Mastering GDPR compliance with process automation

In 2024, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) remains a critical framework for data protection, influencing how businesses manage personal data. For companies operating across national borders, ensuring GDPR compliance isn't just about avoiding hefty fines—it's about maintaining customer trust and demonstrating a commitment to privacy.

Since its implementation, GDPR has fundamentally changed the landscape of data management. Businesses are now required to adopt robust data protection measures, ensuring transparency and accountability in their operations. 

Non-compliance with GDPR can result in severe penalties, including fines of up to €20 million or 4% of the company's global annual turnover, whichever is higher. CIOs and their teams are obligated to ensure ongoing compliance with GDPR by regularly reviewing and updating data protection policies and procedures, providing staff training on GDPR requirements, and conducting internal audits to identify and address any compliance gaps.

The task of coordinating all the systems and actors to achieve and demonstrate this compliance is enormous. Successfully automating business processes to comply with GDPR, and proving this compliance, may be the key.

Beyond IT: making GDPR compliance a company-wide responsibility

GDPR compliance touches every department in the business, spanning multiple organizations, managers, and processes.

Even if a business does not deal directly with customers or partners established in the European Union, it may still be affected by the areas of application of the GDPR. All it takes is for someone based in the EU to interact with a business, at any level, for the company to be affected by GDPR requirements.

Let’s look at an example. One of the aspects of GDPR is referred to as “the right to be forgotten,” or the erasure of data. When someone - a prospect, a partner, a client, or a customer based in the European Union requests the complete erasure of their information from your company's databases, think about what that actually entails.

Don’t forget the right to be forgotten

The GDPR definition of “personal data” is broad. According to Article 4 of the GDPR, this data can include: “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly.” This could be information left on a form such as a name, email address; it can include payment information; posts on the company’s social media websites including photos; medical information, a computer IP address - and more.

The request from anyone to remove their data then means determining their relationship with the business. What systems could potentially contain personal data about this person? 

There is the customer data stored in the CRM system, and partner information stored in the internal relational database management system (RDBMS).

And then there are all the internal processes involving data. 

Uncovering hidden data: mapping personal data in your business processes

Could you be holding financial data on an individual even if they have not carried out a financial transaction with your company? What about your marketing and sales systems? The customer success team? Customer support? Did someone in your company quote this person in an internal or external communication? Did the person use any of your social networks? And what about the backups of all these systems?

What are your internal rules governing data management for each of these systems? For example, what are the rules of engagement for your marketing data? Are there rules for data deletion or does the data have expiration dates?

In addition to auditing measures and documenting the location of all internal data that may be affected by GDPR, do you have processes in place to define how all your systems manage access to, movement of, and persistence of data? 

Have you implemented the appropriate workflows to fully address the “right to be forgotten” and other aspects of GDPR?

Automated data processing using a business process management (BPM) platform can help you answer these questions - and implement the appropriate processes and workflows for both compliance and proof of compliance.

Use process automation to demonstrate compliance with GDPR

Process automation with BPM is designed to bring order and efficiency to the flow of complex processes. The use of a BPM platform can streamline and simplify GDPR compliance by making closely related processes smoother, while also documenting process flows and providing traceability, which is a key part of proving GDPR compliance.

It is not enough to be GDPR compliant; you must be able to demonstrate compliance to the satisfaction of the European Union authorities. BPM platforms can play a role here, as they manage processes in real-time and create a traceable file documenting what happened and when.

Let’s go back to the “right to be forgotten” example and look at what a hypothetical software provider might be facing. The company must document compliance with an EU-based person's request to be forgotten across all of its systems. Most company data resides in CRM systems like SalesforceTM, but personal data may also be found in the company's accounting, marketing, and software license tracking databases as well as in posts and articles across multiple social networks.

Automated BPM processes can be useful for searching, deleting, and documenting the erasure of the requester's personal data across all of these systems; Bonitasoft’s Bonita process automation engine automatically logs the date and time of each step of each process. It identifies who in the company is responsible for deleting information in each database, then records when each deletion was made.

As a middleware capable of orchestrating and interacting with other enterprise information systems, a BPM platform like Bonita can also manage processes in different applications across the business. 

Without orchestrated, automated processes, it would be necessary to write processes for each database, email system, CRM, ERP - every business system - separately. With a manual approach, it is much more difficult to ensure that every affected database has been checked, and to document that every instance of the requester's personal data has been erased.

Future-proof your business by preparing for ongoing regulatory challenges 

Note that GDPR compliance is a process, and a complex one - not a checklist or a series of random steps. You can design a methodical process for managing personal data across all your company's databases, making the adoption of  a BPM platform ideal for this type of compliance.

And as there are other types of legal and regulatory compliance required in business, some of which have yet to be formulated, as laws and regulations change frequently - the implementation of a BPM platform and process automation will also help you keep up with other types of compliance requirements.

Transform your business processes to be GDPR and otherwise compliant while continuing to leverage existing IT assets. Start using Bonita to structure your workflows and systems so that they support the effective execution of compliance tasks. Once this process management model is in place, you can add applications based on the platform you already use, including CRM tools, ERP and custom developments.

Enterprise applications automated on Bonita Cloud enjoy secure, robust data protection and privacy.

Bonitasoft has ISO 27001 certification from Bureau Veritas for its Bonita Cloud information security, and for Bonita Cloud customer development, operations, and support. 

Simplify and achieve GDPR compliance with ease

The increasingly interconnected world we live in complicates data management and privacy. The challenges posed by GDPR may have taken your business by surprise. Perhaps your company's processes are simple enough that you can manage them manually for now.

However, by adopting a BPM platform like Bonita, you will be better prepared to respond to any future data management regulations that are sure to emerge. Mitigate risks, protect customer trust, and ensure the long-term success of your enterprise in the digital age.

----

Ready to take the next step? See how Bonita can revolutionize your GDPR compliance strategy and secure your business future.  Contact us to know more about process automation with Bonita.