GDPR Compliance: a business requirement
GDPR compliance
Between growth charts, operational objectives, and your profit projections, there’s something missing from this week’s strategy session: a GDPR compliance update. If you’ve noticed it too, it’s time to switch perspective. Add GDPR compliance to your next meeting agenda, and warp speed into action.
Your business journey
To be certain: GDPR compliance is not a once-off business process, only to be attended to every year. GDPR compliance must form part of your:
- Business journey: Your business’ GDPR compliance requirements will shift and shape around your business growth. From strategy to sales, GDPR compliance is an operational imperative.
- Processes and policies: Compliance concerns are mostly kept cornered in your legal department. GDPR compliance requires input and action from every member of your team. Yes, even the cleaning department. Those attendance rosters aren’t only for the archives anymore.
- Marketing and customer relationships: Growing your customer base, and ensuring you retain your current clients is no longer a function of your marketing department. Every strategy needs a sweep of ensuring GDPR compliance.
A new cornerstone for your company
Many companies make the error of viewing GDPR compliance as a new layer, or an add-on service to their needs. Indeed, as the full impact of the GDPR comes into play, the issuing of fines has begun. An August 2020 research report, released by Finbold, found that more than €60.1 million worth of fines had been issued for GDPR violations in 2020 so far. Beyond the fines and flurry, however, there lie even larger concerns for your company.
Your company reputation
Organisational reputation is everything. As the advent of social media has shown every one of us, companies can be ruined in a tweet, or sullied by a simple Facebook post. Securing and maintaining your excellent organisational reputation remains important to your business. Beyond social media platforms and company communications, your GDPR compliance is closely linked to your organisational reputation. If your business is issued a fine, or needs to strategically explain why there’s been a data breach, your organisational reputation is on the line, not just your revenue.
Flip the script on GDPR compliance
Avoiding reputational ruin shouldn’t, however, be your approach. Flip the script and consider GDPR compliance a protection for your reputation. Rather than adopting a simplistic process approach, your business can ensure protection of your reputation by shifting towards GDPR compliance as a service. Rather than stretching your internal resources to ensure GDPR compliance, take the intelligent solution to your board, and outsource it to the experts. With data protection, data privacy, and GDPR compliance experts on call, your team is fully equipped to ensure every customer’s questions are answered, before they ask them.
GDPR compliance and your relationships
Every business, from big to small, relies upon building and maintaining strong relationships. Ensuring GDPR compliance throughout your operations enables and ensures that those relationships are embedded with trust, and founded on security. Building relationships is made easier by ensuring GDPR compliance:
- Your supplier network and supply chain are assured that their data remains secure.
- Your customers can interact with your business, without concern for the security of their personal information.
- Your management team knows your business is ready to deal with any data subject rights requests, high level queries, and – of course – legal concerns.
GDPR compliance matters to every business. At ProPrivacy, we help businesses like yours ensure that GDPR compliance is no longer a one-stop process. It’s part of your business journey, and will help your company grow. Get in touch with ProPrivacy and let’s begin!
Philipa is the lead consultant and auditor at ProPrivacy. With clients as far afield as Canada, South Africa, Kenya, Germany, Spain and other such exotic locations, besides Cork and elsewhere in Ireland, Philipa enjoys a broad view of the state of data protection, privacy and cyber security worldwide. Philipa’s passion is manageable data compliance for SMEs.
Philipa is a qualified teacher besides holding a computer science (Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence Programming) and electronic and intellectual property law (LLB) qualified. She is trained in constitutional (fundamental) rights litigation and enjoys a good debate.
Philipa has over twenty years of experience working in different sized organisations and sectors on operational, governance, risk management and compliance matters. She is an analytical and focused person that enjoys a challenge in the workplace. She loves technology, systems and people and has a passion for showing people how technology can make life easier and better. She understands that the world is driven by data today but privacy is paramount. Responsibly developed AI excites Philipa for the future.