The 5 Ps of ethically managing customer data

By Michael Segalla and Dominique Rouziès

The ability to encode, store, analyse, and share data creates huge opportunities for companies, which is why they are enthusiastically investing in artificial intelligence even at a time of economic uncertainty. Which customers are likely to buy what products and when? Which competitors are likely to move ahead or fall behind? How will markets and whole economies create commercial advantages — or threats? Data and analytics give companies better-informed and higher-probability answers to those and many other questions.

But the need for data opens the door to abuse. Over the past few years the EU has fined companies more than 1,400 times, for a total of nearly €3 billion, for violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).