SME and Data Quality GDPR and customer data in UK SMEs

It’s been over five years since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was introduced. Since then, there have been plenty of headlines devoted to enterprise-level data breaches but very little on how SMEs have been fairing. Do they understand the GDPR and are they interpreting the legislation in the correct way? More than that, what is the quality of the data they hold and indeed, how do they store it?

This is what we set out to find in this survey. We wanted to gain a greater understanding of the quality of the data that SMEs hold on their customers and prospects, and the extent to which the GDPR is understood and has been adopted. It was positive to see that awareness of the GDPR and the requirement to keep data clean and accurate (or else delete it) was so high amongst the UK’s SMEs, which would indicate that the GDPR has firmly embedded itself. And while the majority of SMEs (92 percent) with a CRM or other database were aware of the need to clean and update or delete their data, there are a proportion (25 percent) who remain behind the curve and who are still not running the necessary cleaning or updating processes required by GDPR, demonstrating that there’s still room for improvement.

For those who are keeping their data clean and up-to-date, it’s important to keep in mind that data should still be sourced from a reputable supplier so that compliance with the GDPR is maintained.