Extended Enterprise Risk Management

We can assist you in obtaining assurance over your third party partners’ compliance with agreed contractual terms. On the revenue side, this involves providing you comfort that you are receiving the revenues (e.g. royalties, licensee fees, revenue/profit share) you are entitled to and that your third party partners are complying with brand/marketing obligations. On the supply side, this involves assessing that third party suppliers have charged you accurately for services provided as well as meeting service / product quality requirements. Our breadth of experience covers all industries and all types of third party relationships from outsourced providers to advertising agencies to licensees to materials suppliers. We can also support you in assessing your adherence to contractual terms with your customers and licensors; and provide recommendations to address any gaps in your current processes and controls.

Software is prevalent in almost all business processes but the licensing and management of these vital assets is rarely completely understood and often poorly managed. The organisation may not know its weaknesses in this space until it is hit with a software vendor audit.

Our Contract Advisory professionals can assist you in developing a bespoke Third-party governance and risk management (TPGRM) framework to enable your organisation to identify, mitigate and govern third-party risk.

We can support by providing guidance on specific elements of an existing TPGRM framework (i.e. process, technology, governance, delivery model) or by providing you with a programme and a team to work with key stakeholders in your organisation to establish a new framework.

Our experienced team can also provide support in the areas of Contract Discovery, Key Contract Clause Extraction, undertaking Contract Risk Assessments and performing assessments of third party management processes.

In today’s legal practice where speed, efficiency and compliance are major challenges to deal with, digitization is a solution for the legal function and its stakeholders. Dedicated software off the shelve or with the possibility to customize will encourage cooperation between businesses, procurement and legal resulting in a smooth and compliant contracting process. We support organizations in software selection, requirements definition, implementation, change management and training.

During execution of the IP strategy, operational excellence is key to balance value creation versus costs. Aspects to consider are: IP portfolio categorization, lean IP processes and an efficient IP organization together with a synergetic IT landscape, pragmatic budget control and meaningful KPI reporting. Improvements in one or more of these aspects may safeguard IP management from portfolio cuts that potentially jeopardize the long term value creation from IP.

Third parties, such as temporary staff and/or service providers, are becoming increasingly important. Stijn Demeestere and Madhuri Borms discuss the risks, challenges and opportunities organisations are facing today.