REaD Group Report: SME and Data Quality: GDPR and customer data in UK SMEs

REaD Group is an award winning data and insight company, established over 30 years ago. REaD has helped many of the UK’s favourite brands create and implement roadmaps to better outcomes during challenging times.

REaD Group is an award winning data and insight company, established over 30 years ago. REaD has helped many of the UK’s favourite brands create and implement roadmaps to better outcomes during challenging times.

REPORT:

It’s been over three 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.

According to the UK Government* , the usual definition of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is any business with fewer than 250 employees. There were 6 million SMEs in the UK in 2020, which was over 99 percent of all businesses. There were 5.7 million micro-businesses (0-9 employees) in the UK in 2020, accounting for 96 percent of all businesses. 

For the purposes of this survey, we based SMEs on the size of their turnover, classing any business of a turnover of up to £25 million as an SME

Image removed.

(Photo:  MS Bing)

In our survey we asked 1,110 business owners and directors a number of questions: 

  1. Whether they store their customer and prospect data in a CRM and/or other database

  2. Whether they run any data cleaning or update processes on the data they hold

  3. Whether they use physical mailing for communicating with and/or marketing to their customers

  4. Whether they were familiar with GDPR

  5. Whether they were aware that GDPR requires data to be kept clean and accurate or be deleted

Surprisingly, the survey results revealed that only two-fifths (40 percent) of SMEs hold their customer and prospect data (i.e. consumer data) in a CRM and/or other database; a number that seemed surprisingly low, given that most businesses need to maintain contact with their customers. This would seem to suggest that the remaining three-fifths (60 percent) either do not hold any customer data or that they hold it in a format they do not consider to be a database, such as Excel or on paper. 

Image removed.

(Photo:  MS Bing)

The good news is that awareness of the GDPR was high amongst the majority of SMEs (85 percent) and that these businesses are also aware that data must be kept clean and accurate or be deleted (89 percent). It’s good to see that, three years after it was introduced, most understand the importance of the legal requirements for managing data. The larger the company (by turnover), the greater the familiarity. 

However, what the survey also revealed was that, while three-quarters (75 percent) of those with a CRM and/or other database do run data cleaning or update processes on their data, one quarter (25 percent) do not, despite the fact that 93 percent were aware of the need to clean and update or delete their data. And with two-fifths (42 percent) of all respondents using the data they hold for direct mailing/marketing, this raises the question of how accurate, up-to-date and compliant the data they hold for these purposes is? 

Of all SMEs surveyed (irrespective of whether they have a CRM/database or not), nearly two-thirds (61 percent) said they do not run any data cleaning or update processes on the data they hold. This is despite the fact that over four-fifths (85 percent) were familiar with GDPR and almost four-fifths (79 percent) were aware of the legal requirement to keep data clean and accurate or delete it.

 

(Source: REaD)



Looking for something specific?