What Is a Consent Management Platform? Is it needed?

Type: Blog
Topic: Compliance

A consent  management platform (CMP) is a tool that keeps your company,  website or application compliant with consent regulations such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A CMP accomplishes this by asking users for permission to collect and use their data. The collected data can serve various purposes, including the creation of advertising or marketing campaigns.

Industries That Use CMPs

Any organization that sends communications or that performs data collection will benefit from using a consent management platform (CMP). That’s because failure to adhere to the data consent rules of the data owner’s country can lead to financial penalties. Governments with the most stringent user consent regulations are EU countries, the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

At PossibleNOW, our consent management platform is compliant with every relevant international and state law and is customizable to suit your organization’s needs. You can count on it to keep your operations legal, regardless of your website’s traffic origin. It was built with compliance-by-design, so that as regulations change and evolve, you’ll remain compliant.

Purpose of a Consent Management Platform

A consent management platform (CMP) makes it easier to collect and manage consents from a site’s users. The software works by informing a user of the type of personal data it intends to gather and indicate the purpose of collecting the data. The user can then agree or disagree to share the requested information.

Aside from collecting user information, the tool manages data subjects’ requests. Considering that consent collection and processing requirements vary between national governments–and even states or provinces within nations–having a CMP can save money and time for your company.

For example, if your organization operates in several jurisdictions, a CMP will identify the appropriate levels of jurisdictional regulations for each user’s location. It will then apply the pertinent regulations to collecting and managing consents within that region.

By choosing PossibleNOW’s consent management platform, you can achieve the following:

• Simplify collecting user consent
• Customize consent pop-ups and widgets
• Collect consents at the right customer touchpoint
• Provide users with options to modify consents
• Keep a record of collected data.

Keeping a record of collected data is useful for compliance audits, a necessary component of compliance with GDPR and other regulations. To pass the audit, a company must prove it obtained consent lawfully before collecting user data. To prove that, it must show the:

• User’s name, email address, or other identifiers
• A timestamp of when the company received the consent
• A list of what the user consented to
• Details if the user changed or withdrew consent, and when

Contact PossibleNOW today to discuss adopting our consent management platform that will streamline your processes and offer a personalized customer experience.

When to Implement a CMP?

If your website performs any of the following, you need a consent management platform:

• Use of visitors’ personal data: Using the information of visitors to personalize ads, content, or create marketing campaigns.
• Decision-making automation: Running a user’s data through an algorithm to make decisions about that user–for example, using personal information to decide whether to grant a user a permit or reward.
• Transfer of data overseas: Collecting data from users in other countries–for example, an American site that collects and processes the data of EU citizens.
• Use of special categories of data: Collecting and using personal or demographic information, such as race, religious belief, biometric data, political opinions, and the like.

As long as collecting and using personal data is part of your operations, you will need a CMP. Without one, your company could face serious fines for mishandling user consent and data.

What Laws Govern Consent Management?

There are several state and federal laws that govern data privacy and usage. For example, within the U.S., several states have their own data privacy laws, such as California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Internationally, the most stringent data law is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which protects the data of EU residents. The law governs how organizations operating within the European Union (EU) gather and use data. Its regulations also cover organizations outside the EU that transact with EU residents.

The GDPR states that a company or organization must have a legal reason to collect and process the data of EU residents. The legal basis may be:

• The user gives consent to the data processing
• Data processing is required to fulfill a contract with the information’s owner
• Processing a user’s data may save a life
• The entity has a legal obligation to process the data
• The entity if performing data processing to complete an official function or task that serves the public’s interest
• The entity has a legitimate reason to process a user’s personal data.

The GDPR also specifies the proper way to obtain a user’s consent. For consent to be valid, it must be:

• Freely given: That means the data owner was not in any way forced to give consent.
• Specific: The consent must cover the specific purpose for the data collection and processing. If there are multiple purposes, the company must seek consent for each purpose.
• Informed: The data owner must know who is collecting the data and the purpose of the data processing. The company must also notify the data subject that he or she may withdraw consent at any time.
• Unambiguous: The indication of consent must be clear and easily understood.

To remain GDPR compliant, the company seeking consent must be transparent throughout the entire process of seeking and collecting consent. 

However, considering how many visitors some websites receive a day, carrying out this process can be painstaking and resource-consuming. With a third-party consent management software (CMP), the consent-collection process becomes streamlined to allow the company to meet regulatory requirements more efficiently.

The Difference Between Consent Management and Preference Management

For many years, businesses took advantage of smartphones, social media, and other technological advancements to gather data, with or without consumer consent. Many organizations unethically profited from the practice, with some even selling customers’ data to unscrupulous parties.

With the arrival over the last couple of years of laws like the GDPR and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), companies have no choice but to change their ways. The laws compel companies to give customers the power to decide how much of their data businesses can access. Failure to comply can lead to significant financial penalties and brand damage. Since customers have a choice in which companies they do business with, being viewed as a trustworthy organization that honors customer data protection rights is increasingly important.

But many companies that don’t use preference and consent management platforms are struggling to cope with the new status quo.

A consent management platform ensures that your website adheres to GDPR stipulations regarding collecting customer data. According to the GDPR, customers must give consent before a company can collect their data. The platform automates the consent management process, ensuring that you can gather data faster and without risking breaching GDPR rules.

On the other hand, a preference management platform lets you communicate with customers in the manner they prefer. By letting customers choose when and how they receive your company’s promotions and notifications, your company remains GDPR compliant and increases customer retention and customer loyalty. When customers feel their voice is being heard, they feel valued and are more inclined to continue to engage with your business, building lifetime ROI and deeper customer interactions.

Without a preference and consent management platform, your organization stands the risk of appearing unethical, receiving fines, and losing customer engagement. However, using them builds your brand’s reputation as transparent and trustworthy, providing a better customer experience and creating a positive cycle of happy customers who return, enabling a foundation of trust that enriches your relationships with your customers. 

Why Choose Our Consent Management Platform?

PossibleNOW provides innovative consumer regulatory compliance and consent management solutions. Our experience serving some of the most recognizable global brands puts us in a unique position to help your business improve its customer information gathering and processing.

Unlike other solutions, our consent management platform is a comprehensive tool that is more than a band-aid offering. Its versatility covers all aspects of consent gathering to keep your company 100% compliant at all times, with the flexibility of “compliance-by-design” – meaning that we design our platforms in a way that evolves as compliance regulations evolve.

Avoid falling short of consent collection and processing standards by choosing MyPreferences – our state-of-the-art consent management platform.

The platform keeps your operations compliant with the ever-changing regulations that cover consent management, including the GDPR and CCPA. The user-friendly solution offers multiple configuration options to suit your unique consent management requirements.

Through MyPreferences, take advantage of best practices to prevent not only fines and penalties but also improve customer experience and your company’s performance. The tool is suitable for businesses across industries and can enhance consent and data collection and processing at all levels of your organization.

To ensure that you get the best results, our experts at PossibleNOW are on hand to provide all the support you need to use our platform to your advantage. Our compliance experts have years of experience working with various organizations on hundreds of use cases. You can count on them to optimize consent collection for your organization in every way that matters.

Contact us today for a firsthand experience of what our consent management platform and experts can do for you.

MyPreferences Features

Integrate our consent management platform to experience the following industry-leading features:

• Robust configuration control: Your company will gain more comprehensive control over consent segmentation and other configurations to tailor the platform to achieve your exact goals.
• Multilingual capabilities: Many platforms only offer language options for a few regions. For global brands that interact with consumers all over the world, MyPreferences lets you customize consent language to match the location of your users, customer type, and more.
• Expression of consent: MyPreferences provides convenient options for setting up express consent on your website, such as one-click checkboxes.
• Use of pseudonymous IDs: When storing consent details, MyPreferences uses pseudonym IDs to protect the privacy of your users.
• One-click consent revocation options: The GDPR stipulates that users must give consent and have options to withdraw consents at any time. With MyPreferences, users can revoke either all consents or specific ones with a click.
• Audit Readiness: MyPreferences maintains a detailed history of consent text, date, time, source, and more. Having quick access to such information ensures that you are always ready for any compliance audit.

With all these features, PossibleNOW’s CMP provides the configurability and functionality needed to meet the complex needs of large multinational companies.

Get Started With Our Quick Start Program

To quickly launch a CMP that ensures full compliance with every relevant regulation, all you need is our Consent Quick Start Program. It is a ready-to-use solution that provides quick deployment for immediate compliance with GDPR and other consent collection directives.

The platform is configurable to meet your organization’s unique consent collection and management requirements. Other benefits of the tool are its ability to:

• Capture and correct consents at all levels
• Maintain consent disclosure language and other history details

It also features a user-friendly editor for composing consent pop-up messages that match your website’s design.

Are you ready for a consent management platform that guarantees your organization’s performance, compliance, and efficiency? Contact us at PossibleNOW today to schedule a consultation.