Your organization’s intellectual property is a valuable financial and strategic asset, which should be protected and managed mindfully. Unfortunately, the intellectual property management process runs the risk of being deprioritized in many organizations due to misconceptions about scaling and human tendency to prefer comfortable, traditional methods. Compared to manual methods, an intellectual property management system streamlines the process and makes it easier for your organization to identify strategic opportunities, but how do you determine whether or not implementation of a software is worth it?
Determining the return on investment (ROI) of intellectual property management software involves comparing both qualitative and quantitative factors.
Costs of implementation
The total cost of implementation is made up of direct costs of the software, and indirect associated costs.
Cost of the software
What is the dollar value cost of the intellectual property 
management solution? Are there any additional modules you’d like to use for enhanced functionality? Is a one-time fee or a subscription?
Associated costs
Try to reach an estimated dollar value for associated costs of implementing a new software like time to implementation, change management, or training time and materials for the intellectual property team. Add this estimate to the cost of the solution, and you’ll reach a total cost of implementation.
Savings from implementation
There are a host of savings an intellectual property management system will bring your organization, and they’re not all obvious. Estimate dollar values for these factors and weigh them against the costs of implementation.
Increased Organization
If your company has been managing intellectual property assets manually until this point, an intellectual property management solution will bring time and cost savings with organization. For example, it will eliminate the time your team spends sifting through files and the costs associated with the loss of important details (like important expiration dates).
Strategic Leverage
An intellectual property management solution provides your organization a cohesive view into the entire portfolio of assets, which means you and leadership can see how the assets work together, what is performing well or not, and trends over time. This visibility allows the ability to strategically leverage intellectual property assets for success. The organization will save capital by being able to see which assets have been over invested, and by eliminating the opportunity costs associated with not investing into critical assets.
Streamlined Innovation
Downstream savings will also occur from the ability to streamline the innovation process, by reducing the length of time it takes for an internal innovation or invention to move from application to reality. Streamlining this process reduces costs associated with time, but also provides the organization to capitalize on more innovations, faster.
Weighing the costs listed above with the corresponding savings, will provide you with a clear idea of if your organization would benefit from the implementation of an intellectual property management solution. To learn more about evaluating ROI, read this case study which outlines how one company discovered an intellectual property management system would provide them a 150% ROI.
