Five minutes with Elena Galletti, Brandstock

Elena Galletti is vice president of marketing and key account management at Brandstock. We caught up with her to find out how companies can come out of the pandemic leaner and more efficient.

What is the best way for corporates to justify to management that you need to spend money on IP at the moment?

What I would suggest at the moment is to analyse the strength and coverage of the portfolio to see if there’s a basis to rationalise and optimise it. There are some actions that are easy to take, but it may be difficult to do it yourself because you work day-to-day with your portfolio. This is where it’s useful to have someone from the outside to jump in. It’s difficult to do it in-house because you have all the regular daily tasks. We have been proposing this analysis for years and many companies have decided to “test” their portfolio with us. Some corporates immediately understood the rationale and did it, while others were reluctant. This attitude seems strange to me—maybe it means they’re not under pressure or are not worried about it, or perhaps they have a very strong relationship with their agents worldwide or with a different law firm/service provider, and the benefits that come with that.

Especially in this particular period, we all have a responsibility to do our best to optimise and make our processes more efficient, but certainly not every company is doing this. Many companies are still working in an old fashioned way with lots of people involved in the management of the portfolio, old processes in place, no clear reporting. There might be different reasons why they don’t want to change (or they cannot change), for example because they want to keep trade secrets in-house or because they just want to keep everyone involved. But the trend is now to outsource services that are not strategic, because an external provider has experience of other companies and industries, can suggest different points of view, and can challenge the status quo. I think new challenges are always bringing new opportunities and a fresh approach to the usual attitude of “we have always done things in this way”.  Outsourcing means the resource is always flexible and available. You remove the risk of having one person internally who is on holiday or on leave and there being no back up.

Are more companies outsourcing during the pandemic? What should be the primary considerations?

Yes, they have to outsource more, and not just on IP. If they have budget pressure, of course cost is important, but it’s also clear that they need to do more with less: they need a consultant who knows the business and can provide the best (short!) opinion, straight to the point, taking some controlled risks. The era of the conservative lawyer is over.