22 July 2024

Almost six years since GDPR’s inception, compliance has remained a stumbling block for many companies, especially with AI now being a major consideration. The ramifications for non-compliance are dire – big tech companies like Google, X (formerly Twitter), and Meta (formerly Facebook) recently copped multimillion-dollar fines for violating data protection laws, reports Andy Baillie, VP, UK and Ireland at Semarchy.

However, it’s not just big tech companies that feel the sting. Any business can be fined for non-compliance with data privacy laws. As the volume of sensitive information expands and hefty fines for GDPR violations continue to escalate, ensuring compliance has become a top priority for organisations around the globe. Consequently, IT vendors are adjusting their marketing strategies to claim their solutions can assist organisations in managing compliance challenges.

But how do businesses distinguish between genuine solutions for tackling GDPR requirements and those merely capitalising on the hype? The answer lies in a robust, GDPR-compliant Master Data Management (MDM) system. Such a system provides a centralised point for businesses to control, edit, delete, and manage their data – a sensible move towards data privacy compliance.

Here are three practical tips for business and IT leaders to overcome their GDPR compliance headaches using an MDM solution:

1. Consolidate customer data into a "golden record"

Scattered customer data is a recipe for GDPR disasters because it will make it nearly impossible to meet compliance requirements. Embrace MDM to consolidate those fragmented records into a single, mastered "golden record" view. This centralised data hub brings everything together, giving you complete visibility and control. MDM eliminates data siloes causing blind spots, enabling you to adequately govern and protect personal information across your enterprise.

GDPR also demands accurate and minimised data, and one key step in being GDPR compliant is to deduplicate customer data. Master data management’s data quality and deduplication capabilities are essential for meeting these standards – they can validate data against the rules, standardise formatting, and identify duplicate records for merging.

The result is complete, accurate, and unique customer data which ticks off those all-important accuracy and minimisation principles. No more compliance worries or exposure to fines because of poor data quality. Still, deduplication is just the tip of the iceberg for the issues that need addressing for GDPR and the other potential benefits of MDM.

2. Establish continuous data governance

Pay attention to MDM's essential governance controls. Granular access permissions and data masking restrict visibility and protect sensitive information. Comprehensive audit trails show how personal data is processed and protected throughout its lifecycle – demonstrating the crucial accountability for compliance.

By keeping auditable records and establishing control over their data environments, businesses can manage the complexities of regulatory compliance more effectively. With master data management, you have the tools to secure and govern your customer data properly.

Data retention is another key consideration. Under GDPR, businesses can keep personal data only for as long as necessary. MDM's data lifecycle management capabilities allow you to define and automatically enforce retention policies based on legal and business requirements. This means you can easily purge anything no longer required, ensuring you stay compliant with data privacy laws while minimising your data footprint and associated exposure risks.

Many modern MDM solutions also integrate out-of-the-box with dedicated consent management platforms. This unified approach streamlines your consent capture and data governance processes for efficient consent lifecycle management – from initial collection to erasure on request. By establishing continuous governance, you can maintain a complete, up-to-date record of customer preferences and honour them consistently across all systems and processes.

3. Build a solid data foundation for future AI applications

AI and data management are like ying and yang – they need each other to unlock their full potential. AI is undeniably reshaping the business world, yet its insights are only as reliable as the data it consumes. Conversely, robust data quality management practices empower organisations to unlock AI's full potential, harnessing its capabilities to the utmost.

In other words, before unlocking AI's potential, you must lay the groundwork with a solid, well-governed data foundation that supports both innovation and compliance. This includes:

• Leveraging MDM to consolidate personal data into accurate, deduplicated “golden records”, adhering to data minimisation principles.

• Implementing rigorous data quality processes and take advantage of MDM's governance capabilities, such as granular access controls, data masking, and audit trails, to securely manage and document the processing of sensitive data.

• Defining clear policies to automate the deletion of personal data that is no longer required.

• Setting rules for how AI should and shouldn’t be used in the context of data management.

With this GDPR-aligned data foundation underpinning your AI efforts, you can confidently use machine learning to generate game-changing insights without the risk of non-compliance.

Uncover a world of opportunity

The symbiotic relationship between data privacy compliance and MDM is undeniable. However, the value of MDM doesn’t stop at compliance. Clean, mastered, and deduplicated data, encompassing customer information, products, locations, and more, will create many other opportunities for business value.

Knowing your customers, their interactions with your business, and their purchase history provides dual benefits. It simplifies the process of deleting their data upon request and facilitates the implementation of campaigns to improve customer experience, optimise marketing efforts, and uncover cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Sustainable GDPR compliance comes down to having complete control and transparency over how you handle personal data from source to consumption. However, with data scattered across siloed systems and duplicated records, many businesses still struggle to get enterprise-wide visibility in their data processing activities. MDM gives you the foundation to efficiently locate, update, and protect customer information across your systems and processes.