How personal data flows into Sage CRM

2 minute read time.

Sage CRM provides sales, marketing and customer service management functionality to our customers and allows them to maintain and manage customer contact data.

Sage CRM integrates with Sage Business Cloud products, such as Sage 100cloud, Sage 200cloud and Sage 300cloud, to provide a complete view of a customer relationship. Consequently it exchanges some data (including personal data) with those systems.

Sage CRM also can be integrated to email Marketing providers, such as MailChimp and Swiftpage, and personal data is exchanged with those products if the integration is enabled and subscriber information is synchronized.

As a Sage CRM system holds personal data about customers and prospects, an active approach to managing this data by Sage CRM customers is required.

Most businesses and organisations will hold some sensitive personal data. For example, an employee's or a suppliers bank details so that they can get paid. Sage CRM is also completely customisable, and Sage customers may have added additional personal data fields into their Sage CRM system (e.g. Government ID Number). This can be very sensitive.

Sage CRM provides functionality to help customers meet their data consent management obligations. Sage CRM may have been extensively customised with additional personal data fields, and therefore it is the responsibility of the customer to identify those fields and to manage that data according to the law.

Personal Data is any information that relates to an individual, either alone or when combined with other information a customer might possess. For the purposes of this training course we will be covering the standard Sage CRM fields first and last names, personal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, but as referenced above, customers will likely have added other fields to their system that need to be managed.

They key is to only hold the data you need, for only as long as you need it and to ensure you have documented the appropriate legal grounds for holding and processing that data. There are different legal grounds that apply to standard and sensitive personal data types.

Businesses are required to obtain consent for why you have data. — Consent needs to be explicit.

This should not be confusing. One clear benefit of the GDPR and other data protection legislation is clarity and transparency on how a customer wants to be contacted!

A company can build trust by demonstrating a commitment to consent management.

Customers will feel empowered within the relationship if they can understand exactly what data is being collected and how it will be used.

And by ensuring permissions are regularly sought and updated will mean data is accurate.

You can then be sure that you communications are only received by people who want to hear from you and so will improve the reception of your message.

There are several features in Sage CRM that will help Sage CRM customers the overall management of consent:

These include

Obtaining and tracking consent (individual records or groups of records)
Anonymising data (individual records or groups of records)
Deleting communications and library Items
Flagging externally shared data