The advent of the Internet has played a significant role in the success of brands, products and services. Enterprises today have various platforms to get the word out about their products or services such as social networking sites, blogs, articles, emails, forums and so on. Moreover, the customers also use the same platforms to get themselves heard. Thus, the Internet benefits both enterprises as well as customers. On one hand, it helps enterprises to know the perception of the customers about products or services while on the other hand, it helps customers to collect more information about the brands, services and new product lines.

Today customer perception is influenced by factors such as product development, product design, product quality, after sale service, support, customer service and so on. In such a scenario, enterprises spend a significant amount of their time, revenue and efforts in maintaining a strong brand worldwide. Today brand reputation is the key to increasing and maintaining a strong customer base, in view of the fact that very often purchase decisions are based on brand reputation alone. However, maintaining brand reputation is an uphill task because many crooks use the very same internet to carry out counterfeit and gray market sales. When inferior and cheaper counterfeits of products flood the Internet, it affects the perception and image of brand/brands worldwide. When products are counterfeited or sold on the grey market, enterprises not only lose their hard-earned reputation but also lose significant market share.

To meet these challenges head-on, enterprises need to partner with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) solution providers who can help in protecting the brand effectively. They use anti-counterfeiting and brand intelligence solutions to shorten the process of finding where counterfeits are being sold online. Not only that, it prioritizes violators and identifies the syndicates, the most sophisticated violators who are doing the most damage to a companys brand reputation.

Avivah Litan, a Gartner Analyst, in her report stated that companies who incorporate anti-counterfeiting solutions in their brand protection efforts are the ones who are taking proactive action to protect their customers. She believes organizations should let their customers know they are making an effort to keep counterfeits off the market.

Thus taking cue from that, enterprises must deploy effective ERM solutions not only to find counterfeits online, but also to shut down these illegal operations. Finding and shutting down counterfeits is one of the most important steps in effective global brand management because when a brand owner succeeds in reducing the amount of counterfeit and grey market sales of his products, confidence in his brand is restored.