The luxury market continues to grow globally and is expected to reach €2.5 trillion by 2030[1]. The health of this sector is therefore having an increasingly significant impact on the economy. This is especially true for France, where the sector is well represented in the CAC 40[2]. Thus, in this machine made of leather and silk, a single grain of sand can cost tens of millions of euros and have a lasting impact on the image of these companies. Yet, the risk factors are numerous.

Like all sectors, luxury is impacted by geopolitical instability and climate change:
On one hand, due to the high internationalization of its value chain (in 2023, French luxury companies exported goods worth €50.6 billion[3]); on the other hand, because of its high dependence on high-quality natural resources, particularly leather, textiles, and minerals.

In recent years, luxury companies have significantly accelerated the digitalization of their business processes, from manufacturing to sales. Their critical functions increasingly rely on assets exposed to IT incidents, whether caused by cyberattacks or not. Notably, the growing use of AI and IoT is a strong differentiator from a business perspective, but it also increases exposure to technological risks that are still partially identified and mitigated due to their novelty.

As a result, the sector faces a key challenge: how to ensure its sustainability in the context of growing threats? In response, a fundamental concept is gaining traction among major luxury Houses: operational resilience. What is the state of the art in the luxury sector regarding operational resilience? What mechanisms are being deployed by luxury brands to ensure the resilience of their critical activities?

Operational Resilience Applied to Luxury

Armed forces were among first to adopt the concept of operational resilience, defining it as:

“The ability to face the consequences of a traumatic crisis and bounce back, acting effectively despite a degraded environment and the human, organizational, and technical damages they [the military] may have suffered.”[4]

While this definition has a strong military tone, it nonetheless conveys a goal that any organization can pursue: the ability to withstand major disruptions and recover. Today, operational resilience has begun to permeate all sectors, from energy to healthcare, including luxury. This trend has been notably driven by the rise of regulations and standards dedicated to operational resilience, especially in the financial sector (DORA, Solvency II, PCI DSS…).

At Wavestone, we consider operational resilience to be structured around seven key pillars, inspired by best practices, notably the ISO 22301[5] standard, as well as European regulations. The luxury sector is well-suited to building these pillars, provided its specificities are considered.

          Pillar 1: Critical activities and assets knowledge

This involves identifying and improving knowledge of what needs to become resilient among all business processes and assets of the organization. Two approaches exist:

• An exhaustive approach, based on a Business Impact Assessment (BIA) across all organizational processes, providing a global view of activities and identifying critical processes and their supporting assets (IT infrastructure, applications, workshops…). However, this approach is time-consuming and does not add significant value to implementing an efficient resilience strategy.
• A pragmatic approach, based on a limited impact analysis concerning organization’s critical processes, identified beforehand by top management. This faster and higher-value approach allows early focus on analyzing processes recognized as vital by the business, then tracing back to applications and infrastructures that support them.

This mapping is a crucial starting point to focus efforts on what truly matters for the organization. In the luxury sector, particular attention should be paid to the following asset categories: human resources with rare expertise, raw materials, manufacturing tools, and assets related to logistics and payment.

       Pillar 2: Risks Management

The goal is to tailor operational resilience measures to the entity’s risk profile, focusing efforts on preventing the most impactful and likely risk scenarios.

In the luxury sector, it is useful to consider all risks that could affect the entity’s operations, especially those related to geopolitical instability, climate change, and IT/OT, which could impact the supply of rare raw materials, production, and distribution.

       Pillar 3: Implementation and Continuous Improvement of Continuity Solutions

The target is to implement relevant resilience measures, notably through business continuity plans that address identified risks and focus on critical activities.

In the luxury sector, it is useful to define these measures with business teams in a pragmatic and essential way. The idea is for resilience measures to integrate seamlessly into business processes, improving their quality while avoiding being perceived as an additional constraint.

Moreover, luxury professions are often artisanal, with people being the sole holders of a clear vision of their processes (in other words, their craft). The resilience of their work largely depends on them. An interesting approach would be to reverse the usual method: instead of formalizing a continuity procedure and then testing it, conduct a workshop/test with business teams to formalize a procedure based on the best practices they would naturally implement.

       Pillar 4: Third-party risk management

The objective is to have sufficient knowledge of the third parties involved in the entity’s critical activities and to ensure they do not pose an obstacle to their resilience. In the luxury sector, the nature of third parties presents specific characteristics that must be considered. On one hand, they are often artisans or very small businesses (VSBs) that have not worked on their own resilience. On the other hand, some third parties are the only ones able to deliver the level of quality sought by the luxury House, which may place the latter in a position of dependency. A dedicated reflection is therefore needed to co-develop resilience solutions with these third parties, notably through crisis management exercises.

       Pillar 5: Crisis management capability

This involves setting up a framework to manage all types of crises that may arise and that the entity will need to manage: IT, cyber, safety, and business-related. Entities in the luxury sector, due to their “manufacturing” nature, often operate numerous geographically dispersed sites, hosting a variety of professions. These elements must be taken into account to adapt the crisis management framework and ensure that relevant exercises are conducted.

       Pillar 6: IT systems resilience

Given its central role and the technical complexity, it entails, the information system requires particular attention to ensure it is sufficiently protected against threats and can maintain the continuity of its critical services, even in degraded conditions. In the luxury sector, where digitalization process remains relatively recent or still ongoing, a major strategic opportunity emerges integrate resilience considerations from the design phase.

       Pillar 7: Resilience culture and governance

At the heart of the approach, developing an operational resilience strategy is essential, led by clearly identified stakeholders. It is equally important to build on the unique corporate culture of each luxury House — a true driver of employee engagement — by progressively embedding a culture of resilience.

The state of operational resilience in the luxury sector

To establish this overview, we relied on the results of our CyberBenchmark and OpResBenchmark. These two tools respectively assess the maturity level of entities in terms of cybersecurity and operational resilience, while positioning them relative to the rest of the market.

The combination of these tools allowed us to consolidate data from the evaluation of over 150 entities, including a significant number from the luxury sector.
These insights enable us to present the overview below, illustrating the sector’s maturity level across all seven pillars of operational resilience.

According to 2025 data of the Wavestone’s CyberBenchmark and OpRes Benchmak

Upon reviewing this data, the most obvious finding lies in the market average (47.5%):
Entities across all sectors appear to be not very resilient. However, there are significant disparities, particularly depending on the level of regulation in each sector.
Naturally, the financial sector, currently undergoing compliance with DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act), shows a high level of maturity across all pillars.
Meanwhile, the energy sector, also regulated, must contend with complex industrial systems and heavy legacy infrastructures, which complicate its operational resilience.

The context of the past five years – marked by major challenges to business continuity (COVID-19, military conflicts, rising cyber threats, etc.) – along with the operational resilience recognition in several regulatory texts (e.g., DORA, CER, CRA, NIS 2) seems to be reversing the trend. We are seeing more entities becoming aware of the importance of operational resilience and beginning to launch significant initiatives to address the issue.

In terms of maturity, the luxury sector stands out with an average of 53.4%.
Even though it is not directly targeted by regulation, we have observed a proactive approach to the topic, particularly from CISOs of luxury Houses, who have initiated numerous resilience-related projects. Accustomed to the pursuit of excellence, the luxury sector is embracing the topic voluntarily, convinced that it represents a strategic challenge for the future.

This position even seems to allow it to leverage best practices established by regulation, focusing on what matters most, without being burdened by compliance constraints or oversight from authorities (incident reporting, audit preparation, evidence sharing…).

In practice, this translates into the sector being ahead of many other unregulated industries in terms of operational resilience — even though we are still at the beginning of the journey.

       On crisis management and IT resilience

The consequences of poorly managed crises are often severe — financially, legally, and reputationally. We can easily imagine, for a luxury House, the impact of being unable to process customer payments or a fire affecting a raw materials warehouse. Luxury brands have therefore long been structured to manage the crises they face.

However, these crises now frequently originate from incidents affecting information systems.
In 2022, 62% of luxury sector companies were victims of ransomware attacks, resulting in average financial losses of around €5 million per incident. At the same time, stolen data is increasingly circulating on the Dark Web. According to Dark Web Monitor, listings offering sensitive information — such as upcoming product plans or confidential marketing strategies — have increased by 78%. For example, in 2022, the Italian House Moncler suffered a data breach, with a ransom demand of $3 million to prevent the disclosure of information related to its wealthiest clients[6].

Crisis management therefore relies heavily on IT resilience mechanisms, which materialize the decisions made by the crisis unit. These mechanisms include backups, flow blocking, and workaround solutions. They also play a key role in incident prevention and detection, through tools such as EDRs, IDS/IPS probes, automated patch deployment, and regular configuration testing.

      On third-party risk management

The sector’s maturity on this pillar is largely due to the historical awareness among luxury companies of the criticality of their value chains, both upstream (leather, silk, precious stones sourcing…) and downstream (finished product distribution). These value chains involve numerous external providers — extraction, maritime or road transport, logistics hubs — whose failure can lead to major commercial consequences.

Among the suppliers of major luxury Houses, one often finds small artisanal businesses, holders of rare and hard-to-replace expertise. At first glance, their small size might suggest low risk management maturity. However, due to their strategic value, these artisans receive special attention. Luxury Houses adopt a collaborative approach to support them in managing their risks, including in the IT domain, even though IT systems remain limited in these artisanal structures. This collaboration takes the form of regular audits, sharing of best practices, and in some cases, acquisitions that allow for full integration and maturity development aligned with the standards of the luxury House.

       On understanding critical activities and assets

This pillar is particularly complex to master for luxury entities, which are generally divided into Houses/entities with very different business lines, sometimes spread across multiple continents. This structure gives a certain autonomy to the various business units, which can complicate the proper sharing of information with the teams responsible for resilience at the group level.

       On governance and resilience culture

This pillar is the least well mastered by the sector. Luxury even ranks slightly below the market average. Indeed, roles and responsibilities are rarely clearly defined, and a common governance structure is often nonexistent. As a result, several similar projects may compete with one another, or be handled incompletely (e.g., from an IT perspective without considering BIAs conducted by business teams).

Our recommendations to improve operational resilience in the luxury sector

Wavestone supports multiple entities across all sectors in their operational resilience initiatives. Considering specificities of the luxury sector mentioned earlier, we identify four key recommendations:

Draw inspiration from regulations while remaining pragmatic (DORA, CER, NIS 2, Solvency II, LPM, etc.): Luxury is not directly subject to these regulations, yet it is relevant to leverage them as best practice frameworks. With DORA, the financial sector is progressing rapidly on the topic, and its feedback and experience can be valuable to the luxury sector. Obviously, it is essential to remain pragmatic and retain only the measures that are relevant to the specific luxury entity and its characteristics. It is important to avoid overloading business teams with purely regulatory requirements, which are primarily designed to help supervisory authorities fulfill their role.

Test and learn: Testing is an essential component of an operational resilience strategy.
It is through testing that one can measure the effectiveness of continuity solutions (BCP, DRP, crisis management tools, etc.), draw lessons, and continuously improve them.
Notably, threat-based penetration testing (as described in DORA and the TIBER-EU framework) allows for end-to-end testing of operational teams, including third parties, and can therefore be highly insightful even outside the financial sector.

Establish a Group-level strategy: This helps avoid contradictory initiatives at the entity level and/or between IT/Cyber teams and business units, while also enhancing efficiency. Moreover, this strategy allows for the definition of a target maturity level, tailored to the specific needs of each entity.

Build on existing foundations: Due to their specificities, luxury entities may have already implemented continuity solutions and/or governance structures suited to operational resilience (third-party management, crisis management, cybersecurity programs, etc.).
It is important not to start from scratch, but rather to capitalize on existing assets to initiate a tailored approach.

[1] Luxury in Transition: Securing Future Growth, Bain & Company

[2] The main French stock index

[3] Le luxe français : pourquoi ce secteur déjoue toutes les crises, La Fabrique de l’industrie

[4] Doctrine interarmées, DIA-3.4.1_RESILIENCE, N° 23/ARM/CICDE/NP du 08 février 2022.

[5] This standard defines features of a “business continuity management system”

[6] À quels enjeux de cybersécurité les grands noms du luxe sont-ils confrontés ?, L’Usine Digitale

Cet article Operational resilience in the luxury sector est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

To support our clients, we reviewed several AI-driven privacy solutions. This article gives an overview of features offered by key players in the Data Privacy market, including OneTrust, Smart Global Governance, Witik, Dastra, EQS, Secure Privacy, DataGrail, BigID, Collibra, Privacy License, and Ardent. This list is not exhaustive, but it highlights the major vendors we identified among our clients.

The radar below presents a summary of the study’s results, offering an overview of the capabilities of the various solutions regarding AI features. It will serve as a valuable tool for organizations to identify which solutions best align with their specific needs and priorities.

Figure 1: AI Privacy features Radar

AI Features for Data Privacy

During our benchmark, we identified five main kinds of features for AI use in Data Privacy solutions. The five categories cover the main recurring AI features found in editors’ solutions. While each category groups similar features, some unique AI features may fall outside these categories.

Figure 2: AI Privacy features Categories

   1. Assisted generation of Privacy documents

AI solutions can automatically generate questionnaires and evaluations for compliance audits, satisfaction surveys, custom reports, and even data processing records. These tools allow for the customization of content according to specific requirements. Some solutions even integrate the possibility to import existing documents to optimize document generation.

Use case example: generating a template proposal of vendors assessment.

This kind of feature is now advanced and allows quick drafting of multiple documents that would otherwise take significantly longer.

Maturity score:

    2. Intelligent document analysis & completion

Intelligent document analysis uses AI to review complex documents, extract key information, and identify compliance risks. It generates only initial draft responses to questions, helping users avoid starting from scratch. Human reviewers must verify the quality of these drafts.

Use case example: generating a first draft of a privacy by design on a new HR data processing.

This mature kind of feature now enables rapid drafting of responses in questionnaires or various documents, significantly reducing the time required for completion.

Maturity score: 

   3. AI-assisted compliance tasks & workflows

AI solutions can create compliance action plans, manage tasks, automate workflows, ensuring smooth execution of compliance processes. These tools optimize time and resources simplifying the completion of workflows.

Use case example: automation of data subject access request answers.

This kind of feature is emerging with the arrival of AI agents. In one year approximately, this technology will be more mature, allowing more accuracy and tasks combinations to simplify workflows.

Maturity score:     

   4. AI Support Assistants

AI conversational assistants provide real-time assistance to employees and customers by answering their questions and guiding them through compliance processes. In general, these AI assistants are pretrained with regulation referential or legal documents. They also can be adapted with client chosen documents uploaded in a safe work of environment provided by the editor. Their use enhances the accessibility and responsiveness of compliance services.

Use case example: Privacy-GPT enabling to answer questions such as “can you remind me of the data deletion rules for resumes?

This feature is readily available and can be easily implemented within companies using simple AI agent setups like Copilot.

Maturity score: 

   5. Cookie Management and Consent with AI

Possibility to use AI to automatically generate cookie consent banners, considering key inputs like language, country, and applicable regulations. It also automates the creation of privacy and cookie management policies, tailored to regional and linguistic legal criteria. Furthermore, some solutions include intelligent cookie classification, identifying, categorizing, and managing cookies on a website.

This feature is uncommon, and few editors have pursued its development

Maturity score:  

How to make the most of current AI-tools maturity?

The benchmark indicates that AI-based privacy solutions provide notable benefits regarding compliance and workplace efficiency, though certain limitations remain to be addressed.

Benefits:

• Compliance and Timesaving: AI-based privacy solutions can improve and simplify
  • AI features aim to save time, especially for repetitive and long tasks. This may involve, for instance, pre-completing questionnaires, workflow automation…
  • AI tools provide access to a large knowledge base, either internally or externally, and enable faster searches. Compliance can be achieved more quickly and accurately.
  • Those tools allow also to ensure consistency across the organization on how to tackle privacy topics (leveraging on a common RAG). Compliance will be more coherent within all the entities.
• Partial Automation: Full automation is not the goal in data privacy due to the sensitive nature of the information involved, making AI solutions more suitable as support tools rather than complete replacements. That’s why most of the editor are developing features for specific tasks integrating human oversight.

Limitations:

• Task-Specific Limitations: Many AI tools use third-party models (e.g. API directly linked to OpenAI) that may not be fully optimized for specialized tasks. When selecting an AI solution, check the model and training data, and opt for platforms that use proprietary models focused on Data Privacy for more reliable results.
• Security Risks: Increased connectivity and the demand for personalization may introduce security risks, potentially affecting data integrity and confidentiality. It is advisable to monitor how AI systems interact with your data to ensure that sensitive information is not accessible to the AI.

User responsibilities: It is important to recognize that using AI carries inherent risks, as its responses are not always accurate or relevant. Users should maintain a critical perspective and carefully verify any AI-generated content before incorporating it into official documents. Raising awareness and offering guidance on best practices for AI use could be beneficial to ensure responsible and effective implementation.

Outlook

Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy in privacy applications, and more advanced functions are likely to emerge in the future. Currently, AI capabilities are used as support tools for a variety of tasks, typically operating under human supervision to streamline time-consuming or repetitive processes. In one or two years, further opportunities could arise with the development of AI agents (systems designed to autonomously perform tasks for users or other systems), enabling more customization for specific business requirements or general applications, as well as better accuracy in performing specific tasks. For these reasons, it is advisable to take interest in AI tools right now as it can enable you to increase efficiency on operational topics.

Although greater personalization could enhance AI’s role in privacy and compliance, it also increases connectivity, which may pose security risks. Addressing these challenges will be necessary to maintain data integrity and confidentiality.

Finally, given AI’s rapid development, changing your current solution might not be financially wise. Nevertheless, plan for 2026 and reach out to your editor to learn about available features when AI agent technology will be mature.

As part of our research, we held one-hour workshops with six of these editors (Dastra, OneTrust, Smart Global Governance, Secure Privacy, Witik, and EQS/Privacy Cockpit) to better understand their AI capabilities, future developments, and how they integrate AI into their solutions.

We sincerely thank Cyprien Charlaté and Catherine Pigamo for their valuable contribution to the writing of this article. 

Cet article Why it’s the perfect time to include AI-powered tools within your data privacy compliance strategy? est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

But what exactly is ISO 27701?

The International Standard Organisation (ISO) published in August 2019 its standard ISO 27701, which is an extension of ISO 27001 and is intended to specify and define the processes, objectives and measures to be implemented for the protection of personal data and privacy.

Creating and maintaining a Privacy Protection Management System

Like ISO 27001 standard (the reference for IT security), which aims to create an Information Security Management System (ISMS), its extension ISO 27701 aspires to create a System of Privacy Protection Management.

To do this, the standard amends and supplements the processes, requirements and security measures of ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 with specific recommendations for the processing of personal data.

However, it does not only expand the ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 but also adds specific new requirements that are well known to privacy stakeholders (consent management, transparency, minimization, etc.).

In this context, being ISO 27001 certified is a prerequisite for obtaining ISO 27701 certification.

This parameter mechanically narrows down potential candidates for certification, and makes the effort to provide more consistent: review of existing documents, necessary collaboration between the initial WSIS teams and the new PIMS actors, etc.

Despite this effort, the application of this standard offers an excellent opportunity for organizations to further intertwine processes and teams related to cybersecurity and privacy (e.g. linking the processes of Security Integration in Projects and Privacy by Design).

ISO 27701 certified does not mean GDPR compliant

It is important to note that an ISO 27701 certification is not synonymous with GDPR compliance. Indeed, the main purpose of the standard is to establish worldwide principles and rules around Privacy, in a common language. That said, it should be recalled that national authorities (such as the CNIL) participated in the development of the standard and welcomed its publication.

But then, what are the adherences between the ISO 27701 content and the GDPR content?

Regarding the fundamental principles of the GDPR (consent, rights, legality, etc.), the new standard develops a set of requirements covering all the GDPR topics. As the standard is intended to be international, it remains by nature less precise than the GDPR on some topics (i.e. no precision of the deadline to be respected for notifying the authority). It is therefore the responsibility of PIMS to carry out a gap analysis in order to understand what adjustments need to be made to comply with applicable laws.

In addition, concerning personal data security, the adaptations of the requirements of ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 provide a comprehensive repository for organizations that can be used as a basis for compliance with article 32 of the GDPR (dedicated to data security).

… but it can become the strongest credibility mark in personal data protection and privacy on the market.

The main stake for a company in seeking ISO 27701 certification is to give credibility to its Privacy management system and give confidence to stakeholders (business partners, customers, suppliers, employees, authorities…) that the fundamental principles of privacy protection are considered.

The 27701 “stamp” could quickly become a known and internationally recognized pledge of trust. Like ISO 27001, this new standard ISO 27701 could become an essential criterion in tendering phases.

In this perspective, Matthieu Grall of the National Commission for Data Protection (CNIL) states that with “(…) the increase in the number of complaints and sanctions related to confidentiality and data protection, it is obvious that such a standard was necessary. In addition, organizations must demonstrate to the authorities, and their partners, customers and collaborators that they are trustworthy. However, this standard will greatly contribute to inspiring this confidence. ”

Concretely, for whom and why?

The publication of this standard represents an opportunity for several types of organizations:

• In a B2B relationship: a strong pledge of trust vis-à-vis business partners in the context of a collaboration involving the processing of personal data (i.e. a company managing payroll or carrying out communication or marketing operations on behalf of large organizations).
• In a B2C relationship: the certification of a key perimeter of a company that processes the personal data of its customers en masse (i.e. a distributor in the context of its loyalty program, an insurer in the context of its contractual activities…) can eventually become a significant vector of trust vis-à-vis the customers themselves but also vis-à-vis the authorities.
• Within companies: the standard represents a new benchmark that companies can use to develop a clear and shared audit framework. ISO 27701 certification can also represent a way for DPOs and Privacy teams to make tangible the efforts made with their top management.

While there is still uncertainty about its widespread adoption (particularly due to the 27001 certification barrier), there is no doubt that it can quickly establish itself as a confidence-building measure as well as a new standard for internal audit and control.

The fact remains that the emergence of this standard is a new leap forward with regard to the protection of personal data, on an international scale.

Cet article ISO 27701: one more compliance text or the long-awaited international framework for privacy protection? est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.

So, how can consumers rebuild confidence, especially to a level where they are ready to share their data and preferences?

Several major e-commerce players (ASOS, Adidas, etc.) seem to be making transparency a strong thread in their strategy, in particular by giving customers the ability to manage and control their own data. This usually involves a Privacy Center—a personal space where users can view and manage their personal information, adjust preferences and consents, and easily make use of their rights. But should this solution be adopted by all retail players?

Why are privacy centers often considered as the ideal transparency solution?

Privacy Centers have the advantage of empowering users to be in control of and manage the personal data they entrust to a company. Making users masters of their own data provides a guarantee of trust and transparency on the company’s part.

This part of the ASOS Privacy Center allows users to choose the types of communication they wish to receive. This example illustrates the granularity possible in the personalization of content, all the while remaining within the limits drawn by the GDPR.

A Privacy Center provides users with a single point of interaction on Data Privacy. This single interface enables all of its communication channels (internet, in-store, after-sales service, etc.).

Through clear and tailored communications (written in terms that everybody can understand—not in legal language), Privacy Centers highlight companies’ efforts to protect their users’ personal data  and enable customers to better control their choices.The company can then rebuild a relationship of trust with its customers, which, in turn, encourages them to share both their data and preferences.

What are the obstacles in establishing a Privacy Center?

Installing a Privacy Center within an organization’s existing IS is complex. It requires a perfect interconnection between the customer interfaces (mobile, website, physical, etc.) and the various existing client databases (the view of the customer being rarely completely unified). By “interconnection,” we mean information that a user enters on an interface (for example, the choice of the option,  “I don’t want to receive publicity by email”) is used to systematically inform all relevant systems. In fact, the complexities of each company’s IS mean that such interconnections are rare—as well as time consuming and expensive to deploy from a technical point of view.

However, the communication challenges between different interfaces don’t depend solely on the ISD. There’s still a need for a company’s business functions to help bring these customer databases together. It’s quite common in retail for stores to , or for several brands, with different positions in the market, to coexist within the same group. As a result, interconnecting uses and interfaces is a complex—even unwanted—operation. Setting up a Privacy Center, then, is often born of pursuing a more integrated marketing and digital strategy.

Lastly, Privacy Centers can generate a paradox: despite the intention being to boost trust, a company might not necessarily want customers to take too much advantage of it. For example, we can imagine that marketing and digital teams may not want to make it simpler to exercise consumer rights or withdraw consent, as this could result in the loss of existing accounts and potential prospects. Privacy Centers are therefore a better fit for organizations pursuing a “less but better” approach to customer management because they allow them to get to know (through preferences, contacts types, frequencies, etc.) a smaller number of customers and prospects more closely—i.e. the ones that agree to share their data.

The Privacy Center: future ideal or present-day panacea?

Retail players don’t all pursue the same digital strategies or have the same degree of digital maturity. Some are already mature: developed e-commerce channels, websites, mobile applications, linked physical and telephone channels, , etc. This is the case for pure digital players or market leaders who have (re)built their entire business strategy based on the digital user experience. For them, deploying a Privacy Center doesn’t mean a complete overhaul of the IS, or the lens through which they view customer relations. It can therefore be considered in the short term.

For others, a digital strategy is still to be deployed or even developed. This is especially the case for more traditional retailers, where physical or telephone channels are still at the heart of the sales process. For them, establishing  a Privacy Center today seems rather premature. A clear digital strategy must be defined, and its effective implementation and the associated development of the IS assured, before a customer interface of this type can be envisaged.

In summary, Privacy Centers should be seen as a “final destination” rather than an immediately and uniformly applicable solution. And, they represent a destination designed to improve customer trust by enabling users to control their data and communicate clearly on what can be done with it. But, for such communication to be possible, a cleardata strategy for using the data needs to have been defined. And, for control of the data to be a realistic option,

In conclusion then, it seems that deploying Privacy Centers across all e-commerce sites isn’t an immediate goal for 2019. However, the exemplary nature of the approach, and the strong differentiation it drives in the trust relationship with customers, should Privacy Centers become a “standard” in the retail sector in years to come. And that’s something we all need to prepare for!

Adidas Privacy Center

[1]Our sample: 3,620 individuals (603 in Belgium, 600 in China, 605 in France, 612 in Germany, 600 in the UK, and 600 in the US)

Cet article Privacy Centers: a panacea for customer relations? est apparu en premier sur RiskInsight.