Software piracy – Where is your revenue going?
Marketers are under constant pressure to do their part to keep the sales funnel full with qualified leads, grow the business and improve ROMI. For sellers and marketers of software, that typically involves selling licenses and renewing maintenance agreements. But are all applications actually in use being captured as revenue? Enter the constant uphill battle against software piracy. In this three-part series, we will explore what the problem of software piracy means to marketers, what can be done about it and how it can be turned into revenue.
Whether software marketers want to believe it or not, their products and intellectual property are continuously at risk of being pirated. With industry groups such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) claiming $51 billion in software theft globally in 2009, there shouldn’t be an independent software vendor (ISV) without some concern that they have a piracy problem. When you consider the amount of resources dedicated to developing a software product and bringing it to market, the financial impact of unlicensed use could be devastating.
In order for a software vendor to grow its business, it obviously needs to be able to sell its product, but far too often it fails to consider whether that same product is being pirated. The vast majority of marketers are focused on prospects and leads, while overlooking potential funnel leakage due to piracy. Any vendor that is serious about its potential longevity needs to know if it has a software piracy problem.