Smart CRMs can help businesses keep customer data safe

CUSTOMER data is precious and businesses must handle it with care.

Reports and studies have often said that the biggest challenges to ensuring data privacy is understanding how and where data is stored within a business, and monitoring and policing who has access to it.

According to some vendors and solutions providers, however, the best way to ensure data privacy is to optimize the existing CRM system.

The argument does make sense if you consider all the data that a CRM system holds and weight it against some of the features that CRM systems are typically able to offer.

Here’s a quick dive into how you can optimize your CRM system to ensure that you’re able to comply with all prevailing data privacy requirements and regulations:

# 1 | Visibility

In any business, the sales team plays a key role. The data they collect and use to do their job usually includes sensitive information about other businesses and individuals.

Further, as relationships with customers develop over time, companies tend to collect more data than necessary during the sales process.

Using a CRM allows companies to ensure that they collect all the information and store it in the right way, without losing anything valuable — this would be impossible to do on spreadsheets or process or project management tools.

Essentially, a CRM gives businesses visibility into all the data they have on customers — which is the first step to understanding what data needs protection or must be kept private and whether existing processes that leverage data are able to comply with the regulations or not.

# 2 | Security

When you’ve got customer data, it’s easy to forget that you have a responsibility to protect that data. Further, you need to make sure that the data is only accessed by the right people within your organization and for the right purposes.

Using a CRM allows companies to not only protect data but also adds a layer of security in terms of the software protects the data itself.

If the data is stored in the cloud, the CRM provider or vendor is also equally liable to protect the data you store, as a result, you’ve got increased security as no additional cost — which of course goes another step further in terms of data protection.

# 3 | Governance

Most importantly, regulations require that companies govern access to data.

When companies use a CRM, they’re better able to define who has access to data and from where (blocking out access from unauthorized locations and regions).

As a result, CRMs provide a strong sense of support and direction when it comes to meeting strict data regulations such as the EU’s GDPR and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act.

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