“When you work in the compliance and risk management space, we often view digital transformation as something that happens to us and not necessarily for us.” -Victor Maciel
Wherever you are on the journey to more digitized solutions and automation, the latest session of The Privacy Collective, Privacy in a Transforming (Digital) World, provides an introduction to digital transformation for privacy professionals. Watch our latest session to learn more about digital transformation initiatives and their impact on privacy and compliance teams.
Victor Maciel, director, Global Data Privacy & Protection Office at Raymond James, a diversified financial services firm, shares best practices to kick off transformation initiatives to accelerate efficiency and reduce risk.
As an overseer of Raymond James’ supplier risk management review program and incident management, Maciel has extensive privacy perspective insights on digital transformation, including what organizations can do to embrace and implement technology.
“Digital transformation marks a rethinking of how an organization uses technology, people, and processes in pursuit of new business models and new revenue streams, driven by changes in customer expectations around products and services,” according to CIO senior writer, Clint Boulton.
Digital transformation itself is currently undergoing a transformation. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the relevance of digital transformation, as there have been greater shifts toward business continuity planning and business resiliency as part of a changing remote-and-hybrid work environment, according to Maciel.
Where does privacy fit in?
Where and when should privacy teams get involved with digital transformation initiatives within an organization? “The answer is yesterday!” Maciel states.
“You can never get in on a digital transformation effort early enough. With enough planning and enough engagement with you and your fellow stakeholders across the business, you’ll be able to iron out any potential obstacles that may come up.”
Digital transformation is a priority, echo half of the respondents in a session poll.
Those on the fence may be interested in A Guide to Digital Transformation for Privacy Incident Management to learn more about how to implement better and more efficient technologies and strategies.
Maciel offers seven recommendations for organizations to get started with digital transformation for privacy:
- Understand your organizations’ overall priorities and how digital transformation fits in
- View digital transformation as an opportunity
- Advocate for your department
- Make a business case for your privacy team; create an ROI analysis of how process automation “help you help them”
- Ongoing communication with the executive level is key
- Establish a clear plan that outlines levels of alignment, accountability for the level of work, and dedicated resources
Using ROI to reimagine your privacy team
Digital transformation is often first implemented in revenue-generating arms of organizations, according to Maciel. It’s no wonder, as businesses are always looking at ways to “be better and more efficient at providing the products and services to consumers.”
Privacy teams need to be able to articulate their business value across the organization, but might be challenged to quantify their team’s ROI for digital transformation.
“We always have that battle between the revenue-generating arms and the advancements in technology that we need to do our jobs much more effectively. So, developing a clear picture on return on investment for technologies in the risk discipline space can go a long way in saying ‘us too’ — we can save the business some money too. We can help the bottom line too,” states Maciel.
Fortunately, many organizations are already on their digital transformation journey.
Another poll indicated that 72% of respondents are working to be more automated and are embracing new tools to improve their work, with 14% exploring the idea of automation to mitigate risk. Goodbye, manual processes! (Doing things in a manual manner causes friction, according to Maciel.)
Transformation and opportunities
Let’s face it: digital transformation can be intimidating. Maybe view it as an opportunity for growth and realize that “automation can make your job a whole lot easier,” in Maciel’s words.
He emphasizes, “When you work in the compliance and risk management space, we often view digital transformation as something that happens to us and not necessarily for us.”
Any type of transformation is a process; that’s why we have several learning opportunities coming up, including Demystifying Digital Transformation with the IAPP and Decision Intelligence and Hyper-automation with special guest Ron Whitworth, Chief Privacy Officer at Truist.