The Privacy & Data Relationship
Whether you are a small mom-and-pop shop, or an Amazon sized giant, you should be thinking about privacy within your organization. Why? Because no matter the size, industry and goals of your business, you can be 100% guaranteed to have data and be planning to continue using it.
The simple fact that you have data means you should have a privacy policy in place that governs its management using a comprehensive and up-to-date approach. Keep in mind that the data your organization holds is sure to be a combination of internal and external stakeholder data. Meaning, information about your employees and internal operations should be given equal weight as the data you are collecting about your customers. We aren’t telling you this because it’s law, it’s also smart business.
Sidepart – Technology & Finance Focus
Sidepart works heavily in the emerging technology and financial sector to advise our clients on how to strategically invest in the right blend of software, marketing and the processes that govern this relationship. Therefore, the following post will work to educate companies operating in these environments on best practices around the development of a privacy policy for profit.
Mindset Shift: Risk to Profit
What does “privacy policy for profit mean?”
Traditionally, privacy policies have been viewed as a risk mitigation practice and the terms “profit” or “revenue” have not been part of the conversation. It’s time this changed. All it takes is a simple scan of the news to understand that trust is at all time low when it comes to the management and protection of consumer data. In a 2018 analysis by Comparitech, they found that in the long term, [data] breached companies underperformed the market. After 1 year, Share price grew 8.53% on average, but underperformed the NASDAQ by -3.7%. To some, this represents an inability to properly mitigate risk, where as others view this as a revenue opportunity.
Privacy for Profit
The responsibility of those who work at a corporation is to maximize returns to their shareholders. Every strategic decision a company makes ends up also being a decision between the short and long-term benefits to their shareholders. New technology (aka new data) has added extra fuel to the fire because. As with anything new, the public has been exposed to horror stories of where it all went wrong – heard of Facebook? Which has resulted in Privacy Policy only being viewed as a risk that needs to be mitigated. There are many benefits of a properly developed policy that will protect current revenue streams, increase customer retention, and protect future revenue streams such as IP.
Happy customers are the best source of new business and smooth operations. As technology and data security has become a center point of “wrong doings”, it pays to be on top of it. Taking the proper steps to implementing a strategic and well thought out Privacy Policy will help to ensure your clients stay happy and bring you new business. Who doesn’t want new business?
Taking The First Step
Sitting down to plan a Privacy Policy for your business can seem like an overwhelming task. There are three main areas that create the framework for a well designed policy:
- Define The data.
- Data Analysis.
- Security Of Data.
Your company should first understand the type and amount of data it has. Having this understanding allows you to properly analyze and extract patterns from the data that can be used to make better business decisions. Lastly, your organization should commit to protecting the Privacy of its data throughout the business.
Security and privacy pros must ensure security travels with the data across the business ecosystem; position data security and privacy as competitive differentiators; and build a new kind of customer relationship. If you want help getting started, or simply want to use your data in the best way possible, reach out to the Sidepart team!
