GDPR The Future of the Industry
Second day back from the Data Protection World Forum at the Excel in London, 20th and 21st November 2018.
Initial Thoughts
Overall footfall was low, although there were a few genuine enquiries, and talking to the other exhibitors this was pretty much the consensus.
One or two exhibitors claimed to have had significant numbers of leads, and we wish them well with the follow ups.
There were as many people selling to exhibitors as there were prospects, which isn’t what you want as they take up valuable selling space and energy. Standing up for two days and keeping a smile on your face is hard work and we take our hats of to anyone who is a professional event host for any organisation.
Exhibitor Demographics
The bulk of the exhibitors were selling software of one form or another, bespoke tools for handling some GDPR tasks, data collection tools, and in some cases tools that had been one the market since before GDPR that suddenly have a GDPR application.
One Trust had a huge stand on day one and for reasons best known to themselves lost two thirds of it overnight, a response to the attendance level or somewhere else to be…. Who knows?
The overall impression of the tools was that they all pretty much do the same thing, some better some worse, but realistically are at best 50% of what you need and in most cases are little more than document repositories with some fancy graphs.
Nowhere near the full GDPR management suite businesses really need. Part of the solution yes, but all of it, no.
There was one exhibitor that caught our eye and we thought might be useful to our clients.
Komply.co.uk who have an image redaction service, great for anonymising CCTV, guys get in touch if you see this.
Half time scores
Software vendors 20 – Professional Services 3
So many exhibitors selling software and less than a handful selling professional services.
Don’t get me wrong, most software vendors will sell you some GDPR help alongside their software, but it’s not their bread and butter and are less likely to be able to cover everything you need and or be solution agnostic.
Arguably GDPR Auditing were the only exhibitor covering the full end to end GDPR process from audit/gap analysis through to implementation, whilst being completely independent, and specialists, our USP around Technology and IT Security was particularly in demand. Many organisations are starting to realise that you can have all the policies and process you like but it you don’t have your technology and security nailed down, then all that counts for very little.
On that note Information Technology and IT Security were woefully underrepresented, where were all the IT providers who have been more than happy to advise their existing clients on GDPR?
Final Thoughts
All that being said, we would like to thank everyone who visited us on our makeshift and recycled stand, even those visitors who were selling rather than buying. We wish our fellow exhibitors all the best, and if your prospects need professional services alongside your product then feel free to send them our way.
Quiz of the day
Why is it that people are like sheep?
The photo below was taken at some time in the morning on one of the days (dates and times redacted to avoid personally identifying anyone).
Why would people queue 10 deep at this well known coffee store, when less then 60 seconds away 3 other outlets had no queues, and perfectly acceptable coffee and no discernible difference in the coffee.
It just goes to show that a significant proportion of people gravitate to what is popular regardless of whether it is either the best, the least cost or the most convenient – they feel safer in numbers. And what do they end up with, the same or possibly an inferior product, that costs more and so much less efficient.
Contact us
If you would like to know more about how GDPR Auditing can help your organisation with the GDPR please contact us at info@gdprauditing.com or visit our contacts page.
The information provided in this post is for general information only and is not intended to provide legal advice.
© GDPR Auditing 2018.