Who Needs Licensing Relationship Management Anyway? You Do.

Just between us, how important do you think partner relationships are to your business? More important than finding the next hot retailer? Less important than the yearly Christmas party? ­­

Most licensing partnerships fail because of one thing: fractured relationships. So, if partnerships aren’t #1 on your list, you might need a new list. 

Forgetting your partners isn’t just a no-no. It’s a decision that can make the difference between launching a globally successful licensing program and creating a forgettable flop.

Okay, now for the good news. 

In our industry, the need for clear and actionable communication between licensors, licensees, and agents to build strong programs has become a category all of its own. At Flowhaven, we’ve coined the term Licensing Relationship Management.

LRM is what happens when you put relationships at the center of your business.

So, what is LRM?

Licensing Relationship Management is a modern business strategy designed to boost licensing sales, royalty revenue, and partner service, reduce costs, and increase licensing partner loyalty. You’re also allowed to refer to it as pure magic.

The technology was developed by Kalle Törmä, a young industry titan with a passion for brands. At Flowhaven, we’re lucky to call him our CEO.

LRM leverages Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a system that helps businesses manage and analyze its own interactions with its past, current and potential customers (popularized by Salesforce).As well as licensing specific processes to create a tool that works for every licensing department.  

The thinking behind LRM is this: When your team can look at every interaction and transaction through your partner’s eyes, you’re guaranteed to deliver a better experience. The better the connection, the more likely your partners are to stay loyal and repeat business. 

LRM is not a process that can happen on its own.

To work, your need the right set of tools and dedicated leadership. Think of it like a boat. Sure, you can sit on the water and hope that the tide takes you where you want to go. But if you want to steer toward a clear destination and get there quickly, it would probably help to have the right tools and someone who knows the way.

Who needs LRM?

Who needs LRM? *Drumroll* Anyone interested in the health of their brand licensing program!

Today’s LRM systems aren’t like the clunky, intimidating machines of the past. Modern technology, like Flowhaven, comes with a range of advanced functions and user-friendly interfaces. They intelligently store and manage partner information. Helping your team find new partnerships and optimize existing ones to drive success.

It can also help you keep your internal teams on task and external teams happy. LRM solutions do all of this all on one platform. So, everyone has access to the same information and updates at all times.

LRM was designed to fit business structures from enterprises to few person teams. It doesn’t matter if your licensing team fills up an office floor or single chair, LRM is a tool kit that will help you establish closer connections with your partners.

Get ready to revamp the way you deliver professional licensing service, gain more revenue and grow your business further. If that wasn’t enough, LRM systems boast flexible costs, easy maintenance and stress-free onboarding.

Whether you’re working on a high-performing team or struggling to meet deadlines, LRM is the tool you need to make sure every deal is a win.

How is LRM Helping Licensees?

As a licensee, it’s your job to create unique products consumers will love, and retailers will want to stock again and again. To do that, you need to ensure that you have an open line of communication with the brand owner, a clear understanding of your agreement terms including the rights that have been granted to you, and a convenient place to communicate with your partner about the creative assets you need to push production.

You know that if you don’t have the information you need to create high-quality products that accurately reflect the core brand, you can fracture your relationships with the brand owner. Or, take a hit on your reputation and lose your standing as the go-to person in a particular category.

Transparency

LRMs make analyzing and reporting on your progress painless. Never worry about sending an email to confirm that you are on schedule to deliver quality product again. Flowhaven, for example, allows users to give their partners a consolidated view of their movement to flag issues immediately, confirm schedules and enhance trust.

The system’s reporting dashboard is customizable.  You can report on any metric (sales performance, productivity, delivery dates versus goal, etc.) across your internal teams and external partners. You can pull these detailed reports at any time and share them directly with the team members who need to review them. 

With Flowhaven, you can even break data down by quarter, year, or type, including SKU, client, or category, to deliver multi-dimensional reports that show exactly where you triumph. 

In the end, you won’t just get to creating impressive products faster. You’ll generate reports so fast your partners will be blown away by your ability to deliver high-quality service that leads to higher revenues and greater exposure for your core brand, with ease.

Accountability

LRM gives you a way to hold your team accountable in their roles. A good LRM system helps team members across departments understand their responsibilities to partners throughout the licensing lifecycle. When those responsibilities aren’t met, it’s easy to identify what went wrong, where, who fell short and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Say so long to finger pointing. Teams with access to LRMs like Flowhaven, have all the tools they need to keep a licensing program on schedule. If there are changes or delays your team can easily flag it. You can also confirm that your royalty payments have been made, send reminders and track your team’s recoupment speeds.

What does LRM do for Licensors?

As a licensor, you’re proud to be behind a brand that has excited fans so much, they can’t wait to get their hands on the products that connect them to it. To preserve your brand integrity, you want to ensure that you match with agents and licensees who can execute your vision flawlessly. 

If you cannot communicate clearly and make accurate assessments of your partners, you can undermine your core brand and quickly turn fans into foes in an instant. Processes that support effective communication aren’t just right for your bottom line. They can be the difference between a years long product program and an overnight flop.

Customization

Each licensing team’s needs are different. They can’t be standardized. Different views for different users is a must-have functionality when deciding if an LRM solution is right for your team.

Since every company is different, few LRM systems will do everything you need out-of-the-box. There will almost always be some degree of modification required for the software to work for your company. Some of these modifications are simple. Some can be more complex.

Most modern LRM systems provide simple graphical tools, so non-technical personnel can make minor adjustments to the system. More advanced customizations are provided for more technical team members.

Flowhaven has helped several customers solve for special language and currency issues. If an organization has international operations, the ability to support local character sets, translate messages and track and report on transactions in different currencies, can be game-changing.

New Opportunities

As a brand owner, it helps to have a system that helps you want to identify new open categories quickly. Your LRM system can help you find all available licensed rights in an organized way. You can then sort the known partners that could fill those gaps and begin reaching out to make deals. 

The more attractive your business is, the easier it can be for valuable leads to fall through the cracks. Think about when you attend a trade show. Have you ever forgotten to write about your meeting? Improving your efficiency and productivity will bring you closer to your revenue goals. Having a tool to organize the process, ensures its sustainable. 

With an LRM, your team will avoid spending hours combing through emails and trying to communicate with other coworkers to find recent updates about partners. For example, Flowhaven, makes it easy to grow your number of contacts and leads in an organized and professional way by reminding you of appointments.  Or pointing your team leads at specific points in their licensing journey.

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How is LRM helping agents?

As an agent, you act as both a middleman and an overseer, helping teams perfect their strategies and connect with the best licensees and retailers available. At any given time, you might even have multiple brands under your belt. Whether your licensors release a new style guide or are in the market for new partnerships, you can use LRM to let the right people know new resources and opportunities have become available.

LRMs come with state-of-the-art content management features. Flowhaven, for example, gives you the power to create client-specific environments that showcase all assets, including versions of a given artwork, logos, and more. The cloud-based interface eliminates the need for clunky file-sharing or select apps to open files and makes them available anytime, anywhere to everyone, from the graphic designer to the manufacturer. 

Flexibility

As an agent, you’re used to travelling to trade shows and other industry events to promote your clients. That means that office files are no longer a practical method for organising and storing partner information that can be useful while you’re on the go. 

As mobile adoption continues to grow and organisations become more flexible in work set-ups, young desktop applications, including LRM, are conquering into the mobile space.

Users and customers alike expect information to be updated in real-time and not “when you get back to the office.” This means that your team needs access to real-time data no matter where they are. Mobile LRM gives you the ability to work from anywhere in the world. And, update data including contact information about new prospects as you go.

The system also breaks down traditional barriers by providing access to partner, product and sales information. When you’re fully informed, you’re guaranteed to have shorter agreement cycles.

Invoice Management

In licensing, invoice management can be cumbersome without a proper LRM that keeps track of inbound and outbound invoice statuses and details. With full automation, the time previously spent on manipulating spreadsheets, calculating commissions, and minimum guarantee open balances and instalments sums is saved.

See how Flowhaven keeps every licensing deal, right and renewal in one searchable system with Agreement Management.

Eight things LRM changes day to day

1. Better decision making

If licensing professionals have learned anything from years of negotiations and meetings, it’s that they need to be able to make split-second decisions. 

That’s not always easy to do.  

If you don’t have a complete view of your data or the ability to see how your licensing deals are progressing in real-time, you’re at risk of making a decision that can put your business in jeopardy.  

LRM sheds light on important information. That gives users the power to generate detailed reports that forecast sales, measure partner service activity, and compare licensing performance to contractual terms. Having a clear reference within reach will help you track your team’s progress against your base deadlines.  

A decade ago, we could only dream about having a granular analysis of our data in our pockets. Now, LRM takes the guesswork out of decision making and puts the information you need to lead right in the palm of your hands. 

Learn what detailed data reports can do for your business here.

2. Access real-time data

Licensing professionals who are always on-the-go, know that if they want to be the smartest person in the room at meetings, trade shows, and even living room video calls, they need access to data on the go. 

The importance of access to real-time data can’t be overstated. It gives leaders an upper hand in negotiations and helps everyone on the team know if they’re meeting the goals they’ve outlined for themselves. 

LRM gives anyone, from remote-workers to road warriors, instant access to centralized, real-time data like partner performance, communication and activity histories, licensed product information, agreements, and granted rights and email history. The best part? It’s all accessible from any location and on any device.

With a single click, you can access reporting and visual charts that can help you extract important information from the LRM system. And, make connections between data from other systems for internal use, partners, and auditors. 

Modern LRM dashboards don’t just give vague summaries. They display key information specific to each user. Whether you’re an asset-obsessed coordinator or a royalty-minded apparel manufacturer, you can customize the solution to put the information you care about first. Solutions like 

Flowhaven comes with pre-created templates that can be modified, shared with specific users, and exported in various formats. 

Learn what data-led dashboards can do for your business here.

3. A Leap Forward for Productivity Tools

Licensing pros are constantly looking for ways to improve their speed to market. The faster you can get your products to the people who crave them, the more successful you’ll be. 

But, bad communication methods and siloed workflows create bottlenecks that throw to put entire projects behind schedule. 

LRM was designed to fuel shorter agreement sales cycles, improve turnaround times, and win rates. You can also use the technology to create workflow rules, automate team-specific processes, and streamline legal management to avoid conflicts. 

When your workflows improve, your product development processes become easier.

Flowhaven, for example, makes it painless to grant access to assets and style guides. With its well-defined product development funnel, collaborating from the concept of receiving approval confirmation for the new SKU (stock keeping unit). 

LRM also provides superior features to help you transition between stages, like the ability to upload files, apply pins to the preview images, and compare modes to track changes.

Users love LRM because it provides transparency for teams on both sides.

Learn what automated processes can do or your business here.

4. Return the love

Who doesn’t enjoy working with a partner who understands their needs and genuinely listens to their concerns? Another commonly cited benefit of LRM software is enhanced partnership satisfaction and service. The solution empowers partners to communicate well, report their progress, and track yours. 

LRM makes it easy to assign tasks quickly, manage and resolve requests, answer questions with automated routing, queuing, and escalation. From agreements to royalties or product approval requests, no concern will go unchecked. 

By applying fundamental LRM strategies as well as a specially designs tool, you’ll narrow your focus, achieve your goals, and improve your deliverability. Not only will your partners walk away happy, but they’ll also keep you top of mind for future projects. 

Learn what happy partner relationships can do for your business here.

5. Identify repeat partners

The licensing industry is small. If you plan to launch multiple licensing programs or even breathe new life into an existing one, you’ll probably need to form deals with partners you’ve worked with before. If you haven’t kept good records about your past partnerships, you may be at risk of losing your next deal. 

Having an LRM is like having a knowledgeable bookkeeper by your side. The solution will catalog the account owner, what area of the business they work in, and what activities they expect you to perform. 

Once your workflow and rules are outlined, the LRM system can automate the whole flow and generate automatic tasks like booking quarterly review meetings. At the same time, it creates a single reference to help you understand each partner.

LRM applications can automatically identify phone calls from past partners by recalling data from the LRM system. This gives you the opportunity to re-engage and react instantly.

Learn how LRM makes it easy to engage with old and new partners here.

6. Keep tabs on customers  

Customer satisfaction doesn’t end once you have an in-depth knowledge of customer information.

To keep partners happy long term, you need to make sure that the solutions you use fully integrate all of the company stakeholders. When everyone on your team can submit status reports, confirm deadlines, and see where they fit into the big picture, you build a more engaged team all around.  

With LRM sales, brand assurance, product development, royalty functions, and more can be submitted by anyone and seamlessly integrated with existing data. You can then quickly access and share information, supercharging everyone’s productivity. 

Learn how LRM helps you stay updated about partners here.

7. Secure customer loyalty

LRM allows teams to instantly access partner data to create and maintain hyper-personal relationships and tailor pitches and products to suit them. When your partners feel fully aligned with their vision of success, they’re more excited to work with you. 

LRM can help you keep track of important dates, such as your customer’s business anniversary, brand milestones, and more. It can then send reminders when these events occur to reach out. 

What partner doesn’t want to know that you remember their character brand’s 90th anniversary? Or that they unveiled new manufacturing technology last year? Using LRM to create a more personalized experience is a direct route to customer loyalty. 

Learn what partner profiles can do for your business here.

8. Drive licensing strategies

When you have an LRM platform, you can organize and present data in a way that works for everyone. When your whole team can make sense of data, they get to know your partners better. The more informed you are, the better you’ll be at creating strategies that fit everyone’s needs perfectly. 

Solutions like Flowhaven makes it easy to customize dashboard views and generate custom reports to ensure the data that matters is always in front of you. Say ‘so long,’ to missing of misinterpreting the information that drives strategies. 

If one or more of these benefits made you jump up with joy, it’s time to take the next step and start looking for an LRM solution for your business. The perfect system will help you find more customers, keep partners happier, and keep you in sync with your entire company–setting you up for growth. 

Learn what a data-led dashboard can do for your business here.

See how Flowhaven brings agreements, approvals, royalties and analytics into one licensing platform.

“There’s a level of professionalism that gets lost when you’re emailing a spreadsheet.”