Why protecting customer data is a business critical issue for RX

Merilyne Davies is Global Director of Privacy and Data Protection for RX. To mark International Data Privacy Day, she reveals why it is so important to RX to promote customer trust and transparency.

Data Privacy Day is a global initiative to raise awareness about respecting privacy rights. Processing personal information is key to everything that we do here at RX and goes to the very heart of our innovation and customer experience strategies. 

Our customers share their personal data with us to make vital business connections, and to get valuable information that will help them to drive innovation and growth. In an age of increasing regulation, security threats and customer expectations around privacy, it is critical that we are a trusted custodian of that data.

For RX, data processing and analysis helps us to uncover and understand interactions between our customers, so that we can tailor our events and products more directly to their needs, thereby driving our own innovation and growth. However, we are not automatically entitled to this information ‒ it is owned by, and entrusted to us, by our customers. They expect us to comply with the law, keep their information safe, and be transparent in how we use it. Without trust there is no data. No data, no innovation, no growth.

What is true for RX, is true for the events industry as a whole, which is why we are working with UFI, the global Association of the Exhibition Industry and our fellow members to establish clear industry standards on data ownership, privacy and security.

In October 2021 we released a White Paper which poses key questions that we, as organisers, should ask of ourselves and our suppliers to ensure we understand what customer data is being collected, where it is being stored and secured, and ultimately how it is being used by all stakeholders involved.

For RX, privacy and data protection compliance is a business critical issue. As part of RELX, we strive to foster an organisational culture that values privacy and recognises data protection as a key to business success, and I work closely with my counterparts in RELX, Risk, Scientific, Technical & Medical and Legal, to determine policy, and develop best-practice guidance and training.

Our Global Internal Privacy Policy is designed to focus our minds on the actions we must all take to protect our customers, and our business. It outlines 11 privacy rules covering everything from accountability (we are all responsible) to customer choice, transparency, accuracy, access, security, data transfer, purpose limitation, retention and disposal. It also covers ‘Privacy by Design’ (ensuring that privacy is a key consideration from the start when developing new products, services and processes), and working with suppliers, to ensure that they are trusted partners who will handle our customers’ data fairly, lawfully and securely.

Today, digital and data innovation is allowing us to enrich and extend our face to face events in ways we never previously imagined, and to give our customers better quality, more highly targeted leads and business insights than ever before. As custodians of their data, it is incumbent on us to respect and protect their privacy for the future growth of RX.