Written by Syan Bateman

The terms ‘infobesity’ and ‘toxic data’ are new buzzwords, referring to the bloat of big data – where companies aim to collect, store and use massive amounts of data. Data rich approaches means business growth, higher profits and customer insights, right? Not any more. Hyper-growth models of big data are now showing to be heavily limited, and Data Minimisation is the next big thing.

Stocking up on data has been a well-tried strategy in the past. When it comes to data management, accumulation was widely considered to bring in business advantages and to lead to a more profound perspective on what clients need. In recent years, however, enough resources have been developed to ensure that commercial targets are being reached without sacrificing expendability—in other words, market tactics can be tailored and adapted while also sanitising the amount of data that is being collected by companies. The term that best describes and encapsulates this new strategy is called “data minimisation”.   

So what is data minimisation?

The data minimisation principle only collects the personal data that is necessary and relevant to your company goals, partnering with the storage limitation principle (the amount of personal data retained is reduced over time) and ensuring more accurate data collection. 

Why go for data minimisation? Is it actually good for you?

For many, data minimisation seems to only limit, preventing the company from a wide range of actions, and costing more in money and time to process all the data to see if it’s necessary. However, collecting less data actually reduces the cost of storage, maintenance, labour, etc. Data minimisation streamlines your workflow and optimises performance. 

It is also a key principle of most data protection laws, such as the UK and EU’s GDPR. Data minimisation prevents the financial risks of non-compliance, some which go up to 4% of a company’s turnover in the event of a data breach! For more information on the UK’s GDPR and the other key principles, take a look at our blog posts here. 

Data Quality is also boosted when you ensure data minimisation. You no longer have to copy huge swathes of data, where each process was a potential data quality leak. Having less data reduces the risk of inconsistency and improves reliability. 

With more reliable data comes faster and more targeted analysis. By carefully selecting key indicators to monitor and collect, processing what you have becomes easier and quicker, and helps make more strategic plans.

How do you successfully ‘do’ data minimisation?

What data is necessary to conduct your business, what purpose does collecting certain data have? Once you show that every piece of personal data collected is necessary, relevant and clearly defined during the planning stages, you will find that you collect less redundant data than before, streamlining the information that actually reaches and loads your systems. There will be no more “info bloating”, which lends to both resource accessibility and resource economy. Now, your market tactics and customer services can be tailored and adapted with more accuracy while also reducing the amount of data being collected.

In the following step, you will be in a position to properly manage your data – what you have will eventually become out-of-date or inaccurate, but updating your databases should be easier with the streamlined processes we have now!

Finally, delete data regularly. When data becomes too old, it becomes useless for all your needs and only takes up space. Make sure that all the data in your company deserves to be there. 

If you want advice on how to implement data minimisation for your company, Bivika offers toolkits, guidance, audits and policies to help you take your data minimisation to the final level. Please do get in touch via info@bivika.com.