The great thing about change is the new opportunities it creates. Funny though how we usually need a hard push in order to change!
Since the start of digital marketing we have collectively, as a member of the global business community, looked to push the boundaries of what we can do with personal information. For the most part we have looked to technology to understand what we CAN do rather than representing our potential customers and asking what we SHOULD do. As a result, we are running into privacy and data protection laws that have clearly pushed back and set new boundaries to protect the consumer.
Think about that for a moment. Who are they protecting the consumer from?
A marketer’s job is to represent the consumer. It seems to me that today’s marketer seeks to exploit the consumer. As a result, regional laws are in place to protect them from us!
For the past 10 years Newport Thomson has focussed on privacy and data protection. Specifically, how do we operationalize a privacy management program within the organization? How do we set practices that give marketers their desired outcomes while respecting the individual’s right to privacy.
Knowledge of the laws and how they are being enforced is critical and automation (technology) has a key role to play as well. Not the fluffy “all things privacy” platforms, but the smart solutions that actually solve key aspects of implementing a privacy management program. We have focussed on practical, valuable automated solutions that solve today’s challenges for marketers.
For example; marketers have never been required to track and record consents or preferences of any kind. We just grabbed whatever data our technology allowed us to and went about our business.
Now the laws require us to only collect data we intend to use for a specific purpose AND to be transparent when collecting it about how we are going to use it! In fact, Gartner has done an excellent job of examining this area of Consent and Preference Management Platforms. You can download the PDF here – https://cassie.syrenis.com/reports/gartner-market-guide-for-consent-and-preference-management-for-marketers?utm_source=newport+thomson&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=gartner
The first stage of implementing a Privacy Management Program requires a clear understanding of current practices as well as a summary of all the personal information an organization collects, uses, disclose and stores. Prior to discovering these valuable automated tools, conducting a Privacy Review was a very custom, labour intensive process.
Safeguard Privacy allows an organization to buy an annual license to measure compliance and maintain privacy and data protection documents in a single location. For example, if your organization does business in the EU and management wants to know how compliant your Privacy management Program is, Safeguard Privacy will provide an accurate score based on your responses to a set of well organized questions.
All you have to do is answer the questions honestly and the system will tell you, “you are 67% compliant with the GDPR”. And it does not stop there. It will also tell you the key things you should address to move the needle the most!
If you are a global organization, you can purchase licenses for all laws. Safeguard Privacy has integrated your answers so if you said yes to a question for the GDPR and it has a similar application in California’s CCPA, the system will apply your answer to both situations, so you don’t have to answer the same questions for every region of the world.
If you want to know where your privacy and data protection gaps are at all times, contact us at info@newportthomson.com and we will arrange a demo.
Knowing where all the data is within an organization is often a challenge. Even Meta admits they don’t know where all their data is! Fact is, we have never been required to know this. Today’s laws require us not only to know what we have, but we must have purpose limitations, retention plans and allow people to access and update this data. How can we do that if we do know know where the data is?
The consumer now has the right to ask any organization (in many jurisdictions) “What information do you have about me?” and all organizations have to be able to answer with a good level of accuracy. And if that consumer wants to make changes to inaccurate information or indeed want you to delete all of their information, your organization is legally obligated to do so. In organizations who are not certain what data is where, these rights are impossible to fulfill.
Opsware is a technology platform that allows you to find and connect all of this data so you can have a single view of an individual’s personal information under the organization’s control. Once again, for a demo of Opsware, please email us at info@newportthomson.com.
We are in the early days of privacy and data protection. As computers become more powerful, what we can do with data becomes more robust and possible.
The laws cannot possibly keep up with the pace of technology but they are trying. Remember, when it comes to using a person’s personal information, as a marketer we should ask “Should we?” long before we ask “Can we?”.
In the first 20 years of digital marketing we have allowed technology to lead the way, at the expensive of individual rights and freedoms. We were so caught up in what technology allowed us to do we forgot to ask “Should we?”.
Let’s get back to putting the customer first. Let’s change our practices, regain their trust online and see what opportunities arise in this new space. We bet it will be good for business, because it will be good for all involved.