What’s driving new privacy and data protection efforts? Several factors.

Global data flows: Trade data increasingly migrates across borders and will demand more international cooperation and coordination with data-protection laws. If I buy a sweater from a vendor in Ireland and live in California, there are two different regulations at work in just that one transaction.

Growing awareness of and expectations of data privacy and demands for greater transparency and accountability will push organizations to improve their data operating practices.

Technological evolution: Developments in computer science, including artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and biometrics, have changed attitudes around what needs to be protected. This poses new privacy challenges to the old ways of organizing dataflows, which simply do not work in today’s interconnected world, especially with personally identifiable data sitting in massive global data clouds.

Regulatory evolutions: As new attitudes and technologies like GenAI emerge, governments and regulation authorities will be constantly evolving legislation to address new privacy problems and safeguard individuals. This requires constant monitoring and adjustments by organizations to stay ahead of fines and reputational damage.

Foundational Regulations Every Organization Must Understand

Multiple core legislations already significantly influence the global privacy landscape, including:

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) (EU): GDPR is a harmonized data privacy law and an enormous piece of human rights-based change. As of 2018, all data controllers are required to comply when using the personal data of all EU citizens. This pushes organizations to adhere to strict privacy by consent, data minimization, and data deletion requirements.

Data Protection Act 2018 (UK): The UK Data Protection Act implements GDPR and provides further detail on the information rights of individuals and the responsibilities of organizations when handling personal data that must be considered.

California Consumer Privacy Act (US): This California law, effective as of 2020, grants certain rights to consumers for their personal information (e.g., right to know, right to delete, and right to opt-out)​

Here, ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’) by references such as a name, an identification number, location data, and online identifiers or factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

There are also ‘special categories of personal data’ related to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data processed to uniquely identify a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

LGPD (General Data Protection Law): This is the Brazilian law equivalent to GDPR that protects Brazilian citizens’ personal data. It defines the rights and obligations of organizations collecting personal data from citizens, on and offline.

Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (India): This law, while perhaps a much less developed version of GDPR, does provide a regulatory framework on which a better-articulated regime can be built.

The Balancing Act Around Critical Use Cases

Data is everywhere and informs so much of our lives. This has put a larger burden on organizations at every level of society to understand their potential exposure to compliance risks and consistently apply policies and technology to safeguard data

Medicine: Patients’ health data (e.g., medical records, genetic data) must be kept private to ensure physical well-being and avoid misuse related to areas like insurance, employment and receiving benefits.

Finance: The number of rules and regulations in this industry match the level of collection and management of customer data that takes place every second of every day. Fraud protection, anti-money laundering and ethical practices are all regulated and support the consumer trust and confidence that is the lifeblood of financial institutions.

E-commerce: A retailer necessarily collects great amounts of personal data to match buyers and sellers, and even facilitate transactions without friction.

Marketing and Advertising: Ideally, advertisers will gain the ability to target messages very sharply. Striking a balance between the ability to curate experiences and the protection of consumers’ privacy is crucial, especially when crossing international borders into the EU and needing to consider where data is stored and how it is used.

Social Media: Social media companies collect and process immense volumes of data related to user behaviors. Unethical use of data is a high risk in these platforms given their ubiquity and how many users cross different age groups and geographies.

Looking Ahead  

For each part of the global privacy matrix – flagship legislation, use-case categories, and local, regional, and global differences – attention to the whole is required. Only then can organizations deploy strategies that stake out a defensible position where privacy interests are balanced against service and commerce goals while also building and sustaining stakeholder trust.

To explore how Pentaho can help enable your organization to become data-fit and manage regulatory compliance data challenges, request a demo.

The post The Key Legislations That Define the “New” Global Privacy Landscape first appeared on Pentaho.

Grupo EULEN, a leading provider of outsourced business services, has embraced this philosophy. Leveraging the Pentaho+ Platform to transform its data integration and analysis workflows, the company is more effectively tracking key financial and operational metrics, reducing time-to-insight, and enhancing decision-making processes. 

The Need for Increased Data Intelligence

Grupo EULEN serves more than 7,000 clients in over 11 countries across various sectors, including facilities management, security, social and health services, and HR solutions. The organization expanded its footprint through recent acquisitions in the United States, where it faces established multinational company competition.

“We are growing quickly, both in our home market of Spain and overseas. But in each of our service lines, we are competing against long-established multinational companies – so we need to remain as agile as possible to thrive,” said Ricardo Mardomingo, Chief Information Officer at Grupo EULEN.

Grupo EULEN established a Business Intelligence Competence Center to drive enhanced performance and operational efficiency. This internal team oversees data management and analytics projects aimed at creating efficiencies, reducing costs, and identifying new growth opportunities. Even with this dedicated team and focus, the company was finding it difficult to drive more value from its data due to outdated legacy tools and disparate systems.

Flexibility, Scalability, and Cost with Pentaho

Grupo EULEN partnered with innovAhead to redesign its data integration and reporting workflows by implementing the Pentaho+ Platform.

“We were impressed by the solution roadmap, with new functionality released regularly, and by the data integration capabilities of Pentaho,” said Mardomingo. “Pentaho offers excellent data integration and analytics capabilities without high licensing costs. When we looked at other data management solutions, we found complex pricing models and monthly fees. With Pentaho, we get the ideal combination of great functionality and cost-efficiency.” 

Using Pentaho Data Integration and Pentaho Business Analytics, Grupo EULEN now extracts financial, HR, and customer transaction data from its core business systems with minimal disruption to production systems. The analytics tools within Pentaho allow the creation of OLAP cubes and detailed reports that track key performance indicators (KPIs), which are then distributed to stakeholders. 

“In the past, we relied on limited legacy tools to create query-based reports,” noted Mardomingo, “Similarly, pulling data from the heterogenous systems used by different areas and business models was difficult. We wanted more sophisticated data integration and analytics solutions to deliver more value to the wider business and to reduce time-to-insight.” 

The implementation of Pentaho has significantly improved Grupo EULEN’s ability to make data-driven decisions. Approximately 1,000 employees now access information from the platform, including “Power Users” in the Business Intelligence Competence Center and business executives who rely on regular reports. 

Initially focused on core operations in Spain, the new business intelligence model is set to be rolled out globally. 

Time-to-Insights Creates Bottom Line Value

The ability to quickly assess the performance of its various service lines helps Grupo ELUEN identify issues and take proactive measures to optimize efficiency. For example, the company recently identified that its average time to collect customer payments was becoming excessive. By redesigning its accounts receivable processes, Grupo EULEN successfully reduced payment collection periods and improved cash flow. 

Juan Carlos Garcia, Leader of the Business Intelligence Team at innovAhead, states, “With Pentaho, we have greatly improved the time-to-insight, with users now able to access the data they need to track key business metrics near-instantly. Grupo EULEN is becoming a more agile company, as we can quickly pull information on the performance of EULEN’s different service lines and products, identify issues, and take proactive steps to reduce costs or optimize efficiency, and then measure the results.” 

As Grupo EULEN continues to evolve its business intelligence capabilities, the company plans to collaborate further with innovAhead and Pentaho around additional use cases.  

“We are interested in exploring other reference cases for Pentaho, to see how other clients are using the platform,” said Mardomingo. “In the next 12 months, we will complete another upgrade to access the latest-and-greatest functionality to support our data analysis strategy for 2025 and beyond.” 

Grupo EULEN’s commitment to leveraging data-driven insights through the Pentaho+ Platform enhances its data fitness and operational efficiency, positioning the company to thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape.  

Learn more about the power of the Pentaho+ Platform here or request a demo.  

The post Competing Globally Through Data Agility: Grupo EULEN Becomes Data-Fit with Pentaho first appeared on Pentaho.