GDPR is a new regulation from the European Union. The aim of the regulation is to enforce the data protection of citizens.
It brings a handful of changes and duties to entrepreneurs and companies. And of course, to CRM and its usage as well. The new eWay-CRM 5.2 is fully "GDPR-CRM." We interviewed Roman Štefko, the technical director of eWay-CRM, over the new GDPR version and also the context of GDPR implementation.
How and why did our whole company work on the eWay-CRM product, so that the new version 5.2 is practically a real GDPR-CRM?
GDPR influences CRM in a huge way. According to GDPR, companies can only process personal data for a clear purpose and the information needs to be necessary for the purpose of processing, e.g. in business relations. For better orientation, let's say that you can keep a customer's name, surname, company email, phone number and address in CRM, but you are not allowed to collect information about relatives or the customer's birthday. ( To learn more about defining personal data, click here.)
That means that every company using CRM has to review the information being collected and say whether they are proportional for the processing purpose.
Since a lot of our clients come from the European Union the GDPR requirements concern them. Our goal is to help them and offer them a solution which will help them understand these unclear problematics. There is a whole bunch of either smaller or bigger functions that help our clients - collecting consents and keeping records, easy changes tracking, there is also a function for a complete and unrenewable data erase - may the subject ask for it.
What about companies outside the EU, for example in the United States? Should they feel concerned as well?
Even the American companies keeping data about subjects from the EU need to meet these requirements. But most of them don't know that. We will remind all of them, of course.
What is the new version eWay-CRM 5.2 going to bring to our clients? Have there already been any Privacy areas being solved by the former version?
It's going to bring a lot! The complete list of updates is to be found in our list of changes.
But since each of our clients collects a different kind of data from their customers, we are also publishing a nice and handy methodic guide which helps with the "GDPR requirements" implementation within eWay-CRM.
Many things were already possible to do even in the older versions of eWay-CRM, but now it is much easier. For instance, we have an improved function for deleting records without any chance of renewing the data. That is what GDPR requires. The thing is that if your subject asks you to delete his data, you simply have to comply and delete every single thing related to the subject. And it needs to be done in a way that you cannot renew his data half a year letter and happily start emailing him again.
Also, we have added a great little thing, that makes it possible to register changes in any filed within the chosen module. In the GDPR context, you can say, for example, that you want to log all changes done within the Contacts module. Then it takes just one click to find out who and when changed the email address on a contact card. Or when was the time a consent allowing you to process data for marketing purposes expired. That took us like a month and it's just perfection.
How difficult (or easy) and comfortable is it to implement the new GDPR-CRM into companies? What are the steps our clients will need to take?
The important detail is what kind of data our clients collect from their customers. We have clients who keep data such as personal identification numbers, blood groups or the names and ages of customers' kids. Those companies will have to do a lot more than companies keeping just a few basic data.
We prepared a methodic guide, we call it GDPR eWay-Book.
This eBook answers our clients' most frequent questions, such as 'How do I get consents for processing data?' Apart from that, there is a whole bunch of instructions how to process various kinds of subjects' requests using our CRM. For instance, if someone requests a personal data change, all the steps are easily described there.
We offer the GDPR version of eWay-CRM Premium for free to all our clients, of course.
Want to try? Do not hesitate and download from www.eway-crm.com
To get more information obout personal data, sensitive personal data, rules for marketing messages and more, read our Little GDPR Vocabulary
Important note
More details about GDPR and its overall impact and implementation in business to be found in this article.
We talked to Roman Štefko, who is a cofounder and a technical director of the company.
Don't forget to check our GDPR Webinar about how to keep calm and be GDPR compliant.
With eWay-CRM!
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