GDPR actually Improves Sales and Profits

9th May 2019

Many consider the GDPR the umpteenth bureaucratic fulfillment that is requested, a further waste of time. But perhaps it is not so. Surprisingly, it can actually help increase your sales.

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The Regulation was approved 3 years ago but has only been in force for less than 1 year. In these months we have often heard that yet another burden has arrived on the shoulders of entrepreneurs and artisans that do not bring profits but only obligations and unproductive times to get in order.

In reality, it requires rethinking one’s own reality by becoming aware of the data in one’s possession, the behaviors held towards them and, more generally, the organizational and operational practices of the productive realities.

So it’s not just a legal obligation, but an opportunity to seize to rethink your way of doing business, involving employees in the business (see GDPR employee presentation) and the possibilities it provides to improve sales and therefore profits.

Know how GDPR can actually help grow sales.

GDPR improve sales and profits 1

To be clearer, 2 examples:

the controversial case of the secretary of the doctor’s office dismissed because she spent a lot of time on Facebook.
the Regulation requires to clarify to the customer, among other things, the storage time of personal data and the purposes for which I have them. This implies:
- company side: establish a more direct relationship with him, which allows the company to get to know him better and evaluate possible possibilities to increase the profit obtained by supplying him with services or products that fall within his wishes;
- the client side the possibility to have full knowledge of who has his data, for what reason and to obtain further advantages from the same;

Leaving aside the labour law aspect of the story, this story can be taken as an example of a missed opportunity, on the part of the reality in which he worked, to improve awareness in the use of IT devices and the value they have for the business. Providing correct information, awareness of the potential of tools and new technologies is what really guarantees workers and, in return, companies.

The training mentioned above, therefore, can be an opportunity for the company not only to transmit information on the Regulations and the obligations it imposes on the company but also a time to create the necessary awareness in the use of company devices, the correct methods to follow and the value of virtuous behaviour for the reality in which one works (and therefore also for the maintenance of one’s salary).

This observation is even more valid in an age, like the present one, in which thanks to technological development the need for the employee’s physical presence in the office is reduced (with the relative reduction of direct control) while the importance of the IT tool increases. to carry out your business. Therefore it seems difficult to limit its use or prohibit it, rather create clear internal policies on what it is possible to do with them.

Here, then, that the figure of the consultant who follows the company in the adaptation is that of a person who, understanding the business of the reality in which he operates, helps the management not only to prepare the required documentation, but, above all, to understand how intervene on the processes and on the corporate culture in such a way as to make it in compliance with the provisions of the Regulation and seize the opportunities for increasing productivity, knowledge of the data that one has and how it is used, of possible ways of increasing sales.

No one is immune to controls

There is no lack of checks made by the Authority or its delegates and the possibility of white areas. In this regard, we take up the words of responsible for the privacy unit in Italy. In an intervention carried out last year close to the entry into full application, he declared that:

the controls will not save anyone, there will be no list of things to do to be up to standard (Annex B of the old legislation in which there were technical measures to be implemented to comply);
all the departments will be able to take care of the checks; his men, in fact, were carrying out a training activity for the colleagues of the various offices. This means that, for example, during a check on the issue of the receipts and invoices, the financier can also verify compliance with the Regulation.

It should also be said that the new legislation gives anyone the opportunity to make reports on non-compliance with the rules, not just those concerned.

In the case of ascertaining the validity of the reasons stated, the risk is not only the administrative sanction that the Guarantor may combine (or the obligation to modify/interrupt the treatment carried out), but that of finding himself a criminal proceeding for unlawful processing with request for damages in which the receipt of the fine will constitute proof in favour and certainly not against.