There’s no doubt a lot of information is circulating about GDPR, but it does not necessarily make a clear distinction of the key action points or the stance for Business to Business (B2B) organisations.
What we understand is there is no distinction between personal data about individuals in their private, public or work roles – a person is a person. Needless to say in a B2B setting, everything is about individuals interacting and sharing information with and about each other. Your customers in your B2B markets are obviously company entities, but the relationships designed to manage their business requirements and needs are all done through people, i.e. individuals. Thus very often the storage and usage of personal mobile phones and emails addresses as well as other personal information is used and stored as part of managing these relationships.
It is therefore important that B2B organisations ensure that their CRM system is designed for GDPR compliance.
How can CRM support your journey to GDPR compliance?
GDPR has a big effect on how businesses collect, store and secure personal customer data. This means that GDPR impacts marketing, sales and customer service departments and all personal data needs to be handled in a more professional manner.
Your CRM system needs to have the capacity to manage your contact data with functionality that helps you to comply with GDPR.
Here is a checklist:
Ability to create bulk updates
This first phase of these CRM features is all about helping you to make your current customer database GDPR compliant. A system that can bulk update your
Let the customer make the final decisions
Ensure your CRM system has the functionality to allow prospects and customers to decide for themselves what kind of information they want to receive – whether it’s blog post updates, white papers or product training material.
Consent management
It’s important to have a CRM, you will be able to digitally record consent, state the legal basis for why you’re storing the data, store the source from where you got the consent (for example, a webform) and store when and who has updated the information.
Subscription management
Once a contact has given his consent to receive email marketing campaigns from your company, he also has the right to decide what it is that he or she wants to receive.
Doing nothing is not an option. If your current CRM system doesn’t support these GDPR compliant features, now is the time to find a new solution, before it’s too late!
Synergy Technology has over 15 years working in the CRM market, and is one of the largest SuperOffice partners in the UK. Driven by a passion for customer relationship management, Synergy Technology is dedicated to providing software that supports the individual user to achieve stronger sales, marketing and customer service productivity and to help comply with GDPR.
To discuss your Business to Business CRM requirements please contact Synergy Technology on 0345 456 0050.