EU GDPR: 99 days and counting to turn risk into opportunity (and bring your people with you)

Andy Gill explores how your business can start looking at GDPR as an opportunity to homogenise your data, rather than seeing it as simply a risk for your organisation.

With 99 days and counting until the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) come into force, some organisations may well be starting to panic.

I’m very proud of the capability at Hitachi Solutions to help our clients with EU GDPR. We not only assist with the essential compliance aspects of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP platforms, but also ensure the effective management of the additional workload that the regulation will bring. We advise organisations to use the legislation as a catalyst to drive customer loyalty, and how to use the opportunity to better understand their data and therefore leverage for product and customer innovation.

GDPR is the best possible driver to move to a homogeneous data store and the natural choice is to move to a cloud-based CRM and ERP system such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 hosted in Microsoft Azure. If the opportunity is missed now, you may well find that come May 25th it is too late and you have no hope of being able to run a search across your entire legacy data stores to locate all the personal data you have on the individual who has just sent you a Subject Access Request.

Although the EU GDPR requirements are very clear (and there is excellent advice to be had from the Information Commissioner’s Office and its 12 steps to take in order to prepare for GDPR), organisations may need help in how to implement the requirements in practice and how to bring their staff with them.

Don’t Forget Your People!

The problem of personal data being in fragmented data stores is fundamentally one of ingrained habit and behaviour. Over many years the habit has been to store data in personal data stores (laptop, PC, smart phones, memory sticks etc.) It has not been good practice for a long time and yet for many organisations it still happens.

Remember the importance of policy, staff awareness and training. All data, especially personal data, needs to be stored in official company data stores. Changing the mind-set and actions of your staff may be the biggest challenge organisations face in complying with the data privacy regulations.

The good news is that Hitachi Solutions can assist with this too – you can read about our innovative Transformation & Adoption solutions.

For more details about how Hitachi Solutions can assist you, particularly if you are Microsoft Dynamics users or potential users, please feel free to contact us.