Andrew Clarkson transitions to Managing Director of CJCH
In January this year, CJCH attracted Andrew Clarkson, a thought leader in licence compliance, to consult to the firm on specialist licence compliance investigations. Now almost six months into his new role, Clarkson reflects on the progression of the firm, its offering and the industry.
CJCH is a Cardiff based group of companies which includes a Solicitors practice, a property investment firm, and a leading software anti-piracy and licence compliance services business, CJCH Consulting. Collectively CJCH Group is run by an executive board including four Solicitors, an ex-director of Deloitte, an ex-management consultant from Accenture, and the previous CEO of a global construction supplies company.
Prior to joining CJCH, Clarkson most recently held the title of Senior Director of Anti-Piracy and Licence Compliance at Dassault Systèmes with global responsibility across the Group. Before that, he held senior roles at IBM and South Wales Police.
The successful symbiosis between Clarkson and CJCH saw the relationship evolve with Clarkson accepting the offer to become the firm’s Managing Director in July of this year. The appointment of the new Managing Director was aligned to CJCH’s strategic succession plan, whereby the founder of CJCH Consulting, Stephen Clarke, stepped into the Group Chairman role, and Tim Hartland into the role of Chief Operating Officer, having previously been the Managing Partner of CJCH Solicitors.
Growth strategy
Clarkson and Hartland now work side by side to advance CJCH’s ambitious growth strategy. This strategy offers their existing clients enhanced operational efficiency, best practice thinking and a wider global implementation network.
The firm now directly manages licence compliance activities across 42 countries in the EMEA region, while having agreements with critically placed partners in the Americas and Asia-Pacific to extend that network to 60 operational countries for licence compliance enforcement.
“What is clear is that implementing a successful licence compliance program brings significant opportunity in terms of ‘value’ not only from protecting IP but also driving revenue. The BSA (Business Software Alliance) identified the global software piracy market to have a value in excess of $34.6 billion. What we’ve achieved at CJCH is to inform and educate the market of the challenges of the use of ‘unlicensed software’ and provide them with tailored and accurate licence compliance solutions to address it in a positive but effective way.”
“With that in mind we’ve taken the knowledge we have built up over the last five years and shared the approach, working closely with our partners, clients and other industry specialists which has seen our team travel across the globe; including countries China, Japan, the United States, Israel, France, Spain, Italy, and Egypt.”
According to Clarkson, the CJCH approach acknowledges and offers software vendors the security of protecting their intellectual property, recovering lost revenue due to non-compliance, whilst keeping in mind the need to safeguard user relationships and industry reputation.
“We’ve prepared ourselves for rapid growth in 2020, with dedicated analysis, research and compliance teams for each of our clients, and a renowned training program to build a team capable of addressing the ever-evolving sophistication of digital piracy activities,” Clarkson concluded.
