Faced with a historic level of social and business disruption, companies have been forced to respond quickly and strategically to meet the challenge. To help address this challenge, and elevate customer experiences, we are introducing real-time customer journey orchestration capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing.
Elevate customer experiences
Connecting with people has never been more important, and customer expectations have never been higher. Customer tolerance for disjointed experiences, or even worse, tone-deaf communications is unacceptable. Organisations that deliver better end-to-end customer experiences (CX) are taking share. Despite a decade of discussion about the importance of CX, many companies have failed to elevate their experiences to the level desired.
Beyond the human value of great experiences, elevated experiences are critical to driving business value—enabling growth and driving brand equity, preventing churn, and enabling higher marketing and customer engagement return on investment.
Dynamics 365 Marketing is working to revolutionise how organisations address these challenges to enable teams such as marketing, sales, customer success, commerce, or customer service to create engaging and impactful customer-led experiences.
We are announcing real-time customer journey orchestration capabilities in Dynamics 365 Marketing will be released for preview as part of the April 2021 release wave 1 updates in Europe and North America. This landmark innovation brings together the worlds of customer experience and marketing automation and is designed to help businesses:
- Engage customers in real-time
- Win customers and earn loyalty faster
- Personalise customer experiences with AI
- Build customer trust with a unified, adaptable platform
Plus, commercial Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 customers will get six months of free access to Dynamics 365 Marketing at no additional cost. We’ll have more details on this offer to share soon, along with eligibility details, and we are excited to see you reap the benefits of these solutions together.
POPIA Explained: Your 5-Minute Guide to SA’s New Data Privacy Law
Has your inbox suddenly been flooded with mails all about POPIA, privacy and new legal changes? Ours certainly have been!
Now that the dust has settled a little, we’re posting to clarify any remaining questions you might have, and give you a helpful recap about what POPIA is, and what it means going forward.
Intro to POPIA
On July 1st 2021, South Africa’s new Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) came into force. With it, data, privacy and record-keeping requirements changed for thousands of organisations around South Africa. Not only for government entities and large corporates, but SMB’s, too.
In brief, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is South Africa’s new data protection law. It’s aim is to protect individuals from harm by ensuring the their personal data is always handled correctly, prudently and with their consent.
To do this, the Protection of Personal Information Act lays out a number of specific conditions for when and how it is lawful for someone to process someone else’s personal information. It also places strict requirements on how that data is safeguarded and used.
What do the requirements include?
The POPIA requirements cover factors such as accountability, processing limitations, information quality, openness, security safeguards, and data subject participation, among others.
Some of the basic principles include:
Personal information may only be processed in a fair and lawful manner and only with the consent of the data subject.
Personal information may only be processed for specific, explicitly defined and legitimate reasons.
Personal information may not be processed for a secondary purpose unless that processing is compatible with the original purpose.
The data subject whose information you are collecting must be aware that you are collecting such personal information and for what purpose the information will be used.
Personal information must be kept secure against the risk of loss, unlawful access, interference, modification, unauthorised destruction and disclosure.
Data subjects may request whether their personal information is held, as well as the correction and/or deletion of any personal information held about them.
What is “personal information”?
For the purposes of the act, “personal information” means information relating to an identifiable, living natural person and, where applicable, an identifiable company or other similar legal entity.
Information about age, gender and race, identity numbers, telephone numbers, location information, online identifiers, and personal opinions and preferences are all included in the definition. Personal data on disabilities, physical or mental health, financial, criminal or employment histories are also included.
Who is affected by the act?
Any natural or juristic person who processes personal information – including large corporates and government – are affected. Currently, SMEs are also included.
What steps do companies have to take to comply with the act?
There are various requirements placed on companies by POPIA. Among them are the need to:
- Appoint an information officer
- Draft a privacy policy
- Raise awareness of POPIA among employees
- Report data breaches
- Only share personal information when they are lawfully allowed to
At The CRM Team, we’ve always been committed to the strictest client confidentiality and data security protocols. You trust us with your personal data, and we work hard to keep that data secure. With the passage of POPIA, we’re doubling down on that promise, to ensure your personal information is always used appropriately, transparently and in accordance with the applicable laws.
If you have any further questions about POPIA or want to get your business compliant, feel free to get in touch.
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