We look at how industries are preparing, and ask – have businesses already moved on?
For the past two years, whole industries ranging from Conference Organisers, to newly articulate Vendors – have sprung up professing abilities and proficiencies to help us manage the data compliance of GDPR – coming live in just a few months.
And their message may have been getting through. In Scandinavia, you cannot find any free Consultants able to take on any new projects. In our calls to UK vendors, few even answered our calls. If past history is anything to go by, companies typically leave things to the last minute – so maybe there will be this rush to the final hurdle when the deadline May comes around.
Or maybe there won’t. According to Richard Copland, Partner at The Future Shapers – those companies that were going to do something – have already done so. The concern over GDPR among the large corporates where this can matter – has already been dealt with and life is moivinbg on to more important areas of data handling.
This mirrors our own experience. In interviews we have had in the Financials and Insurance areas, the need is not for data compliance. The concern is how to identify key bits of customers information that can make a commercial difference. In other words, technology and IT is not the problem any more; we are getting back to basics of – what drives our businesses and above all, what will give these companies a commercial edge.
Interestingly, Trade Conferences per se are no longer seen as the giver of new comparative information, because it is rare to find vendors who genuinely have anything new to say. Whilst there are exceptions to this, their importance is in the casual networking of vendor to delegate and delegate to delegate.
Where this takes us in the future – is that 2018 will be the catalyst for specific vendors who genuinely have a new vision and a new take on their market. Linking technology to commercial benefit, will be the difference.
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