The term “Business Intelligence” (BI) represents tools and systems that play a key role in a corporation’s strategic planning process. These systems allow a company to gather, store, access, and analyze corporate data to aid in decision-making. They generally cover such areas as customer profiling, customer support, market research, market segmentation, product profitability, statistical analysis, and inventory and distribution analysis. In a nutshell, business intelligence is a concept for delivering specific and useful information in the midst of the data-explosion that organizations face today.

Business intelligence is a corporate weapon to fight fraud, waste, and abuse. It empowers decision-making at all levels of management. It provides quick notification of business exceptions, advanced reporting and analysis capabilities, and the ability to compare data to improve tactical and strategic management. Business intelligence helps you embrace strategic planning for business growth by identifying key trends and patterns in your data with the potential to unlock new growth opportunities, streamline processes, or even reduce costs. Business intelligence software provides a 360-degree view of your business, empowering individuals to share data across the business and give immediate access to vital customer and financial information. In today’s business environment, where data is king, good business intelligence should be at the heart of every company.

Royalty management tools help companies manage even the most complicated contract situations, including streamlined contract management, royalty sales aggregation and processing, statement generation, royalty calculation, and payment processing. Royalty management can be a major component of business intelligence. As an enabling technology, business intelligence is all about providing the right information in the right context to the right person at the right time; this in turn gives organisations the insight they need to achieve real business agility. Through increased visibility of your financial prospects, you can not only better understand the implications of an investment, but make and analyse connections between different areas of your business. This can improve efficiency within your organisation and ultimately increase productivity.

We will look at four types of tools used in royalty management, and the business intelligence value each tool adds:

1. IP Portfolio Management: A well-considered intellectual property strategy that supports the overall business strategy, implemented with a realistic budget and executive-level authority and accountability, is a 21st-century necessity for companies large and small, in every commercial sphere. The actual monitoring, managing, and reporting of even a few intellectual property assets requires a clear understanding of the legal deadlines and procedures involved, as well as the ability to balance the costs, risks, and benefits of available opportunities across all cases. It also requires the ability to update and execute the IP strategy in harmony with an evolving business strategy.

2. IP Exchanges: Underutilized patents hold intellectual property (IP) owners ransom to the tune of $1 trillion annually. The solution? Monetize valuable IP assets on the open market to see exactly how much your IP is worth.

A number of web-based intellectual property exchanges are designed to facilitate communication between sellers of IP and potential buyers. Some are simply internet portals to licensing organizations. Like many exchanges, IP exchanges provide a marketplace that brings buyers and sellers together; however, instead of offering stocks and bonds, IPXI offers ULR contracts.

A ULR contract represents a non-exclusive license for an individual unit or a bundle of IP. Purchasing a ULR contract grants the holder of the contract (the licensee) the right to use the IP listed in the contract for the future production, use, and/or sale of one unit of goods.For example, a patent owner (a licensor) might offer a ULR contract for a technology that a licensee could use to build a certain device. Each ULR contract would grant the licensee the right to make one device with the patented technology. If the licensee wanted to produce 10,000 such devices, the licensee would need to buy 10,000 ULR contracts. Each contract would expire upon the production of a product with the patented technology.

All ULR contracts go through an extensive vetting and valuation process before being offered on IPXI. IPXI evaluates the quality and validity of the proposed IP, then conducts market research to create a financial model and estimate demand for IP licenses.

Royalty management tools may perform the function of BI tools here. For example, a client may ask you to assist in marketing a technology for which you have secured patent protection; or you may need to research the competitive market.

3. Document Assembly: Document assembly is the process of creating word-processing documents by combining segments of text stored separately as files or macros. This is a key BI function. A document assembly system should reflect your drafting styles to address your firm’s specific needs. If the bulk of your practice is in the area of intellectual property, you should consider investing in a document-assembly program and spend some time developing automated templates. These tools enable the IP practitioner to be more productive. Combined with task-based billing, they can dramatically improve the bottom line.

4. Intelligent Forms: Any business, large or small, has to deal with an overwhelming amount of data and paperwork. Data acquisition is one of the biggest challenges faced by most businesses today. Handling paperwork in the traditional fashion can be time consuming, difficult, and counter-productive. However, organizations can adapt and scale intelligent forms to meet their current and future needs.

An intelligent form is a form in which a programmer or interface designer has placed interactive elements that help the user complete the form. The interaction can be online help, visual cues, or even artificial intelligence. The goal is for the user to complete the form correctly. Highly engineered software for global data acquisition and distribution has been designed to support large volumes of data with speed and ease, with the intelligent forms configured in a powerful, centralized database engine.

Royalty management data is an important part of business intelligence. A quality royalty management system comes equipped with these BI tools and helps IP licensors and licensees base their decisions on accurate information and analysis.