Data provenance: Be a star of GDPR
Jean-Michel Franco is Director of Product Marketing for Talend. He has dedicated his career to developing and broadening the adoption of innovative technologies in companies. Prior to joining Talend, he started out at EDS (now HP) by creating and developing a business intelligence (BI) practice, joined SAP EMEA as Director of Marketing Solutions in France and North Africa, and then lately Business & Decision as Innovation Director. He authored 4 books and regularly publishes articles, presents at events and tradeshows and can be followed on Twitter: @jmichel_franco
The big data ecosystem is constantly changing and with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) due to go into effect in May 2018, businesses need to deploy a coordinated approach to data management. Aging data architecture will not be able to meet the needs of the new EU regulations which prescribes much more stringent and specific rules on the use and storage of personal data than ever before.
The good news is that shifting to a modern data architecture can help to liberate data and make it more useful for your business. According to IDC research there is almost a 50:50 split between organizations that view GDPR as an opportunity and those that see it as a threat. While it certainly presents a challenge, GDPR provides a great opportunity to develop more transparent relationships with clients while simultaneously cleansing the data businesses hold to make it more usable. The opt-in rule that GDPR will introduce requires that companies need to know if, how and when each customer has opted in. All companies will need to have a comprehensive view of the private data they hold so that a clear digital paper trail for each customer can be identified. While this has clear privacy and transparency benefits for customers, it can also help businesses put more of the right data to work. Credit Agricole Consumer Finance for example, have been successful in capturing personal data from their customers to improve the customer experience.
To be fully compliant with GDPR, data-driven enterprises will need to create a Personal Data Hub where all relevant data can be collated, making it easily traceable and readable. Updating legacy data architecture that enables the establishment of a personal data hub is a must.
The first step is to bring all the data into a data lake so that it can be connected to the personal data hub where it can be cleansed, discovered and shared. Cleansing legacy contact lists will eliminate any out-of-date information that is no longer useful to the business.
