EPI Assessment: Building Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Capability

Due to the accelerated review method of processing applications and increase in the number of major organizations conducting businesses in the area, this consultancy was requested to perform a BPR assessment to streamline future application efforts within Sakpatenti.

To implement an efficient e-filing and patent management processing system, this trip finalized processes for national and international processing for future processes for the following units — Inventions/Utility Models, Geographical Indications, and Finance. Current and future processes for Trademark, Design, External Application, Copyright, and Legal were conducted during the first trip.

In addition to this, a local requirement specialist (Eka Kathamadze) was hired to conduct a full-scale requirements analysis of all business processes that are currently underway. A quality review of those requirements has been necessary to make sure that the requirements gathered are in line with the future processes and the vision provided by Sakpatenti. In addition to the requirements gathering session involving various experts and specialists representing Sakpatenti, external applicant focus groups were initiated, which consisted of patent attorneys and trademark applicants from various pharmaceutical industries. These external applicants were brought in to glean ideas on what they would like to see established for the processing of future applications via the e-filing system.

After the analysis and design of future processes were complete, to implement the requirements analysis phase, it was determined that training needed to be provided to various departmental units within Sakpatenti.

In addition to the above training sessions, to enable BPR facilitation within Georgia, upon request from the Data Exchange Agency, supplementary training was provided to 20+ Georgian organizations to facilitate information sharing between Data Exchange Agency and the 20+ identified organizations within the public sector. This training was provided to help promote the transfer of information between agencies hence facilitating the advent of the e-government initiative within Georgia.