One of my great passions is helping businesses maximise profits. This enables growth, improves employment prospects and increases prosperity for those involved. However, whilst I’ve found that many businesses are alive to stay operating for 24 hours a day to maximise output, far fewer are aware of the way that businesses can achieve the same thing with their intangible assets, such as databases, brands, technology, know-how and software. With that in mind here are five suggestions for businesses to think about:
1. Maximise the use of the existing brands. How can you add value to your supply chain by buying up parts of it and rebranding it as yours? Is it possible to license your brand to third parties? Many FMCG brands do this and it is quite common to see brands such as Ted Baker (which was originally a clothing brand) licensed out to third parties for toiletries, fragrances and makers of glasses.
2. Does your business use unique technology? Have you got the technology patented? If so, you may be eligible to join the Patent Box scheme which means your business pays far less corporation tax. Even if your business is either an exclusive licensee or makes only part of its income from patented technology, it is well worth having an IP strategy to make the most of this opportunity to pay less tax.
3. Have you created a database or set of data that can be used by other people? Companies such as Autotrader provide value to the buyers and sellers of cars and their data sets on pricing is invaluable in their industry. Data scientists also can and do provide useful insights for everything from the aviation industry to the food industry. Producing data sets from your knowledge could be massively valuable and potentially create a new income stream.
4. Does your business use unique software to make things run smoothly? Could such software be either used in other industries or licensed out to third parties to help them grow and generate a royalty income for your business?
5. Copyright is often overlooked in businesses but creating copyright assets such as tools, images and manuals is actually a very valuable asset to the business. These should be protected with the copyright notice ©. Allowing people to just take these assets is essentially giving away your important assets, whereas licensing them can create a royalty from their use.
As the economists will readily tell you, companies that innovate and create IP are often far more resilient and better off than their competitors. Having an IP strategy can be an invaluable way to grow and it’s one I personally love to engage with for my clients — it often makes them world class in what they do.
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