Using Compliance Analytics

Rarely is an IP address sufficient to confidently identify and understand infringers. You need far more data. This can include unique hardware identifiers (e.g., MAC addresses), detailed module usage data, specific known-pirated version data, domain names, egress IP addresses, and more. All this can be captured transparently, without impacting application performance.

Capture geolocation on Wi-Fi connected laptops and other client devices. Linked to Google Maps APIs, this data can even deliver aerial views of physical locations. Even when such views aren’t available, geolocation data can add certainty to other location data.

Better assess potential leads by enriching them with information from your customer and prospect databases, third-party business databases, and proprietary industry knowledge about other infringements.

The right tools automatically assemble all data associated with each prospect, without requiring developers to write scripts, SQL queries, or web service calls. That way, you can get the job done yourself, without competing for scarce technical resources.

Using location data, advanced software intelligence tools can determine on-the-fly whether data needs to be anonymized, and where it should be sent and stored. That means you can use personalized data in the US without risking violation of EU privacy rules.

To capture client data for compliance auditing and user behavior analysis consistent with privacy law, you must claim your right to do so in contracts and EULAs.

Implement systems that automatically aggregate all infringements associated with a specific organization, identify that organization, and link with existing accounts or prospects where they exist in your CRM.

Don’t focus resources on a single brief infringement: look for multiple sessions and use of multiple modules that represent meaningful theft of your intellectual property to gain business value. As a practical matter, doing this requires sophisticated automated correlation and analysis tools.

Access basic metrics immediately including: total compliance opportunity, damage calculations, count of infringing organizations, number of machines running pirated software, and number of infringements that represent actual use of your application. You should also be able to easily customize your dashboards to generate geographic heat maps, segment and filter based on your business models, and integrate other business intelligence tools to support and analyze higher volumes of infringement data.

When generating large numbers of leads, use tools that score them automatically based on rules you define and adjust (e.g., levels of usage over time, number of machines, etc.). Your most qualified opportunities automatically rise to the top.

Don’t let emotions such as anger or betrayal interfere with your strategy for an infringer. Focus on understanding the business needs that led to piracy, meeting them with your paid-for technology, and moving forward. If your goal is revenue for previous usage—and paid-up licenses and maintenance contracts—make sure your entire team knows that. You don’t want a salesperson to settle for a vague promise of future business or a minor favor on a current project.

Integrate your compliance and CRM systems, so it’s easy to receive and share relevant information, communicate with team members and partners, and automate your case management workflows.

Implement systems that make it easy to provide summary data at any level, or granular detail about only specific clients. For example, you might selectively provide limited compliance dashboards to those who need them, or use tools that make it easier to generate and share PDF reports.

Manage your compliance pipeline with a portal that lets you assign leads internally and externally approve cases, review program status, and analyze results by market, geography, partners, and more.

Standardize and simplify the generation of instructions to salespeople and other compliance team members, as well as letters and language you will use with your infringing prospect or customer.

If you don’t have the resources to manage compliance in certain markets, or if internal sales organizations can’t comfortably do so, leverage outside compliance specialists with expertise in monetizing piracy efficiently and dispassionately, based on best practices and extensive experience.

By linking your compliance tools to your CRM and other tools, you can simplify the management leads to revenue and track the relative performance associated with multiple products, channels, and partners. You can potentially view conversion rates, revenue rollups, and more, without leaving your compliance dashboard.

On first contact, give your infringer just enough information for him to verify that piracy does in fact exist: for example, MAC addresses implicating specific devices, or knownpirated licenses in use. Until your infringer responds, hold back what you know about the piracy’s full extent in space and time. This is information you can often use effectively in negotiations, or if your executive contact lies or shades the truth in future conversations.

A surprisingly large number of infringers will pay if you can prove infringement. You can often position yourself on the side of the enterprise or its IT management, helping them self-audit to uncover security risks associated with cracked software throughout their own organizations.

If piracy disappeared immediately after your first executive contact, the executive may be conspiring with lower-level pirates to hide their tracks. If piracy is continuing, the executive may be conducting a legitimate investigation. Knowing this can help you strategize your next steps.

Using sophisticated software intelligence tools, you can build automated sequences of in-app messages and behaviors that begin by gently informing users that their software is unlicensed, and gradually move toward limiting functionality or reverting to trial versions. This strategy has been repeatedly shown to generate significant new revenue streams with modest investments in time and resources.