A Year On – Emerging Stronger
Inset (L-R): Directors Steven McIlroy and Stewart Cameron
After hitting the anniversary of lockdown across the UK this month, and having just surpassed the 10th anniversary of the company’s founding, we at Cameron Intellectual Property have been reflecting on the legacy of the past year, what we’ve learned and how we’ll go forward as a business.
Resilient and committed staff
As people, our staff have been tested for sure, juggling caring responsibilities and work, dealing with the isolation of homeworking, and coping with a completely new way of life, with these just some of the challenges they’ve faced. We’ve learned just how resilient and committed our staff are in the face of the most difficult circumstances and admire how they’ve responded.
Robust business systems
As a business, we’ve learned that we have robust systems that have seen us through what we hope is the worst of the pandemic, and that prior investment in the technology and infrastructure to facilitate staff working from home has served us well, with our clients experiencing no reduction in the quality of our service.
World-class client care
Throughout lockdown, we’ve kept in constant dialogue with our clients, ensuring we adapt to the different client needs caused by the pandemic, fulfilling our aim to provide truly world-class client care. We believe our clients have appreciated our flexible approach in helping them solve some of their most difficult challenges, and that this has made our relationships stronger.
Opportunity to innovate
Like many of our innovative clients, we’ve also grasped the opportunity posed by change and disruption to make improvements to our business. We’ve focused on improving and documenting our procedures, with a view to shortly obtaining ISO 9001 certification. This is already benefiting both our staff and our clients, providing increased efficiency and clarity.
We’ve also realised that remote working opens up opportunities regarding recruitment, and have recently hired new Development Director, Keith Turner, and BD and Marketing Manager, Fiona McKenzie, with a flexible geographic brief.
We’ve additionally introduced a Flexible Working policy for our staff, recognising that people do not need to be strictly limited to traditional office hours to do their best work, and that increased flexibility can work for the good of our staff, our business and our clients.
Opportunity to grow
The last year has also seen us grow our business. Since last March, we’ve recruited 6 new staff, including in the Development and BD and Marketing roles highlighted above, and on the patent practice side of the business. Callum Stephen has joined as a Trainee Patent Attorney specialising in engineering, James Reid has taken on the role of Patent Administrator, and will soon transition into a trainee attorney role also with a specialism in engineering, and Melanie Davidson and Hannah Law have joined in Patent Paralegal roles.
Emerging stronger
Overall, we believe this period has shown us that being flexible with and supportive of our staff and clients, continuing to invest in the best technology and systems, streamlining and documenting procedures, and being prepared to innovate and recruit through a challenging time yields tangible benefits, and we believe we will emerge a fitter and stronger business as a result.
Categories: Patents, Trade Marks