Advisori understands how difficult it can be to find the right privacy platform. To best serve our clients, Advisori has partnered with industry leaders to provide our clients with a full range of best-of-breed technologies. Our partner network allows us to give our clients an unbiased view of what technology best suits their needs.
Client Considerations
While understanding the privacy technology industry is critical to the privacy platform selection process, the fundamental consideration in selecting the best tool for our client is a comprehensive understanding of its business. Therefore, we take the time to learn critical aspects of our client’s industry, locations, management structure (where the privacy functions sits), resources (financial and human), and the privacy laws and regulations in scope.
This process begins with stakeholder consultation (data protection office, security team, and general counsel) and factoring in each of their particular needs and agendas. Our goal is to find the right privacy platform that best suits the needs of all departments.
For instance, Chief Information Offices tend to have the largest budgets. As a result, some vendors are focusing their technical and sales strategy on data security and less and less on privacy. This trend has negatively impacted privacy professionals in two ways; first, they may be left out of the tool selection and configuration decision-making process and second, they may be forced to use a tool lacking essential privacy capabilities and functionality.
Our professionals are well aware of this security vs. privacy dilemma and work collaboratively with our clients to design an inclusive solution, considering all department needs (the privacy vs. security office). Our fundamental goal is to get our clients the “biggest bang for their buck” from our technology partners.
Identifing all available company resources (financial, technical, and human) is also a critical consideration. For instance, before considering new privacy platforms, we assess the utility of existing privacy tools our clients already have. It is common for companies to spend a fortune on a privacy platform that ultimately goes unused after the company finds it needs more resources to commit to tool management. These “hidden” costs associated with employee headcount can often render the long-term internal administration management of the tool far too expensive.
Instead of the endless cycle of tool “pull and replacement,” our clients can often benefit from outsourcing privacy tool management to Advisori. Our team is trained and certified on the most-widely used privacy platforms, ensuring that our clients get the highest level of technical capabilities at the lowest overall costs. Often, we can implement and manage existing tools cheaper, better, and faster than internal resources.
Finally, we consider our client’s short and long term needs. For instance, a client may have an immediate need for its website (Cookie Consent Management, Subject Access Rights Portal, etc.). As a business matures, its privacy needs evolve. Based on our client’s trajectory, we recommend a platform that is best equipped to suit immediate needs and with add-on capabilities to address future privacy needs and requirements. The goal is to build a strong technological foundation for our clients to ensure efficient and scalable growth.
Vendor Considerations
The market is flooded with products that purportedly solve every problem.The reality is that each vendor has strengths and weaknesses.
Based on our client’s profile, we first identify vendors that are in our client’s price range. Vendors cater to businesses based on size and revenue; we rule out unaffordable vendors, focusing on realistic vendor options.
We then address the clients immediate needs as describe above. For instance, is the client a small business looking for a cookie consent management platform or website privacy notice, or is the client a multinational corporation struggling with data discovery, or a client implementing a compliance management program? These factors are critical as some vendors focus on website privacy compliance, while some excel at data discovery and related artificial intelligence capabilities, and others have sophisticated privacy management tools like automated risk assessments.
Another important consideration is reporting and dashboards. Advisori believes that data protection and privacy is a team sport. Accordingly, a useful privacy platform must have sophisticated reporting features and a manageable dashboard equipped to provide real-time metrics to all relevant stakeholders including upper management when appropriate.
An often overlooked, but consequntiual consideration, is vendor support. Advisori has direct relationships with our partner support teams and can either interact with the appropriate team on behalf of our clients or connect the client directly to the support team. Either way, vendor support should be a top factor when choosing a privacy platform.
Please contact us at [email protected] to learn more about how we can assist your business in finding the right privacy platform.