Four Steps To Revenue Recovery

It is no secret that billions of revenue dollars each year are lost due to counterfeiting. Companies have identified it as a significant problem but in many cases they don’t have the data they need to determine the extent of how counterfeiting is affecting their business.

The cases are growing at an alarming rate and so are the losses. Surprisingly, the common recovery methods used by high technology companies are publicly available free search tools like Google and Yahoo. This method provides millions of rows of unstructured data that companies need to cleanse, organize, and prioritize. This common method is also the least productive for revenue recovery.

Today, companies are discovering new technologies that allow users to search broader and more applicable set of servers and at the same time, cleanse, organize, and prioritize the data. In this month’s issue, we will focus on the key parts of a successful revenue recovery program.

Your company’s team will manage and own the program but they no longer need to limit themselves to the technology and resources available in-house. In fact, many organizations with successful revenue recovery programs use the latest in technology to gain visibility and outsource parts of the process to experts that specialize in corporate risk.

Step One: Visibility

The first step is to identify where and with whom your products are being sold. The accuracy and speed of this information is critical. You will need to incorporate specific technology solutions that will allow you to load your products and prices, allow for data analysis, identify the scope of the violations and be able to report the return on investment (ROI) to management.

The technology needs to find the comprehensive and unstructured market data from websites, email, file transfers as it incorporates the information from your ERP data, PLM data, transactions history and run it though data filtering and cleansing. The right market intelligence will help your team focus on where you will get the highest return on your efforts.

Step Two: Planning

Many organizations underestimate the significance of the proper plan development. The more time and effort you place in creating a comprehensive plan - the better the implementation and results. Like any strong plan, you will need to set goals and measure frequently. Your goals need to be realistic and cover a one to two year timeframe.

You will want to plan every aspect of your program including test purchases and due diligence.
After reviewing the data, you will decide exactly how you will go about approaching the seller. Initial questions that need to be answered include:

•Is this a massive problem?

•Is it long-term?

•How much do you want to buy it for?

•What quantity will allow it to become evidence if you decide to take civil/criminal action?

•Do you need to purchase at a certain price?

•Is there a price that will strengthen its role as evidence in future civil/criminal action?

•Can you get customs, FBI, CBP, and ICE involved?

•How should you maintain the evidence and for what time period?

You need to set your goals for each seller. The goal does not always need to be civil or criminal action. One company’s goal was to make life so difficult for their counterfeiters that they drop their product and move onto something else.

Step Three: Implementation

With the right information helping create a comprehensive plan, the implementation is ready to begin. In this phase, you will need to prioritize targets, follow-through on plan, and incorporate the ability to consistently add new data that could alter the actions taken. Don’t be afraid to outsource certain parts of your implementation to corporate risk specialists.

With your comprehensive plan in place, you can start assigning due diligence investigations and conduct strategic test purchases. This step also includes engineering analysis, civil action, and criminal action. When doing a test purchase, we recommend a wire transfer because it allows the company to have access to valuable data on the counterfeiter’s financial institution. This information may be helpful when taking civil and criminal action.

Step Four: Measuring Results

Part of any revenue recovery program needs to include a method to consistently measure results. On a weekly basis, determine the value of the product on and off the market. You will want to record the amount recovered through test purchases and document progress. Note the criminal and civil actions taken and their results. Your management team needs to take an active role in the revenue recovery process - continually reviewing results data and determining changes when needed.