Are you prepared for GDPR?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on 25 May 2018. These new requirements are a radical change of the existing obligations on companies regarding privacy and the processing of customer data.
Print28 February 2018
Garden Connect have been introducing useful online innovations in the garden industry over North West Europe since 2002. Since then they have worked with more than 250 garden centres to help them succeed online. With GDPR fast approaching, and with The Independent Online reporting that “most Irish businesses are not ready for GDPR”, now is the time to start getting prepared. Garden Connect can assist in this process.
What is GDPR?
The European Parliament has adopted the GDPR in April 2016. The provisions reinforce data protection in line with contemporary concerns about personal information and apply to both EU member states and organisations outside the union when processing the data of citizens within it.
Once the GDPR is implemented, every organisation has to demonstrate that good data protection is a cornerstone of the business’s policies and practices.
What should you do?
The Data Protection Commissioner launched a straightforward document with 12 steps to take to prepare for GDPR guidance. The document offers a good overview of how organisations can prepare. You can find it here.
Garden Connect highly recommends you to read through this document in detail and seek legal counsel to make sure your garden centre follows the regulations.
Please note that breaches could result in a fine of up to € 20 million or 4% of worldwide revenue, whichever figure is higher.
What are we doing?
In the upcoming weeks, our management system is undergoing multiple technical adjustments to be compliant with GDPR.
- Subscribing to newsletters will change, we will now record in which way people subscribe to a newsletter, including the explanatory notes.
- As soon as somebody unsubscribes from a newsletter, we automatically delete the email address after six months.
- When you import data into the newsletter system, you are now obliged to register the source of the email addresses.
- Data entered in contact forms will be deleted after 24 months.
- You will be able to remove customers from the webshop system yourself.
As for the relationship between Garden Connect and their customers: they will need an agreement between their customers and Garden Connect where Garden Connect are getting authorisation to process data on their customers’ behalf.
How can Garden Connect help?
Garden Connect will be hosting a webinar on GDPR on March 27 and April 3 and 5 at 10am. You can register for this seminar here. Places are limited so you are encouraged to signup soon. The webinar will last approximately 45 minutes.
To make life easier for you, Garden Connect can perform a check on your website and/or webshop to see what is necessary to be compliant with the regulation. To learn more about this website check send an enquiry to help@gardenconnect.com to receive more information.
If you require any further information, feel free to send them a message at help@gardenconnect.com. Because the questions that could arise might have a legal context, we ask you to only use email for this so we can give a comprehensive answer if necessary.
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