UX Forms and the Intellectual Property Office celebrate four successful years
Today marks the fourth anniversary of UX Forms’ relationship with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). The IPO is responsible for the registration of trade marks in the UK, issuing patents and providing guidance on surrounding Intellectual Property rights. The IPO comprises three departments: trade marks, registered designs and patents, and to give a sense of scale, there were over 95,000 trade mark applications last year, on top of 25,000 design applications, and more than 20,000 patent applications.
A new strategy to improve outcomes
In 2016, when UX Forms and the IPO first engaged with one another, there were 54 trade mark-related forms. Only nine were available online — with the rest paper-based. The IPO’s drive to improve their online forms was propelled by their desire to provide a better service to customers, whilst reducing the high cost of change. There was also a lot of manual testing, which added longer lead times as well as increased risks of human error. Lastly, the underlying technology was becoming moribund — excluding some modern browsers and lacking responsiveness on new mobile devices.
The IPO’s strategy changed to be cloud-first, and replace bespoke, in-house solutions with existing services. UX Forms was the first partner in the new approach.
Empowerment and enablement
UX Forms helped the IPO’s team replace the nine online forms, whilst providing mentoring on how to use the software themselves. Over the last four years, the IPO has gained up to x10 capacity, replaced brittle systems with a versatile and proactive approach, and mitigated the pressures of unpredictable spikes in demand.
“As a result of four successful years working together, UX Forms underpins 14 webforms across all IP Rights. Those forms have processed over 455,000 submissions, and the forms in total have been used over 44 million times.”
— Ian Welsh, Technical Service Owner, IPO
Here’s to four more years of success!
Want to know more?
Come have a look around https://uxforms.com, follow UX Forms on twitter, LinkedIn, or email us at hello@uxforms.com and see how we can make your forms better, together.
