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Most companies were unprepared for the coronavirus pandemic, and they had to implement new solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 or Teams almost overnight in the spring of 2020 to enable their employees to work (together) and communicate with customers and colleagues while working from home. In the meantime, it has become apparent that the often hectic and bumpy installation has led to new challenges. Data was copied back and forth, or shared countless times via different paths and stored in a wide variety of places. The result: no one knows their way around anymore.

As part of their corporate social responsibility strategy, many companies spend a share of their resources on promoting social and environmental projects or making their supply chains and the manufacture of their products more climate- and environmentally friendly. However, today’s digital lifestyle is also having an increasingly negative impact on the environment, by generating high CO2 emissions in the manufacture and use of electronic devices, for example. The increasing volumes of data also need to be taken into account: Data centres already consume around 1 percent of the electricity generated worldwide – in the next 15 years, this figure is expected to rise to 30 percent.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been in force in the European Union since May 2018. It governs how companies are allowed to collect and process personal data. In particular, Article 15 – the right of access by the data subject – and Article 17 – the right to erasure – pose challenges for companies. The first article gives a person the right to obtain confirmation from the data controller as to whether or not personal data concerning them is actually being processed. This information must be provided within one month. The second article gives a person the right to demand that this data be deleted without delay.

The larger a company is, the more employees it has. Each of these employees signs an employment contract before starting their employment. These are often scanned and filed away – and never looked at again. Yet these contracts can contain important details that are not recorded in a structured manner. Take the notice period, for example: it is often the case that different employees have different notice periods – the intern may only have to serve two weeks’ notice, the manager three months and the CEO up to six months’ notice. Individual agreements between employees and their employer are also noted in their contracts, of course.

Every employee will leave their employer eventually. However increasingly, the question arises as to what data they are actually allowed to take with them – and what data they are not. Long-serving employees in particular not only have in-depth knowledge, but also access to many files. Important information is often hidden in folders on their computers or in their e-mail accounts and is not necessarily marked as company data. Even the employees themselves no longer have an overview of the data that is confidential and what data they can take with them without worrying about violating compliance rules.

Insurance companies fulfil their contractual obligations in the event of a claim by reimbursing damages up to defined coverage amounts. The amount of coverage is defined in contracts, signed, scanned, and stored in various formats. These coverage amounts can change over time, however, because new laws are passed, or regulations adapted. As a result, insurance companies must revise their contracts accordingly. But they face the challenge of not knowing which contracts are actually affected by the changes. If they fail to meet the requirements, however, insurance companies can be faced with lawsuits from their customers.

Insurance companies often employ different professional groups for customer acquisition and customer care – sales representatives in the field and inside sales or general agents. They sell their products and settle contracts with existing and new customers. All correspondence, customer information and contracts are scanned and stored as PDFs – but no one ever looks at the exact details, such as due dates or exclusions, again afterwards. Accordingly, customer service representatives do not know when their customers are likely to cancel their insurance contracts or which policies need to be adjusted, when a child is born, for example. They can therefore only make customers new and better offers reactively.