Since GDPR affects personal data and consequently, the collection and use of customer data, you no doubt have many questions with regards to how and if your SuperOffice CRM solution can support you on your journey to becoming GDPR compliant.
In this article, we will cover:
- What is GDPR?
- How does GDPR impact your business?
- How can SuperOffice CRM support your journey to compliance?
- What new functionality comes first?
- Next steps
What is GDPR?
GDPR provides citizens of the EU with greater control over their personal data and assurances that their information is being securely protected across Europe, regardless of whether the data processing takes place in the EU or not.
Personal data can be a name, email, address, date of birth, personal interests, unique identifiers, digital footprints and more. This is is typically the kind of data you store in your CRM system.
How does GDPR impact your business?
GDPR imposes strict requirements on the way a business collects, stores and uses this customer data.
Suffice it to say that a CRM system alone cannot make your business be GDPR compliant. GDPR encompasses 3 main areas that every business needs to consider - an understanding of the GDPR regulation itself, and an understanding of the legal aspects of the regulation and how it will affect the way you handle personal data and finally the systems to keep all your customer data.
Your SuperOffice solution is such a system which supports the collection and management of personal data in a secure system.
With regards to the regulation and understanding of the legal aspects and privacy rights described in the law, we recommend that you seek legal advice and consult other GDPR resources to ensure your business is compliant.
Your national data protection authority has useful descriptions and explanations on privacy. You can also read the complete legislative text of GDPR here, and the EU has an official GDPR web portal, where you will find relevant explanations of what your business needs to do.
How can SuperOffice CRM support your journey to compliance?
As mentioned earlier, GDPR has a big effect on how businesses collect, store and secure personal customer data. This means that all teams, such as marketing, sales and service have to handle personal data in a more professional manner.
GDPR and CRM actually have a lot in common. Both are all about building deeper trust and loyalty with new and potential customers through the professional handling of personal customer data.
We have spent a considerable amount of time and resources to ensure that SuperOffice will support your journey to compliance.
Here is a short summary of what you can expect:
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Privacy by design
GDPR and privacy management go hand in hand together. We believe that privacy is not something that is added to an existing application but built into the core architecture and functionality.
We are committed to including privacy at the initial design stages and throughout the complete development process of new products, processes or services that involve processing personal data.
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Privacy data lifecycle management
GDPR comprises a set of eight basic rights given to individuals to protect their private lives and control the use of the digital traces they leave behind when using internet-based applications and services. These rights are meant to create openness, control, and trust between the parties.
Dedicated functionality in SuperOffice CRM supports the fulfillment of each of the 8 rights.
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Managing personal data in SuperOffice CRM
GDPR is about protecting and managing personal data.
Customer data, which goes into a CRM system, is by default, also personal data. Different types of data have different rules for how they should be processed.
For example, basic data such as names, addresses, phone numbers are more general data and can be open to all employees within your company.
On the other hand, highly sensitive data such as tax information, bank account information, personal agreements, and contracts require more security and relevant user access.
SuperOffice CRM allows you to set up routines and automated rules for how different types of personal data can and should be handled by your company.
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Several SuperOffice upgrades to come
In the months to come, you will see GDPR functionality released in 4 main phases. The first phase is about making it possible for you to get your existing customer database to adhere to the GDPR regulation.
In the next upcoming phases, we will launch additional features for the handling of personal data, and you definitely expect more features for improved handling of privacy and security.
What new functionality comes first?
The first wave of GDPR features available in a new version called SuperOffice 8.2 are:
1. Consent management
As GDPR require consents to be documented, you will get new features for Consent Management
In SuperOffice CRM, on a specific person, you will be able to:
- Store multiple consents
- State the legal basis for why you’re storing the data
- Store the source from where you got the consent - for example, from web forms
- Store when and who has updated the information
2. Subscription management
Once a person has given his consent to receive mailings from your company, he also has the right to decide what it is that he wants to receive.
New functionality will allow your prospects and customers to decide for themselves what kind of information they want to receive.
3. Bulk updates
As we mentioned earlier, this first phase is all about helping you to make your current customer database GDPR compliant.
Once you’ve evaluated your database for what kind of personal information you have, where it comes from, what legal basis you have for keeping it, etc., and set up how you want the data to be handled, you will need a way to update all this personal data in the new GDPR world.
Bulk updates help you to tune up and clean up your database in an easy way. Rather than updating personal records one by one which is really time-consuming, you’ll be able to set up certain rules and then use the bulk update feature to set purpose, legal basis, source and date on many records at one time.
Next Steps
As you can see, there’s a lot of exciting news coming in the next months which will help you on your journey to becoming GDPR compliant.
All of these new features will automatically be available if you have our cloud version, SuperOffice CRM Online.
If you are running SuperOffice on premises, you will need to upgrade your system in order to take advantage of the new GDPR features and functionality.
We normally advise our on-premises customers, if possible, to migrate over to our cloud version instead of upgrading their existing system because it’s generally a lot less worry and hassle involved for them.
If you’re on the cloud version, you automatically get new features and functionality without having to do anything. The cloud version is ISO certified, so you and your customers can rest assured that your CRM system and data are safe and secure in a GDPR world. It’s really the best solution for the majority of our customers.
That being said, regardless of the CRM system itself, you will still need to seek external help or advice in your journey to becoming GDPR compliant. If you have just started on your GDPR journey and want to learn more on a general basis, please attend one of our popular GDPR seminars.
If you are well on the road towards GDPR compliance and are ready to discuss the new features and functionality in our next version, please contact us today.
Tell us what you think
What kind of challenges, if any, are you coming up against along your journey to GDPR compliance? Do you think some of the new features mentioned above can help?
Please let us know in the comments section below.