Criminal Defense

the market for intellectual asset management (iam) software is a fragmented with many smaller organizations providing a wealth of features and functionality. This makes it difficult for corporate ip departments to choose the best software for their needs.

a number of our customers started their selection process looking at over 30 intellectual asset management software vendors. Each vendor claimed to have the most comprehensive solution. The selection process was long (sometimes over 2-3 years), frustrating and confusing.

here are the top five tips that will help you reduce the number of vendors for your evaluation and to separate the wheat from the chaff:

5. Usability

without this, nothing else matters. If your users will not adopt and use your selection, it’s a waste of time and resolution and effort. You should look beyond the glitz and try to understand how your users will accept the new iam organization and system. In short, the user interface should be sane and simple and habitual and intuitive for the first time user.

4. Accessibility

if the software is not accessible via standard web browsers such as ie, firefox, safari or chrome, discard it immediately. To make your iam organization and system deployment successful, you need strong adoption from your inventor community. In many organizations, inventors use different types of computers, operating systems and browsers.

your intellectual asset management application should support such variations seamlessly.

3. Configuration

ask you vendor to demonstrate how to add a new field of your choice. Most vendors who claim to have the most configurable application will hesitate to do this. If your selected software does not have tools to do these basic tasks, you got yourself locked into the vendor’s roadmap.

2. Searching and reporting

how good is iam software if it can’t provide good searching and reporting tools? It is frustrating to many users that they can’t easily get to the data that they entered a few months ago. Ask vendors to demo their searching capabilities and make sure the searching and reporting tools are part of the basic organization and system and do not require phd degrees in rocket science.

1. Integration

if you have been previously involved in the deployment of iam software, you already know it. The world of “docketing in a black box” is over for corporate legal departments. It is unsmiling and critical that your software can be easily integrated with other systems inside your organizations such as hr, accounts payable, sinewy and active directory, etc.