AskPaul uses Dataships to build trust and win clients.
Ask Paul’s Story
AskPaul was launched in 2016 by Paul Merriman with the goal of giving everyone a place to get access to jargon-free financial advice. Since its inception, AskPaul has grown from strength to strength.
The Problem
When GDPR was implemented in May 2018, like many companies, AskPaul took a number of measures to ensure they met their GDPR compliance obligations.
Two years on, in May 2020, the Group wanted to do a fresh review of their GDPR practices and wanted to do more than just ‘meet’ their GDPR compliance obligations. Instead, they wanted to put in place a ‘best-in-class’ data privacy experience for their clients, while having peace of mind knowing that their brand reputation will not be tarnished by having non-compliant GDPR practices.
AskPaul uses several applications in their tech stack to enable internal teams across their portfolio of companies and to provide their clients with an excellent service. Like most companies, having multiple applications presents an operational challenge around ensuring all data across the systems is in sync. Dataships’ software does all the heavy lifting here and synchronizing any updates made by clients across applications integrated with the Data Privacy Centre.
The Solution
To achieve this, AskPaul approached Dataships to be their Data Privacy partner. The Group particularly liked the idea of the Dataships’ Data Access Gateway tool which provides their clients with real-time access to their personal data. The Group wanted to demonstrate that they truly care about their clients’ privacy by delighting them with a single place to manage all their personal data and privacy preferences.
When asked about how long the implementation process would take from sign-up date to go-live, Conor (the Group’s COO) recalled his surprise at the speed of implementation saying, “Honestly, the onboarding process was very simple to the point where I thought, ‘That’s it? I would have expected greater timelines given the number of our applications being integrated with Dataships.” For AskPaul, their main focus is always customer experience and trust. The Group want this embedded in everything they do, and how they handle personal data and GDPR compliance is no different.
The Result
We want our clients to know that they will not only get a great service, but that their personal data will be processed securely, ethically, lawfully and in a transparent manner. What I like about Dataships is that every time I speak to anyone from their team, it’s a very consultative approach. I truly feel like they are the experts in what they do and I feel comfortable trusting their opinions. I think that’s very important with something like compliance, because it is scary. You want to make sure that the partner you’re working with really supports you and knows what they’re doing. Paul Merriman, Group CEO.
