As a result of a rapidly growing and changing employee base, the rising need for teams to collaborate using third-party content, and an increasingly remote workforce and the challenges it brings, many organizations need to develop a global, yet nimble copyright compliance strategy to minimize risk and constantly evolve to meet the changing needs of the businesses. One firm that has found success developing and implementing such a strategy is T. Rowe Price, a global asset management company focused on delivering investment excellence and retirement services for institutional and individual investors
In addition to the steps for fostering a copyright-compliant culture outlined in a previous blog, T. Rowe Price has also instituted a two-pronged strategy that highlights the importance of providing a comprehensive set of IP tools and support services to employees company-wide.
To start, T. Rowe Price’s “Service Everywhere Approach” adopted hub-and-spoke design focused on self-service tools. They compiled resources that the business can utilize for copyright compliance, such as CCC’s Annual Copyright License, which complements publisher agreements and subscriptions by providing a consistent set of reuse rights across a broad repertory of titles, and CCC’s Multinational Copyright License, which extends those rights to employees outside the U.S. to facilitate efficient global collaboration.
They developed internal job aids, decision trees, self-directed forms, and digital asset libraries for content such as photographs and accolades, and evolved into a service-end model —from offering a central location for the business to come with IP issues to proactively engaging employees on their turf, whether physical or digital.
Next, they formed strong partnerships with crucial teams integrated in the business’s regular workflows by:
- Partnering daily with the global communications compliance team, global brand management team, and the market data services team to identify and resolve business IP needs.
- Embedding IP team members within the business units, which allows them to interact daily, build strong relationships and stay current on the business’s most pressing IP needs.
- Building out a team of IP champions — liaisons that can help identify potential IP problems and guide the business to self-help tools or to the IP mailbox
T. Rowe Price’s education and copyright compliance program also leverages data for more informed decision-making. They are able to determine how effective a compliance training was by analyzing the type of requests coming in and from whom. They can forecast when requests from business units that typically use their services may decline. Their analytics dashboard warns of these potential instances so that they can increase engagement with those teams. In other words, data allows them to identify potential high levels of risk and focus educational efforts in an effective and efficient manner.
To read more about T. Rowe Price’s complete strategy for managing global copyright compliance, access their full case study here.