Your Global Brand: Reconciling Business Models and Supply Chains

On Abe Lincoln’s birthday, we can derive inspiration from the life and lessons of “Honest Abe.” Like your parents told you, you are known by the company you keep.  This is true for each employee in a service business as well as the entrepreneur, the growing business and the global business.   Your business model and your associations with others directly impact your business success.  Increasingly, you need to orchestrate your business operations and branding messages across both individual and shared brands.

Now, more than ever, creating and managing your global brand is essential to all aspects of your business, beyond attracting and retaining loyal customers under an understood trademark.  Every business today is a service industry, and your brand reflects quality of service and user experience (UX) for everyone who touches your business.

Value Chain Branding.  Brand management means running all aspects of your business as a strategic relationship throughout the entire business value chain. Your global brand transcends across customers, employees, suppliers, outsourced service providers, investors, professional advisors and even regulators and competitors. Think of the benefits of a strong brand in terms of strong corporate culture, employee morale, investor confidence and enterprise sustainability.

Proprietary vs. Shared Brands.   In the American culture, individualism and community can collide.  A proprietary brand is owned, controlled and managed by one enterprise.   A “shared brand” is the brand of shared enterprise.  The logic of collective action suggests that individuals and small and emerging businesses should brand themselves uniquely, while joining in shared brands that may include competitors and suppliers.

Managing Your Own Brand.   In the individualistic enterprise model, managing your own brand requires trademark registration in relevant markets (including countries where you source your products and services).  Think Coca Cola®

Sharing a Brand.   The Big Four accounting firms and the global law firms might present themselves as partnerships, but they  segregate their operations for tax, legal and regulatory purposes by setting up a common brand and then licensing it to themselves.  That’s sharing a brand at the individual enterprise level.  The leaders develop the concept, the membership follows the model and markets under the shared brand. Think Ocean Spray®, a cooperative of growers of cranberries.

Sharing a brand normally means losing your individual identity.   Ironically, in the services industries, the value of a shared brand depends on the quality and integration of the components (individuals) operating under that brand.  By marketing and delivering your own unique skills, doing your own blog and having your own little team within a larger organization, you can enjoy both the economies of scale of the larger organization and the unique profile that attracts and sustains your own clientele.  For this reason, broker-dealers, law firms, consulting firms and other service enterprises encourage each individual to be a rainmaker with unique talents and to team with others offering collective and synergistic talent.

Co-Branding.  Consider possible solutions to piggy-back upon the goodwill of others:

• Creating new venues by co-marketing (under different brands) of different goods and services to the same target clientele.
• Advertising to your target clientele in venues that your competitors do not use.
• Giving financial incentives to referral sources by “partner referral” or “business partner” programs.
• Earning a “certification” from a well-respected source of trust, such as a top university or the International Standards Organization, or other non-profit or non-governmental organization.
• Participating in the development of industry standards.
• Building a new trademark and enlisting others to sell under it, either as licensees, franchisees or even as co-owners of the brand.
• Becoming a strategic advisor or “resident” expert to a university, think tank, startup incubator or non-profit organization.

Interplay of Individual Brand and Your Supply Chain.  Sharing a brand can also mean building a network of trusted suppliers and service providers who are the back-end of your service delivery platform.  You need to manager your suppliers to ensure you deliver on your promises (and your regulatory compliance obligations).   Otherwise, you have no business, and you have legal liability for breached contracts.  Think about your vendor contracts and your supply and service contracts for your customers.

Joint Ventures, Strategic Alliances and Teaming.  Synergies also come from collective operations that are either new enterprises or an extension of your own enterprise using third parties as co-providers or as suppliers.  Dow Corning has been a joint venture for over 40 years and has developed its own customer.  CSC (US) just announced a partnership with HCL (India) that enables CSC to deliver data center management and cloud computing using HCL as supplier and HCL can enjoy the benefit of CSC’s sales and customer relationships.  Think about introducing a strong “partner” to return and engage clients.

Rethinking your Brand Strategy.   Effective branding strategies bear fruit upon sale of the company, since trademarks and goodwill are valuable marketable assets that can be sold separately (like Abercrombie and Fitch) or as part of a business.  These distinctions might help you rethink your brand strategy and develop and support multiple brands for yourself.

P.S.  I’m being interviewed on the relationship of business models and global brand management tomorrow at 2 PM ET, at www.global-reach.com

President Obama’s January 28, 2014 State of the Union Address sets a nationalistic agenda for American jobs.  There are some ideas that even business people (including business lawyers like me) can warm up to in the January Polar chill.

If you have been following the changes in the law, you might find his remarks a bit hypocritical and bombastic.  At least it was an occasion to be selectively optimistic to anticipate future legislation (or executive orders, i.e., Presidential fiat).

Insourcing.  Manufacturing has been outsourced and offshored in global supply chains for a long time due to wage arbitrage, efficient global logistics, factory automation and computerized design.   Obama notes: “over half of big manufacturers say they’re thinking of insourcing jobs from abroad.”  Any reshoring of manufacturing production jobs would unlikely bring back the number of jobs lost during the offshoring years.   Re-localization of these jobs would probably require new skills as manufacturing processes have become more highly efficient. 

Tax Reform.  Obama wants to reform “our tax code [that is] is riddled with wasteful, complicated loopholes that punish businesses investing here, and [that] rewards companies that keep profits abroad.”  He wants to “close those loopholes, end those incentives to ship jobs overseas, and lower tax rates for businesses that create jobs here at home.”  What’s missing is that any tax reform should be used to raise revenue on a permanent basis for both personal and corporate income taxes.  Current proposals will only result in a temporary revenue increase, which Obama would allocate to infrastructure investment.

Small Business and Entrepreneurship.  Recognizing the role of SMB’s in job creation, economic growth and foreign trade revenue, Obama exhorted Congress to “do more” for them.   He claims that “Over the past five years, my administration has made more loans to small business owners than any other.”    How about reducing government regulations which impose onerous costs on SMBs?

International Trade.  Obama wants trade, “new trade partnerships with Europe and the Asia-Pacific” to help SMB’s create more jobs.  “We need to work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers, protect our environment, and open new markets to new goods stamped “Made in the USA.”  China and Europe aren’t standing on the sidelines.” This is a plug to get trade negotiating authority for the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership diplomatic deals. 

Innovation.    Obama claims the US is the global leader in innovation, giving us “an edge America cannot surrender.”   He wants to restore R&D tax credits, which lapsed due to the failure of his Administration and the Congress to enact a general tax law for three or four years due to dogmatic positioning.
 
Patent Trolls.  Obama wants to “pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly, needless litigation.”  Of course, he fails to mention that business process method patents, judicially approved in the mid 1990’s, helped create new industries in Silicon Valley.  The America Invents Act of 2010 was supposed to have protected businesses from unwarranted litigation through reforms in the processes for evaluating the patentability of pending patent applications.

Immigration.   Immigration reform offers significant economic benefits, which Obama focused on.  Pending reform legislation would open the doors to foreign entrepreneurs, investors and retirees, making the U.S. more competitive with other immigrant – favorable jurisdictions. It will also eliminate abuses of H1-B visas by foreign service companies and promote a more balanced global workforce with significant U.S. consultancies. 

Business Compliance Strategies: Avoiding “Accidental” Software Piracy

What’s the price of “accidental” or “inadvertent” software copyright infringement?  For the U.S. Government, the cost was $50 million to settle a $224.5 million copyright infringement suit brought by Apptricity, a software firm offering supply chain management and integrated finance solutions.  In this case, the U.S. Army paid for a certain number of licenses for Apptricity software to track troops and supplies in “real-time” and then significantly “over-deployed” copies to its servers and devices to the tune of thousands.

Under the U.S. Copyright Act, the infringer is liable for either actual or statutory damages plus attorneys’ fees of the copyright owner.  However, Apptricity chose to settle and the U.S. Army remains a client, according to their press release.  I surmise that Apptricity probably got the deal it wanted from the “alternative dispute resolution” process by adding some settlement agreement conditions that were not announced, such as improved monitoring for future compliance, additional maintenance fees and some other forms of future revenues.

In civilian cases, software piracy can lead to double the licensing fees plus intrusive usage monitoring, additional penalties for future infringement and adverse publicity.  On various occasions, we have had to advise clients on the realities and risks of unlawful “over-deployment” of a similar nature, or worse. The resulting process of correcting such errors is costly, distracting and damaging to your core brand value.

Executives and entrepreneurs alike should ask themselves what does it take to manage software licensing compliance?

• Inventory Management Practices. You maintain an updated inventory of all computers and other devices and identify the authorization rules for all licensed users. You update continuously based on needs and actual uses.
• Pricing Management Practices. You plan future growth so you can negotiate volume licensing prices. 
• Human Resource Management. You design a compliance process to include “adult supervision” of all personnel having access to computers. This includes both internal and external personnel and external (Cloud-based) computers. The process includes policies, training, internal auditing, enforcement and may include whistleblowing and code of conduct” procedures applicable to internal and exteral (outsourced) personnel.
• Toolkits. Find a software tool for digital rights management.
• Digital Asset Management. Beyond protection of third-party licensed software, every business needs to track and protect the intellectual property and competitive advantages of software developed by itself, its licensors, and its trading partners. Digital asset management starts with a trade secrets management strategy and assurance of the independence of its innovation team from inadvertent infringement using “Open Source” software or snippets “discovered” on the Internet.

$50 million is a lot of pain.  “Inadvertent” software piracy is not good for business.  The Government’s painful disclosure of such infringement is just a reminder that we each need a compliance program for digital assets

Infosys "Visa Fraud" Settlement

The U.S. Department of Justice has just announced a civil settlement in which Infosys, an Indian firm involved in consulting, technology and outsourcing, will pay the U.S. government a record $34 million dollars for “systemic visa fraud and abuse.”  Although Infosys denies all the allegations, reportedly, it has agreed to this settlement and to enhanced compliance measures to resolve claims made by the U.S. DOJ.  This settlement, the largest fine ever levied in an immigration case, serves notice on buyers and sellers of international business services.

So, what happened?  Was it more than garden variety fraud?   In short, it appears that Infosys used [less expensive] B-1 visa holders to perform jobs for clients that involved skilled or unskilled labor that would otherwise been required to be performed by United States citizens or required legitimate [more expensive and limited number of] H-1B visa holders.   The U.S. DOJ claims that Infosys basically went out of its way to conceal the true purpose of a B-1 visa holder’s travel in the U.S. in order to secure entry of the visa holder to perform these type of jobs.  Infosys also failed to maintain required records of its foreign nationals employed in the U.S.  See http://www.justice.gov/usao/txe/News/2013/edtx-infosys-103013.html 

Breach of contract?  No. Terminable by the customer?  Probably not. Damage Control?  Yes, for Infosys.  Under standard outsourcing and supply chain contracts, the supplier must agree to honor the enterprise customer’s “code of conduct.”  Since Infosys denied liability but paid the fine, it probably does not face a breach of contract claims by its U.S. customers for failure to honor the contractual obligation to respect the law.  But this episode invites a new “governmental settlement” event for termination by the enterprise customer. Or at least it warrants some possible contractual consequences short of a termination by the customer.

Contract drafting tips?   Yes.  Customers should require not only compliance with laws, but consequences for non-compliance.  Customers might include a new clause on “Visa Compliance” that warrants compliance and allows the customer to inspect the work permits of onsite service personnel.

Can U.S. customers ignore a service provider’s settlement of a civil suit by the government?   Can foreign outsourcers ignore the lessons?  That might not be a good idea.  To avoid collateral damage by being associated with a settler of a governmental fraud claim, business executives have a duty to follow the same rules that they set for themselves and others.  If a customer does nothing, it risks shareholder claims for breach of fiduciary duty, backlash from employees, vulnerability to attacks by U.S. unions and governmental officials for being bad corporate citizens, and possible loss of valuable recruitment opportunities for any prospective employees who believe in corporate social responsibility.

The lessons are simple.  Moving foreign technical staff to onside locations needs to be balanced and in compliance.  As a model for scalable global sourcing, mobile labor arbitrage is dead.  Don’t engage in schemes for illegal wage arbitrage.  Find Americans or lawful permanent residents to fill the needs . Don’t harass whistleblowers.  Train everyone on your commitment to compliance with all applicable laws and have a compliance officer.

“Transaction Costs”: A Nobel-Prize Worthy Analysis for Global Business

The death last week of Nobel-prize winning economist and retired University of Chicago Professor of Economics, Ronald Coase, at 102 years of age, reminds us all of the conflict between the real world and the economist’s theoretical world. His eight decades of work helped found the field now known as “law and economics” and continues to impact our understanding of today’s economy and the law. While an undergrad in college, I read Coase’s writings eons ago. His papers helped me understand the logic behind how business organizations work, and was a factor in my decision to become a transactional business attorney.

In law and pure economics, the fair market value of anything is the price that a willing buyer and a willing seller would agree upon, assuming each has equal knowledge of relevant facts, neither is under any compulsion and the transactions costs are nil. This economy would be comprised of self employed individuals continually contracting work with each other. However, in the real world, there is a price to pay for these constant negotiations or what Coase called “transaction costs”. In his 1937 paper, “The Nature of the Firm”, he posited the idea that people could more readily grow their business by organizing themselves into a firm and gain operational efficiencies by reducing these transaction costs. He further noted there may be a point of diminishing returns in this growth, some say foreshadowing the advent of outsourcing.

In 1960, his paper, “The Problem with Social Cost” dealt with the actions of business firms which have harmful effects on others. In a theoretical world, all affected parties would come together and arrive at a voluntary agreement and solution at nil cost as long as property rights were clearly defined and everyone was willing and able to bargain. In the real world, he advocated that cost benefit analyses should be done to determine the appropriate remedy and that each case should be evaluated individually. Where transactions costs are high, either no deal will occur or government regulation of protection of rights from externalities like factory pollution will be adopted to protect those who cannot protect their interests, or small claimants will sue under class action tort principles.

Today, we recognize that transaction costs are the norm in corporate, commercial, technology and service transactions. Business attorneys like me make a living as a transaction cost when clients buy and sell companies, intellectual property or other assets and when they enter into strategic relationships over an agreed time span, like financing, licensing, leasing, investing in depreciable business equipment and technologies. But I am just one mouth in an ecosystem of commission salesmen (“business developers”), consultants, intermediaries, brokers, investment bankers, accountants, appraisers, engineers, logistics providers, outsourced service providers and others whose transaction costs are embedded in the purchase price of an asset, a new venture or a strategic alliance of small companies fighting in a Big Company world.

For that, I am glad to express my appreciation for his insights.  Thanks, Ron.