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BD-BrandProtect Perspective:
Protecting the Integrity of Your Brand from Online Risk Exposure

Metrics for Performance Management

When adopting an online brand protection strategy, a final issue to consider is the availability of robust performance metrics that enable you to measure the effectiveness of the approach at an enterprise level. In this way, companies can assure that the business value of protecting their brands and various intangible assets gets measured, acted upon and assessed by executive management.

For most organizations, experience shows that the most common forms of online infractions are likely to occur on an ongoing basis, rather than as isolated incidents. From a managerial perspective, then, it is important to design and manage these infractions via a corporate performance scorecard that is aligned with the corporate ‘balanced scorecard’. Metrics must be calibrated in a way that will help determine the business value of the harm being brought to the brands and defined in such a way that is meaningful to the stakeholder groups represented on the cross-functional brand protection council.

The most actionable metrics and scorecards are simple and easy to read by frontline employees, middle mangers and executives alike. They do not simply provide a tally of brand abuse, but track the level of severity, incidence levels and cost to the organization in the form of lost revenue, lost ‘shopping intenders’ and recovery costs.

The best metrics include associated actions and rates of success in mitigating brand abuse and fraudulent activity. This is where the executive management will be most interested in the process to protect the brand and evaluate the business value of the brand protection process in and of itself. The best case will deliver a true ROI measure; in the least, specific actions and outcomes will be tracked and measured. Realistically, most companies should strive to mitigate as much of the most harmful damage as possible, allocate resources to the most harmful activities and take steps to educate customers and employees alike about the various forms of Internet-based criminal activity. In this way, companies can begin to protect the integrity of their brands by mitigating and managing their online risk exposure.

Figure 4: Sample performance dashboard

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