It increases business value, improves brand image and builds customer loyalty
Organisations should place Data Privacy among their top business priorities.
Kaushik Bhaduri, Chief Technology Evangelist, ProcessIT Global.
Years before consumer internet or even computers, many retail brands were manually capturing customer information to serve the latter better during repeat sales. Consumers were willingly sharing their personal details, with majority of them not even worried of it getting misused.
However, there is a dramatic change in today’s business environment with customers increasingly expressing their concerns about data privacy and security issues. A consumer survey across Australia. Canada, France, Japan, UK and the US, a couple of years ago by Consumer International and the Internet Society, confirms these apprehensions. According to the survey, 75% of people distrusted the way data is shared, 63% of them found connected devices ‘creepy’. Today, such fears exist in Indian consumers too. Businesses should take this aspect seriously and consider this as an opportunity to regain and build consumer trust and nurture it, creating the competitive advantage.
For both organisations and customers, Data Privacy Management is extremely crucial, especially in the current world, where the line between offline and online is blurring. Customers provide their personal information to sellers, assuming the latter will safeguard their data. Yes, every time a consumer logs in to his or her device to check mails, for entertainment or news updates, they are casually giving away personal information that could get misused later.
Significance of Data Privacy
Data, the new currency has evolved to become a business asset and provides several business insights leading to the delivery of a great customer experience, one of the key business objectives. In the modern world, new-age technologies and tools contribute to easy collection of personal information.
Organisations should place Data Privacy among their top business priorities. Not always considered as private by organisations, chances of data leaks are high, with it falling into hackers’ hands, severely harming the users as well as businesses. Among other unwarranted uses of personal data, it can be sold to other sellers and advertisers without the consent of the users.
Organisations should display transparency in collecting personal data and how it is utilised, while protecting it to build customer trust and gain the confidence of potential investors, which otherwise can impact the share value.
Furthermore, businesses also have the responsibility of collecting, storing and leveraging personal data of customers to meet regulatory obligations, failing which could result in legal punishments, including hefty fines and even prison time in some cases.
Data Privacy is an evolving discipline
Businesses generally integrate data privacy, primarily to ensure regulatory compliance and avoid penalties. However, data privacy as a discipline has many other benefits too. Besides appealing to the investor community, financial losses and customer churn can be avoided without harming brand reputation.
An effective data protection program should provide clarity of the sensitive data, while ascertaining who has access to the information. All employees should be trained and involved in data security responsibilities. Necessary sensitive data policies should be implemented to ensure regulatory compliance. Processes and technologies for continuous data protection should be automated. A mechanism for continuous monitoring should be put in place. Only by ensuring best practices across all business units are diligently followed and data privacy standards are integrated with their processes, can the data privacy policy be effective.
Data Privacy is recognised as the human right in the UN and it is important to establish a data privacy culture across the organisation. Government of India has plans to introduce policies on data governance and cybersecurity. The country’s IT Act may be replaced with Digital India Act, with new regulations set to replace the Personal Data Protection Bill. It is also critical for users to learn the value of data privacy and be vigilant when sharing their personal information. To reiterate the importance of Data Privacy, every year 28th of January is observed as Data Privacy Day across many countries, to increase awareness, and provide a boost to data protection best practices.
