to the end user in a compact, multi-dimensional market intelligence format. Using this format the end users can attain personalized dashboards, custom report views and even set up user formatted export files. All the essential information is accessed and used within an intuitive interface. This further helps the investigators to manage and develop case histories, assess evidence and understand the link between partners, suspect companies and other associated contacts better.

Over the years, the internet has acted as a pivotal medium in giving rise; to gray market sales. However, resorting to advanced brand protection solution will enable you to steer clear of gray market sales. 

Read More About: enterprise risk managementAnti-Counterfeiting

 

Enhance Delivery Capabilities with Efficient Supply Chain Solutions

Global markets are expanding beyond borders, thereby changing the way demand and supplies are managed. Global companies are propelled by markets across continents and efficient supply chain solutions are vital to business organizations today. And with the increasing  complexities of trade, supply chain solutions are also getting highly sophisticated. For improved flexibility and future growth and fueled by global competition and changing market dynamics, supply chain managers are seeking new solutions that better position their organizations.


Successful and reliable supply chain solutions offer the much needed relief in streamlining infrastructure, and in disciplining operational progress in the entire process. Advancement in technology has made it easy for organizations to customize the supply chain depending on the need of the organization. Effective supply chain management ensures the delivery of the right product in the right quantity and in the right condition with the right documentation to the right place at the right time at the right price. The two important facets of revenue recognition are availability of products and sound market coverage. Both these are dependent on sound implementation of the supply chain strategy. The modern day business scenario is characterized by increasing complexity, competition and territorial business opportunities.


Supply chain management solutions help in reducing inventory, increasing the speed of transactions, efficiently fulfilling customer demands. Owing to the ongoing improvements and broadened scope in personal computing that has made it possible to optimize the supply chain performance. Strengthening the supply chain cycle is the key to attaining operational excellence and business success.  A company can achieve great benefits with an efficient and effective supply chain management.


A global supply chain solution will take into account coordinating all the different pieces of this chain as quickly as possible without losing any of the quality or customer satisfaction, while still keeping costs down. Ideally all the members of the channel, from suppliers to end users, coordinate their business activities and supply chain processes to minimize their total costs and maximize their effectiveness in the market.  


Partner with a reputed service provider  who can capture your supply chain processes, goals, and key metrics to understand what you wish to achieve in terms of meeting supply challenges and making improvements. It is essential that they have the experience and know-how to keep your supply chain at top efficiency while also keeping costs low for your company. Choose your solution with care as the right  supply chain solutions can improve a firm’s profitability, better customer relationships, and enhance delivery capabilities effectively.


Related links - rack integration &  Reverse Logistics

Reverse Logistics - Creating Environment Friendly Enterprise

The business environment today is abuzz with a number of operational activities. The supply chain and logistics activities being the backbone of every enterprise  brings in  success through higher returns, profit margins, better customer service and loyal customers.  Nevertheless, the evolving business models as a result of globalization and technological enhancements are partnering changes in the supply chain activities of the enterprises.


The supply chain solutions of the modern day business are not just focused on the management of the raw materials and products from the manufacturer to the distributor but extends to see the satisfaction of the customers and end-users. This aspect brings in another angle to customer satisfaction and extends the supply chain process to reverse logistics. Referring to all operations involved in the reuse of products and materials, Wikipedia defines Reverse Logistics as "the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost effective flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods and related information from the point of consumption to the point of origin for the purpose of recapturing value or proper disposal”.


Reverse logistics today is a phase in the product's lifecycle. Also termed as Aftermarket supply chain this includes logistics, warehousing, repair, refurbishment, recycling, managing e-waste, call center support, reverse fulfillment, field service activities. The reverse logistics involves movement of  finished goods from  the customer or end-user to the manufacturer due manufacturing defects, warranty returns  or unsold inventory. With re-manufacturing, refurbishing and recycling included as a part of the reverse logistics planning, this aftermarket activity helps to understand customer requirements, recapture  value as well as saves on money and environmental resources by ensuring  proper disposal of unused goods.


Today the globalized enterprises  locate their  manufacturing units in area with lower labor costs, and warehouses  at places close to shipping zones so as to reduce the internal transportation costs. The movement of finished inventory or parts of finished goods thus involves a global supply chain. With reverse logistics facilitating effective returns management ,manufacturing enterprises can now pull out their products from areas of low demand to those with higher demands thus ensuring that all their products are sold irrespective of  the markets.


However, since reverse logistics is still a new concept being accepted slowly by the larger business population, not all supply chain solutions are ready to handle the returns. Nevertheless, leaders in the supply chain and logistics industry have designed integrated systems which will aid the returns process in an efficient manner. With the use of trusted returns management solutions they provide their clients speed, real-time visibility and efficiency in dealing with inbound product and help in minimizing volume of return inventory.


Related links - Rack Integration

Address Translation Challenges with Enterprise Translation Solutions

Website translation is no more an option that only large scale companies can invest in. Today it has become compulsory for almost every organization, mid scale or start up ventures that wants increased brand awareness and maximum web traffic, leading to successful business expansion. Majority of Google search results display page translation options, especially if it is an ecommerce site or a corporate website. The reason being global brands today want to reach out to their potential consumers around the globe. Language is not uniform across the world, hence it is essential for companies to be able to converse or share their product and service details, and brand messages in foreign languages as well. This is the reason why most companies are deploying efficient website translation technologies.


Challenges of Language Translation


Today majority of multinational companies need to translate their bulk content successfully to manage global expansion. However, they often face bottlenecks that results from wrong language translation procedures. Companies that cannot detect these loopholes often get caught up in tedious and continuous translation assignments that are error prone and lack the professional erudition. This automatically leads to unwanted delays and costly overruns.


Keeping these aspects in mind, language translation service providers have introduced advanced enterprise translation solutions/software. These companies have a wide translation network including thousands of translators located globally having experience in hundreds of language. This enables them to take on any project of any vertical and size. The software further offers bilingual speakers with contextual translation of phrases and words, instead of the conventional sentence-based translation that results in grammatical and syntax errors. This helps in reducing the localization cost up to 50 percent and increasing the translation speed. Other benefits that the software offers are:


* Efficient terminology management that helps to maintain messaging precision and consistency

* Automated language translation that can be utilized as a springboard using professional editing

* A translation memory that helps in content-recycling through recurrent projects

* A project management dashboard and instant reporting that helps to streamline team coordination


Furthermore, the language translation services also offer a collaborative translation platform that helps in translating bulk content quickly and cost-efficiently utilizing high-end translation software technologies, community collaboration and a systematic workflow management. It also allows you to implement an onsite system of your own so that you can supervise the overall translation process. This enables you to translate the content and effectively cooperate with your community to save money and time.


Related links: Translation Software Solution, Language Translation Solutions

Make Your Website Meaningful With Enterprise Translation Solutions

If the language of a website is incorrect, then its total content tends to have a different meaning than what is originally intended. If this is not corrected then the online audience gets the wrong message about a brand that in turn affects its public image, web traffic and revenues. Therefore, it has become imperative for enterprises, especially the ones planning business expansion to resort to professional translation services to make their corporate websites comprehensible and meaningful.


Recently, language translation along with the interpretation industry has been described making use of terms such as “translation”, “globalization”, “localization” and “internationalization”. In addition to that, the very phrase “going global” is no longer new. In fact, it has become a way of life. Most enterprises today are expanding their operation base round the globe and venturing into untapped territories. They touch base with foreign consumers speaking multiple languages demonstrating their products, services and brand mission. Legal documents and contract forms are being exchanged between countries specifying the terms and conditions of business and litigation policies.


Hence with all these exporting and importing transactions, interpreters and translators are transferring documents, manuals, conversations and agreements from the original language source to the target language. In case there is a communication breakdown then it will lead to commercial break offs, automatically leading to monetary losses and loss of vital business opportunities. All these aspects, heightens the importance of professional language translation solutions.


In order to aid the situation, service providers specializing in professional translation services have introduced innovative enterprise translation solutions. These companies with their own translation network of thousands of translators situated globally can accommodate assignments of any domain and size. The solution also provides bilingual speakers with contextual translation of words, sentences and phrases than a generic sentence based translation that is error prone. This minimizes the localization cost by 50 percent and maximizes the translation speed. Few other benefits include:


* Terminology management that helps in messaging accuracy and consistency

* Translation memory helping in content recycling through successive projects

* A project management dashboard and instant reporting that streamlines team coordination


Apart from this, enterprise translation software also provides the companies with a collaborative platform that facilitates huge amount of translation in a quick, trusted and cost efficient way utilizing innovative translation technologies. It also results in proper workflow management and community collaboration. Implementing an onsite server of your own indicates having complete control on the overall translation process. Furthermore, you can also supervise every step of this translation and cooperate with your community to save time and money.


Related Links: Translation Software Solution , Language Translation Solutions

Train Your Employees about Phishing Attacks

The cyberspace is a mix of scopes, opportunities as well as security hazards. Development in internet technology has resulted in various kinds of cyber attacks in the form of malware and virus attacks. The most talked about one today is Phishing, which is an after effect of social engineering.


Phishing attacks have been making rounds with eminent brands. The Hotmail Phishing news was a much talked about incident when this global brand encountered a situation with more 10,000 hotmail passwords getting violated by hackers, cyber criminals and other third party intruders. This is the reason why enterprises and individuals are required to update their employees with regards to the essential guidelines that are required to be followed in order to stay protected from Phishing attacks.


The media reports on this mass Phishing attack indicated the vast number of accounts that got compromised. The majority of attacks resulted in the loss of vital data that was official, private and financial. According to Paul Wood, a senior analyst for Symantec asserted on Phishing attacks through and said that “A user's unique email address is often used to authenticate a number of Websites, including social-networking sites and instant messaging on a public instant messaging network”. Wood also came up with the following advice “If your e-mail address has been compromised, not only should you change the password there, you should also change it on any other site that uses that email address as a login ID.”


The recent reports on Phishing awareness campaigns suggests the increased number of security breaches. The people’s control is one of the crucial areas to focus on as Phishing attacks are generally aimed at unsuspecting users. Furthermore, the process control and technology also need to be implemented but will be of no use in case the people’s controls are weak. Standard Phishing protection mostly addresses the “process and technology” part of Phishing Security. However, the modern day solutions efficiently address the “people’s risk” factor. The recent trend has been towards an “incident based” reactive approach towards Phishing.


Service providers today have come up with anti-Phishing software that aims in taking proactive measures to update the users and employees about Phishing attack and enable them to detect these attacks so that they can avoid them in future. The solutions help in gauging the response to simulated attacks and then prepares a detailed action plan depending on the responses. This helps a company to set up a sound anti-phishing strategy.


Read More About: anti phishing tool,  protection from phishing, Simulated phishing attack

Contain the Rising Phishing Threat with Awareness & the Right Solutions

With Phishing threats and social engineering increasing in sophistication, it continues to be one of the biggest threats to online privacy & security across the world. Highly advanced and targeted security attacks have become the norm and the alarming increase in the cyber crime rates and security breaches emphasize the significance of tightening network security to guard organizations from such attacks. The Anti-Phishing working group recently issued a report based on a web vulnerability survey. The findings from this survey are a bit alarming–most companies that have been compromised by a Phishing attack are unaware their website has been compromised. The frequencies in the high profile security breaches across the globe have led to the increase in the sophisticated hacking attacks and security breach incidents in recent times. Phishing attacks have become a key risk for which organizations need to develop specific control measures.


Phishing attacks can adversely affect a company's brand and reputation, and can potentially lead to significant financial losses in the future due to lost customer trust and decline in shareholder value. It is therefore necessary for an organization to have an effective risk management and control mechanism against social engineering attacks to be dynamic and keep up with evolving security risks. One of the most important things you can do to avoid Phishing attacks is keep your antivirus software up-to-date because most antivirus vendors have signatures that protect against some common technology exploits. With a good anti-Phishing solution employees are armed to counter any attacks.


It is also prudent to invest in a solution that helps organizations to protect their employees, from becoming Phishing victims. It is advisable not to rely on end-users to run malware checks to detect and eliminate these increasingly sophisticated threats. With the right solution, you can easily find out how prone your employees are to social engineering and Phishing attacks. And generate an effective action plan. Successful Phishing protection and control essentially needs to include law enforcement and employees of targeted businesses so that they are able to recognize scams. And an effective solution will include being aware of the ways in which a Phishing attack can be launched. These solution providers engineer simulated Phishing attacks and also ensure that employees have training that explains what happened and how to avoid similar attacks in the future.


The solution that you choose goes beyond process and technology to address people risks and create a prioritized action plan to alleviate possible threats.  Choose yours wisely.


Read More About: phishing awareness, anti-Phishing software, protection from phishing

Engineering Solutions by Aerospace Engineering Service Providers

Indian aerospace engineering service providers recently have been moving up the value chain. From the late 1990’s till the recent times there have been certain less challenging tasks such as validation and verification i.e. the testing of functions, requirements, standards and specifications that were outsourced to India.


Today almost the entire lifecycle of aero system design, comprising the unit testing and cooling integrated engineering services is offered by Indian players. For instance, Infosys played a crucial role in contributing for designing a part of Airbus’s wings. Similarly, there have been other Indian companies have been offering hardware and software development service to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is a mid-sized passenger airliner by the world market leader. Though the aerospace core technology outsourcing in India is still in its developing stage as compared to auto outsourcing, it has been observed that Indian IT firms can look at a $1 billion market from this industry vertical in the forthcoming years.


With well known market players in aerospace engineering services foraying in, India today enjoys the benefit of the accessibility if prototyping and testing facilities, the ability to understand innovative design-technologies and an evolved aerospace industry with establishments for instance NAL (National Aerospace Laboratories), GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment) and ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency).


Today multiple global aerospace engineering service providers have forayed in India, understanding the challenges and needs of the aerospace brands and offers advanced solutions for the same. These companies has the capacity to combine aerospace manufacturing and engineering solutions that helps to in designing to set up services helping the consumers to fulfill the modern day engineering needs. The focus here is on the quality of services and the ongoing improvement. These companies help the end users in the following ways:


* Enhance quality of supply

* Minimize time-to-market

* Expand capacity

* Maximize revenue generation

* Reduce cost of product development

* Improve sustenance aerospace engineering


These companies have their own time tested inter-disciplinary aerospace engineering know-how, skills on the present and next generation engineering equipments and the experience of a huge business assignments. They also have near-site centers situated in locations such as Europe and US helping them to work on ITAR-export-controlled projects and offer important domain knowledge and project coordination and engineering assistance. Furthermore, by working proactively and closely with their client’s from the conception design phase aerospace engineering service providers engage in turnkey practices by affirming to some of the most rigorous manufacturing benchmarks.


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