Outsourcing is a vast market and a variety of business processes are constantly being outsourced, however after GDPR being passed by EU legislators, there is a bit of a twist in the tale, data privacy norms are stricter and more transparency would have to be exercised on part of businesses dealing with EU citizens’ data. Companies now require to divulge information to customers about how their data is going to be used, and provide them with more elaborate options on sharing data.

This move is going to largely impact the outsourcing processes such as data entry, data mining, contract abstraction among several others.

The aftermath of GDPR

GDPR would be enforced from May 25, 2018 onwards and given the hefty penalties companies can face in case of non-compliance, there is an urgent need for companies that rely on off-shoring to set their houses in order. GDPR extends to any businesses whose work involves data of EU citizens including outsourcing agencies as well. Data entry projects that a business has assigned to a service provider would require to make sure that the work doesn’t involve violation of the privacy norms.

Data misuse, lack of customer consent and extended periods of customer data storage beyond a required time frame can land you in trouble.

Here are some practices which can help you maintain compliance:

Map your data and document its usage

You need to trace your data to all the locations it has been saved in and deployed at. It is quite normal for companies to have resources saved in multiple databases, and one must be fully assured that none of it has been tampered with. One should conduct a quality assessment exercise that makes sure all the data is traced fully to its storage and also cleanse it to get rid of outdated data. Make sure that you can easily track your client data and record the specific purpose of its use because companies need to be able to explain acceptable circumstances behind usage of customer data and its duration in a database.

Improve your infrastructure security

If EU citizens data isn’t fully secure within your company database, that means trouble. It has been the case with certain businesses that their security infrastructure is still quite old school and with new regulations, newer and more effective technologies should be utilized to secure organizational as well as client data. Apart from technology, internal policies must be reviewed and validated as per the GDPR criteria for data classification, protection and other relevant information prior to signing an outsourcing contract. Also it is highly recommended to use pseudonymization for your customer data. Treating customer data as encrypted information and using arbitrary markers to identify it can be useful to keep data confidential.

Partner with an agency that upholds compliance

While outsourcing contract abstraction, data entry projects, or any other process that involves exchange of customer data, make sure your collaborating partners hold their end of the bargain when it comes to GDPR compliance. Both the purchaser and the service provider must be on the same page, as it would better to collaborate with an agency that has begun implementing these privacy norms.

The next few months will witness a gradual imposition of GDPR, and the efforts to make data entry projects more privacy compliant are already in full swing. If your agency is not ready yet, it is really time to get your act together and make the necessary amends to avoid penalties.

Get to Know!

Are you hesitant to assign your outsourcing projects to a service provider due to doubts over GDPR? Feel free to discuss your concerns with us at info@suntecdata.com

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