• by Ray Schultz , October 30, 2017

Openprise has introduced new capabilities designed to help firms comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

The new version of the Openprise Data Orchestration Platform allows marketers to control and monitor the flow of data on EU consumers.

The launch of the updated platform was announced today at the Sirius Decisions Technology Exchange.

The Openprise product automates data onboarding, data cleansing and enrichment, data unification across systems and data delivery, the company says.

The platform also enables firms to control the flow of EU data out of the company based on data filters and permission rules.

Users can also identify leads and contacts governed by GDPR even if they are missing a valid country field value.

GDPR, which takes effect next May, affects any company with EU prospects or customer data in its marketing and sales systems, Openprise notes. That includes U.S. firms. 

The product is available globally to "any marketing team anywhere in the world is subject to GDPR if they have EU citizen data, even if they don't have an office in the EU," says Allen Pogorzelski, vice president of marketing, Openprise.

Pogorzelski adds, "GDPR will have a profound impact on the way both US-based and EU-based companies target EU citizens via email. Marketers that continue to simply pull contact information from third party data providers on EU citizens like they always have will be violating GDPR unless they have a data processing agreement (DPA) in place with those data providers, and we haven't seen any willingness on the part of data providers to sign one."

He continues that companies that want to continue using those third-party data providers while remaining in compliance with GDPR are looking for solutions like Oopenprise to "provide controls to ensure that their automated systems don't accidentally request data on EU citizens." 

Fines for non-compliance can hit €20 million or 4% of a company's annual global revenue, whichever is greater.

"The vast majority of U.S.-based companies are woefully unprepared for GDPR, and this new set of regulations has teeth," said Ed King, founder and CEO of Openprise. "We've heard from our customers that they want a central control point to help maintain compliance with GDPR.”