Operationalizing GDPR: You Didn't Know You’ve been Doing it All Along

There's been a lot of talk on how European and US multi-national companies will deal with GDPR. Bu are US companies actually prepared to enable GDPR with the multitude of media and platforms through which they regularly interact? How will the organization respond at scale to requests for data? How will they enact their consumers’ right to be forgotten? We explore all of this and more with Matt Mobley, Chief Technology Officer at Merkle 

Watching European and US multi-national companies deal with GDPR has been interesting to say the least. I liken their actions to watching a speeding car hurl toward you from many miles away and standing flat-footed when it is upon you. These companies have had an extended period of time to prepare for the oncoming car and devised numerous policies and processes for the eventuality. However, they lack the ability to operationalize their plans now that the moment is upon them. I also find it interesting that US companies aren’t watching this event more closely, with the expectation that we will see more GDPR-like policies adopted at state levels. Sure, many organizations have considered what they would do in this case. But I have found that most are not prepared to enable it with the multitude of media and platforms through which they regularly interact with individuals. How will the organization respond at scale to requests for data? How will they enact their consumers’ right to be forgotten?

The implementation of GDPR does not necessarily dictate the need to acquire new technologies, but it does add another reason to create an integrated platform. This is not too different from what companies have been trying to do in their pursuit of a unified customer experience. At the root is the need to have an integrated platform that can react in the moment and engage a customer – a single place where data is connected and policy can be implemented across the entire platform, uniformly and at scale. In the absence of these integrated platforms, companies will struggle to implement a single strategy without encountering conflicts and inaccurate data. The result will be an ever-expanding, generalized, and conservative policy to ensure readiness, which will, in turn, shackle the business. The good news is that executed correctly, the same investments made to improve customer centricity will also make huge strides in the organization’s ability to operationalize compliance policy.

The technology areas of focus start with the same foundational basis: unification of the identity graph. Through this unification comes the integration of data. And with appropriate platform investment comes democratization of the data and a strategy management platform that implements a uniform policy across all points of engagement. The strategy management platform is just another way to view your decision management capabilities. All of these items should be in your consideration set when solving for a unified customer experience.

Marketers have been buying, implementing, and creating marketing technology and advertising technology platforms for some time. Most organizations are still moving down a path to integrate these platforms. With the arrival of GDPR, these organizations should now have yet another reason to pursue this path, and potentially amp up the speed of progress. These platforms can help not only grow the business but also mitigate of risks in compliance policy implementation. The core tenets we use to drive technology decisions for a unified experience can and should be the same tenets used to drive technology to enable compliance implementation. Surprisingly you have most likely been making these investments, but you probably aren’t looking at them in the right light, and you most certainly aren’t moving fast enough.