How BetterCommerce enabled The Fragrance Shop to be 100% GDPR compliant

Finlay Mure

Brands & Communications

The shortest way to achieve GDPR compliance is to converge all your data channels into a single platform supported by a global data server.

By opting for an eCommerce platform built on the cloud, and with a single global database server, you can avoid data fragmentation and duplication, while delivering a unified Omni-channel customer experience.

This is how The Fragrance Shop become GDPR compliant within a few days.

Post GDPR announcement, we saw how existing eCommerce platform providers elaborated on the cumbersome process of locating, securing and accessing customer data. Some vendors even detailed out the cases where they cannot provide you with the data. Apparently, your customer data was stored within different regional database servers. Added to this was the data copies stored within multiple applications. locate and secure the personal data of a single individual seemed time-consuming and complex task with the existing eCommerce infrastructure. Not to forget, getting customers to access to their own information was a completely different issue and would involve a long bureaucratic process. This was corroborated by retailers who spoke to us at IRX 2018, where Tom Martin, our esteemed partner presented on “Customer analytics in the age of GDPR”.

GDPR concerns discussed by the retailers compelled us to share our experience of helping a top UK retailer become GDPR compliant within a few days.

The Fragrance Shop (TFS)

The Fragrance Shop, just like you, was concerned about the latest GDPR regulation that was to come into effect on the 25th May 2018. With a revenue size of over £120 mn, and online revenue amounting to 20% of the total revenue, their business thrives on customer data as well as the degree of trust in their brand. While, the fragrance retailer intended to offer personalised customer experiences across brands – Scent Addict, The Fragrance Shop and Indulge Beauty, they also wanted to be highly transparent to their customers. GDPR was not just a regulation, but an opportunity for them to achieve this transparency.

GDPR implications on TFS online stores

We assessed the implications of GDPR while working closely with the legal and compliance team at The Fragrance Shop, and derived implications and modifications in three areas; Privacy and cookie policy, Back-end Database Server and the Web interface.

Renewed Privacy and Cookie Policy

The Fragrance Shop and its brands created a fresh policy to adhere to communication clauses laid down in the GDPR, clearly defining the What, Where, When and Why for the personal data captured.

What all information was collected

Lawful reason to collect the data

How would it be used

To whom would it be distributed

Where will it be stored and for how long

Everything was clearly laid out without any hidden caveats or legal jargon. The Fragrance Shop also created a mechanism for the customer to easily withdraw their consent.

Simple Modifications at the Back-End

The right to access, erasure and consent clauses within the GDPR implied the following:

Implications Challenges

All personal data related to an individual must be correctly mapped across data locations, repositories and applications. Identify all the data repositories where the customer data is stored in the business.

This includes data copies and data distributed to the third-party data controllers. Collate the customer data spread across different internal applications, systems, data servers and third-party applications.

A process had to be put in place to furnish this data to customers, on request, and in electronic format. Mapping all this data to the identifiable single record of customer

However, with BetterCommerce , The Fragrance Shop did not have to deal with these challenges.

How did we solve the Data Mapping issue?Identify all the data repositories where the customer data is stored in the business.

It’s by Design – BetterCommerce includes a global data platform to capture and manage all data from any customer interaction. The data is managed in a central secure location without duplication or fragmentation across different applications or repositories. The data is accessible to the business to create personalised experiences, dynamic promotions and enriched customer service interactions.

Built on BetterCommerce platform, The Fragrance Shop had instant access to customer data, without the hassle of requesting data from disparate providers.

We placed data accessibility in the hands of the customer

Again, this was done by Design – All the websites built on BetterCommerce have the capability to give complete access to personal data of customers through their registered account.

The customers can log-in to check all of their personal data – explicit and implicit.

– Explicit – all the information customers have provided themselves.

– Implicit – all the information captured by the data platform – products browsed, searches, brands viewed – essentially the complete browsing history.

With BetterCommerce, our clients are not dependent on cumbersome processes to access and secure customer data. The user has full access to the complete history of activities with the capability to view, download and even delete all the data – if desired. this is done in a self-service mode, without any extra burden on the customer service team and without any dependency on the IT teams.

So, The Fragrance Shop had to do nothing?

We Did. We extended our Customer 360 API to give restricted access to the customer personal data on-need basis to all the third party systems to avoid any duplication and promote traceability of data between applications.

The internal access policies were defined for accessing customer data only on-need basis which was easy to implement since all the customer data was centrally located in a single repository and accessible through the API.

But that’s all we needed to do.

Modifications to Website Interface

The Consent clause, access and erasure clause required some changes at the front end of the Interface.

There has to be explicit consent to The Fragrance Shop’s privacy policy and cookie policy.

The Fragrance Shop must obtain explicit consent for all marketing activities.

The Fragrance Shop must obtain explicit consent to collect information at Checkout.

BetterCommerce strives to support its customers throughout the association. We helped The Fragrance Shop to customize the Front-End Interface for all brand sites.

Indulge Beauty

Scent Addict

The Fragrance Shop

GDPR compliant within a week!

The Fragrance Shop began its customer campaign on GDPR and showed their customer base that they were a brand that could be trusted to act responsibly when it comes to dealing with personal data.