As mentioned before, much of our business is driven by the user's (licensee’s) requirement to have a contingent recovery plan in place for mission-critical software or other IT systems. We field many inquiries from developers – new and established businesses – who call us with their new business pending the setup of an escrow agreement. Many who call have never had to deal with escrow before!
One of the first questions we ask is whether the developer expects to share the escrow security benefits with multiple licensees, or just one. If so, we use a Multi-User escrow agreement. The developer and Guard-IT are the only two signatures needed to establish the escrow.
The Multi-User agreement is good for the developer because: 1) UNLIMITED users can be enrolled as beneficiaries; 2) New beneficiaries can be enrolled online at our website; and 3) the beneficiary doesn’t have to sign anything.
Having the Multi-User escrow in place proactively also helps the developer address the escrow issue when marketing to or negotiating with new prospects. “Yes, our code is already in escrow. We’ll enroll you as a beneficiary when you come online with us!” sounds much better than “Escrow? We’ll have to look for that and get back to you.”
When new customers sign up, the developer just fills out our simple Beneficiary Enrollment form. Guard-IT processes the enrollment and returns a receipt to the developer and also an escrow enrollment email to the new beneficiary. If the developer has a large client base, bulk enrollments can be submitted to Guard-IT via spreadsheet or in a CSV file format.
Once enrolled, we send the beneficiary semi-annual escrow status, annual renewal and deposit update confirmation emails. This steady flow of information keeps all of the parties up to date on the agreement, renewal dates and the latest version of the product held in escrow.
Beneficiaries to the escrow agreement may request a copy of the original escrow agreement, deposit verification or escrow status emails at any time during their enrollment.
