With the advent of social media and online marketing, the subject of data protection and privacy is always a hot topic in the media. Thanks to public scrutiny into data usage by Facebook and other large corporations, the public at large is much more tuned in to how their personal data is collected and used than they were just a few years ago.
The good news is, with a few simple steps you can ensure your business stays the right side of the right side of the law.
GDPR
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the single largest overhaul of data protection laws since the Data Protection Act of 1998. It will affect all organisations big and small, public and private and is too big to be ignored – regardless of Brexit.
The GDPR initiative itself is Europe’s new framework for data protection laws and will replace the current Data Protection Act. It has been established that as technology has moved on massively in recent years, the current legislation is now out of date. The whole ethos behind GDPR is that it puts control of an individual’s personal data firmly in the hands of customers as well as harmonising data privacy laws across Europe.
GDPR is all about collecting, controlling and securing an organisation’s information in a uniform way across the board. It updates and strengthens an organisation’s processes and improves the quality and integrity of data held. In addition, it encourages businesses to rethink why and how they capture personal data and to what ends.
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Handy tips for keeping data clean
Follow our quick advice to keep your data accurate and usable:
Give records a unique ID
Often referred to as a unique reference number (URN), by putting an individual ID on every record you can swiftly manage data and track changes in an accurate fashion.
Make sure data is accurately collected and entered
There’s not much point in having lots of data if it’s not quite accurate or has some details missing. Devise a written guideline for capturing data to make sure all data is of the same quality and written standard. Also, ensure that all essential data fields are made mandatory. This really helps keeps data clean and easy to use in things like mail merges too.
Use a data cleaning bureau
Find a data cleaning bureau which you can rely on (such as bakergoodchild), as they will have access to the external data resources you need, such as births, deaths and marriages, as well as a whole host of other public records. Don’t tie yourself to a large annual data cleaning bill when you can run monthly or quarterly cleans instead, which will also reduce postage costs from direct mail and wastage from too much print.
Ensure data security at all times
Harking back to GDPR, data security is absolutely essential. Your data cleaning bureau or data supplier must be able to issue you a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), as well as a secure way and encrypted way of sending your data.
Contact us to clean your data
If you have concerns about keeping your business’s data clean and usable, at bakergoodchild we have the knowledge and expertise to help. Call our team today on 0800 612 1972 or use our contact form for an informal discussion or to ask any questions or find out more about keeping your data up to date with our data cleansing services.
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