October 11, 2022, 12:15 PM 
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“IP teams often embark on the IPMS journey with great optimism. Once in the thick of implementation, however, they may experience a turbulent journey.”
Success is not delivering a feature; success is learning how to solve the customer’s problem.
~ Eric Ries
Imagine that your family has decided to build a new home. You’ve got the vision, but you need to call in the pros—a well-established, highly expert homebuilder with a cadre of architects, designers, contractors, and tradespeople.
You’re relying upon the builder’s expertise to thoughtfully scope the project and prepare you for what lies ahead. This includes (a) helping you understand what financial and other commitments will be required of you; (b) educating you on challenges you’ll face along the way; and (c) highlighting available offerings that align with your vision.
You’re impressed by what the builder’s sales team promises to deliver, so you sign a contract. The price tag is substantial, but you feel you owe it to your family’s future well-being to move forward.
The sales team hands off the project to the builder’s design and construction teams. It’s then that a sobering reality begins to settle in, marked by a litany of unfulfilled promises, delays, surprises, cost overruns, uneven performance, and unresponsiveness.
The only way to salvage the project is for your family to make up the difference, all at incredible sacrifice to daily life. You essentially take a leadership role in the project, do many tasks you thought you’d contracted for, and chip in more money to get the work done. You also give up on the builder fulfilling all contract items.
Now imagine that your company or law firm has decided to implement intellectual property management software (IPMS) with a vendor.
In a worst-case implementation scenario, you may feel like you’re reliving the above homebuilding saga.
Indeed, IP teams often embark on the IPMS journey with great optimism. Once in the thick of implementation, however, they may experience a turbulent journey.
Armed with knowledge of what can go wrong, your enterprise can take proactive steps to drive stronger vendor performance and successfully leverage the power of your chosen IPMS.
Well known to IP professionals, IP management software provides functionality related to IP assets (e.g., patents and trademarks), disputes, operations, and/or tasks. Other descriptors for such software include IP management system, IP asset management system or software, IP portfolio management software or solution, IP lifecycle management software or solution, and IP docketing system.
IPMS vendors, providers, or developers abound in the IP software and services industry.
In its most basic sense, an IPMS is a database of IP records of an enterprise (e.g., a corporation) or multiple enterprises (e.g., multiple clients of a law firm or multiple business units of a group of corporate affiliates). Besides storage of IP asset data, an IPMS may provide docketing functions to enable the tracking of legal and organizational deadlines and related tasks.
IPMS software has come a long way from its docketing-centered roots. Similar to other enterprise teams such as finance, product management, engineering, marketing, and sales, IP teams are increasingly seeking workflow tools that (a) reduce time-consuming administrative tasks; (b) enable more collaboration within the IP team, with other stakeholders in the enterprise, and with external parties; and (c) help their operations to become data-driven.
The IP software and services industry has taken note. Many IPMSs now provide functionality related to portfolio management, invention disclosure submission, workflows to automate or semi-automate actions, document management, patent annuities, trademark renewals, analytics, invoice submission and processing, and the like. Vendors also are starting to introduce new connectivity (e.g., to cloud services) and modern interfaces to support more optimized workflows, digital transformation, and intelligent automation.
Your company’s or law firm’s decision to buy, implement, and use an IPMS may be quite consequential. Implementation and subscription costs may be high. You may need to commit substantial time and other non-monetary resources to support implementation and ongoing productive use.
No two IPMSs and no two enterprises are the same, resulting in significant variability among implementations and implementation projects.
For example, an enterprise using one IPMS may opt to switch to a new, different IPMS. The new IPMS vendor must migrate data from the current system to the new system.
When an enterprise doesn’t have an existing IPMS, datasets must be created from scratch or aggregated from multiple disparate sources. In one such scenario, a corporation’s IP asset data historically has exclusively resided in respective docket systems of its outside patent or trademark counsel. Now, the corporation wishes to implement its own IPMS to provide a full view (e.g., “shadow docket”) of its IP portfolio, or perhaps to begin insourcing IP work.
Another paradigm involves a corporation comprising multiple distinct business units, divisions, or other subgroups that apply different processes, procedures, and ways of viewing their associated IP. The corporation has decided to implement a singular IPMS that permits customization by business units or standardization of operational practices across such units.
An enterprise’s IPMS journey generally fits within four stages:
Some IPMS implementations may be relatively compact and straightforward. An enterprise may have a small portfolio of IP assets; it may have an existing IPMS containing clean data that merely needs to be migrated to another IPMS; or it only requires an entry-level IPMS for basic docketing functions.
Other IPMS implementations may be complex or extremely complex. In particular:
The list of complexities goes on.
What can go wrong during implementation? Potentially many things. Enterprises may experience turbulence such as:
1. Lackluster project leadership and execution
An enterprise may discover that its vendor approaches implementation principally as an exercise to migrate data and provision IPMS features, rather than as a project to deliver solutions closely aligned with the enterprise’s vision and needs.
For instance, the vendor makes no meaningful attempt to ascertain the enterprise’s current organizational, competitive, and IP ecosystem; its imagined future state; or other pertinent fundamentals. The vendor says things to the effect of, “Our software does this,” versus “What are your pain points?”, “What do you want to accomplish?”, and “This is how we can help you get there.” It seems to lack the desire or capacity to truly lead the project; passion for innovation and high service delivery are in short supply.
As a result, the enterprise expends significant energies just trying to be heard by the vendor. It feels that it must take the lead to compensate for the vendor’s lack of direction.
In addition to demonstrating poor leadership, a vendor may struggle mightily with execution of its implementation plan. A project team that acts passively, reactively, or incompetently is undesirable in any IPMS context. However, in particularly complex implementations, the enterprise’s troubles will be substantially compounded by the vendor’s shaky performance.
2. A Pandora’s box of unwelcome surprises
Surprises can arise in every implementation. In an implementation gone south, an enterprise may confront numerous surprises that seemingly could have been avoided but for the vendor’s action or inaction. Examples include:
3. Revisionist storytelling
As implementation problems arise, go-live seems ever distant, and it’s unable to collect subscription fees, a vendor may take strained positions in hopes of bringing money in the door.
For example, contrary to a negotiated contract and the clear understanding of the parties, a vendor suddenly asserts that it’s owed subscription fees despite not having completed the implementation stage and delivered the IPMS for the enterprise’s use. The enterprise is asked to accept the notion that go-live means to provide a test environment or perform implementation tasks.
4. Poor relationship management
The implementation stage may reveal flagrant weaknesses in how the vendor approaches its customer relationships. The vendor may consistently stumble in such foundational areas as managing expectations, fostering healthy communications, and resolving major and minor problems. These deficiencies erode the enterprise’s trust and hamper the parties’ ability to navigate the turbulence of implementation.
5. Massive allocation of enterprise resources
An implementation may require significantly more commitment from the enterprise than the vendor stated would be reasonably required. Internal stakeholders, including IP team or practice group members, must dedicate precious additional time, effort, and money to support the implementation and bring it to fruition.
Many of the above scenarios stem from the vendor. Simply put, it overpromised and undelivered. Others may be unavoidable, a byproduct of complexity or other realities that the parties did or could not anticipate despite their best intentions.
Whatever the cause, a troubled IPMS implementation brings dangers to the enterprise beyond delays and extra costs.
The enormous time devoted to the project takes team members away from other activities and disrupts ongoing work. Added costs and prolonged project completion may undermine the credibility of enterprise leaders who championed adoption of the IPMS. Team morale may suffer.
Moreover, a plagued implementation may sabotage a team’s efforts to deliver visionary, disruptive changes to the enterprise.
To avoid these dangers, companies and law firms should take proactive steps to ensure as successful an IPMS implementation as possible, which we will explore in Part II of this series.
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A common complaint among in-house legal teams is getting sales teams to provide the right information during the intake process. When creating new contracts for new or existing customers, there is a direct relationship between sales and legal teams. And it continues from intake through deal management – involving everything from contract creation to review to execution to renewal.
Although sales teams are generally tasked with starting the contract generation process, they aren’t necessarily good at intake. It’s tedious, boring and can get in the way of closing the deal and earning a commission. To further complicate matters for a sales representative, there are often subtleties that have been pre-negotiated that may seem totally innocuous to sales, but are legally significant. These facts may be left out all together on an intake request.
To reduce the work required to create new, accurate contracts, some lawyers create customized templates to capture all the information they need. But those ad-hoc solutions often fail as incorrect data gets inputted, the whole process is ignored, or the template is hastily completed.
One example of a common roadblock can be highlighted by examining the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) drafting and signing process, often required for business to move forward. The first question to address is whether an NDA exists with any given customer. If so, where is it? If none exists, what will it take to get one created and signed? People spend too much time hunting down the NDA with a flurry of back-and-forth e-mails. Wouldn’t it be nice if this standard document was included in the process and easy to access from the beginning?
Intake challenges also include the input of incorrect information – everything from the use of outdated templates to unreviewed legal language or repetitive or obviously unnecessary errors or omissions. These issues simply frustrate the lawyers who are tasked with ensuring each contract brings with it minimal exposure to risk for the business.
In most sales circumstances, both sides will have a champion –a sales rep on one side, a buyer champion (sometimes called Sales Point of Contact, or SPOC), on the other. Both sides will work with their own legal representatives, who will offer comments and red lines. It’s not unusual for this process to happen again and again, wasting everyone’s time and resources. It’s the sales rep’s responsibility to manage the process – even though most don’t enjoy doing this and aren’t particularly good at it. Often, to move the process along, both sides will engage their own legal representatives in a phone or video conversation, an expensive and time-consuming exercise that often dissolves into a barrage of e-mails that can introduce errors into the whole process.
Each one of these cycles can be its own “mini-intake,” and can be subject to all of the above problems and frustrations that come with it.
One solution is to enlist the help of deal desk software – preferably one that is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) so it can continue to learn from all the changes and significantly improve the process. For example, Advocat offers a platform that enables collaborative redlining by centralizing all activity so that it’s easy to access and use.
Using software offers simple solutions to these problems that come up during the intake and deal management process. Here are some things the software can do, leading to significant returns on investment for companies that employ this evolving technology.
How deal desk software can help
Coordination: A virtual deal desk solution allows everyone to see the same information at the same time, avoiding cumbersome and time-consuming communication chains. This allows for a single source on negotiated documents, eliminating the many different versions of Word documents that users attach to emails and circulate around, getting messy and out of sync.
Overcoming issues: Deal desk software provides tools that make it easy for the legal team to show what they have done so it’s easier to approve changes.
Empowerment: A virtual deal desk empowers everyone involved to leverage all features embedded in the software, allowing all employees to use the tools to quickly move deals forward.
Essentially, intake problems are a symptom of bad incentives, confusion, and dis-empowerment. Adopting deal desk software can solve these problems by increasing communication, reducing confusion and overcoming disempowerment. When adopted correctly, deal desks can not only reduce frustration among and between the sales and legal teams, it can save the company time, money, and increase revenues by allowing deals to close quicker.
This is a collaborative effort, requiring support from all stakeholders involved.
Here are some examples:
Highlighting areas of confusion when redlining documents reduces the number of areas that don’t matter and allows resolution without escalation. This also points directly to things that actually DO matter and require escalation. AI can tell the difference, allowing the legal team to focus on what is truly important.
AI can unify the sales playbook with guardrails set up by the legal department. Frequently, everyone has a different view on what the ideal contract result should be. By aligning those views early in the process – and allowing the software to help – internal processes will be improved.
Deal desks allow shared and transparent timelines. The sales team may want to close a deal before the end of the quarter or around a buyer’s budget cycle. But the legal department may have a three-month backlog of work, frustrating the sales team, which may covertly try to avoid the legal process and create contracts on their own. It’s imperative for both sides to understand each other’s timeline to avoid conflict or risky actions such as the execution of non-vetted contracts.
Deal desk software empowers employees on all sides of the deal to quickly and easily solve problems by putting everyone in the same virtual room – both synchronously and asynchronously – to manage their time in an efficient way.
If you’re on the sales side, don’t let intake and deal management challenges get in the way of closing your next deal. If you’re on the legal side, be confident your sales team is working in the most efficient and legally prudent manner. Consider employing a virtual deal desk to improve your processes and bottom line.
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A Statement of Work outlines the scope of work to be performed and identifies the objectives, tasks, and schedule. Here’s what you need to know.
Statement of Work (SOW) documents are extremely detailed and binding contracts that specify all the details of a project, including hierarchies of reporting, timelines, budgets, deliverables, dependencies, resources, and other terms and conditions agreed upon by all stakeholders. It is a complete project plan that lays down the groundwork for the working process of the project from start to finish.
An SOW document is imperative in order to begin work on any project for effective project management. It is a clearly written project management plan detailing the minutest aspects of the project to bring all the stakeholders on the same page.
Managing a project begins with a well-constructed SOW document. A comprehensive SOW agreement defines each and every aspect of the project in clear terms to all parties involved. It describes the scope of work, including daily tasks, due dates, the governance process, quality assurance, and deliverables, along with the suitable facilities, resources, equipment, training, and budget required to make the project feasible.
A formal SOW document is especially helpful when working with external resources or outsourcing projects to vendors or third parties. It serves as a legally binding contract that comes into play in case of disputes arising due to failure to deliver, financial dues, discrepancies in the end product delivered, missed due dates, etc.
Scope of Work ensures that all stakeholders are on the same page regarding the deliverables of the project. It deals with a brief overview of the project, the list of tasks, a detailed description of services, members, or teams responsible for tasks and services, due dates, expected outcomes, and deliverables.
On the other hand, the Statement of Work encompasses the Scope of Work plus other aspects of project management like budget allocation, financing, resources, equipment provisioning, training, payment processing, performance management, and so on.
An SOW (Statement of Work) document is especially helpful when managing projects in software development as it regulates the service agreements between two or more teams, between developers and vendors, or between IT firms collaborating on building a software product. Although it's not composed as a legal document, it can have legal repercussions when not adhered to.
A clearly written SOW template in software development project management includes explicit descriptions for the following crucial points:
Includes an introduction, a brief overview, and pointers on the reasons and objectives of the project, the processes involved, the end goal, and what it would take to get there.
Where will the vendors, contractors, managers, developers, and other stakeholders work from? Office, remote, or overseas locations?
This section describes the list of tasks, task due dates, responsible teams and members, reporting structure, and task outcomes.
Date of project commencement, task due dates, major milestones, and dates for project conclusion.
This section defines what is to be delivered, when, and how.
This section deals with quality testing, feedback loops, and other standard procedures to maintain the integrity of the deliverables.
A list of all the facilities, equipment, dependencies, technical know-how, tools for project management, and other resources like training, upskilling, etc., required to ensure the successful completion of the project.
This section deals with the budget allocated to the project, payment schedule, services and goods purchase, invoicing, and other financial aspects of the project.
Things not covered in the above eight sections, like travel expenditure, payment for short-term external services, security issues, confidentiality clauses, etc., are usually covered under separate headings dedicated to the topics.
This section deals with what constitutes the successful completion of the project. It mentions the standard of acceptable deliverables within the agreed-upon timeline, with the allocated budget, and every other aspect, so there's no confusion or communication gap between what's expected and what's delivered.
The closing section deals with the project completion procedures and lists all the paperwork, product releases, and other paraphernalia to conclude the partnership.
Here's a quick list of downloadable templates for different types of SOWs.
If you are in the business of developing and managing projects or building software products and services, you'll be in frequent need of clearly composed SOW documents. Although you can easily plan a project using tools like Dropbox Paper, it doesn't help you write a thorough SOW document. Instead of writing one from scratch for each project, you can rely on web-based portals that specialize in generating proposal documents, Scope of Work documents, and SOW agreements.
Better known as digital contracting apps, these portals provide everything from readymade software contracts and legal documents to tools to manage a project, negotiate the terms, customize documents per project requirements, and measure the progress of your software development project. Here's a shortlist of such digital apps to help you with your SOW agreements.
Whether you're a freelance software developer, a member of a team of developers, or a software firm that hires vendors, it's a given that you'll need to write or sign an SOW document sooner or later.
You can use the free downloadable templates listed above, or outsource this process to software services that make the process easier and also provide free Scope of Work templates.
Former corporate communications specialist who's worked with Uber, Google, and TCS, Al Kaatib has ten years of experience as a freelance writer specializing in B2B and B2C content.