Technographics Research and GDPR for Business Improvement

Knowing who your client is has always been an essential part of any business’ framework. In the past, this meant looking at the demographic and firmographic data, such as age, location, and the company’s industry. Nowadays, there is an extra layer of an advanced insight to be considered, and that is technographic data. This information reveals the technology stack and company applications a business utilizes, which is a great insight for sales and marketing as well as product development.

There is no debate that data-driven business strategies provide significant value. However, there is also no debate that data privacy and regulatory compliance has never been a more sophisticated area of focus. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the primary compliance framework for the ethical collection, processing, and storage of personal data. It should also be the framework within which businesses can best comply with these requirements to provide added value in the area of trust and confidence which is essential for marketing purposes. In this blog, I explore the potential of technographic data for improved business performance within a GDPR compliance framework.

Technographic analysis identifies the software and hardware technologies an organization leverages while providing insight into a company’s digital shadow and footprint by answering questions such as:

What is the organization’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software (Ex: Salesforce, HubSpot)?

What is the organization’s website Content Management System (CMS) (Ex: WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager)?

What is the organization’s cloud provider (Ex: AWS, Microsoft Azure)?

What is the organization’s website analytical tools (Ex: Google Analytics, Mixpanel)?

Technographic data, unlike demographic data (which describes individual users) and firmographic data (which describes entire organizations), is strictly centered around the adoption and usage of digital technology, illuminating a company’s operational focus and spend, as well as digital sophistication and overall maturity.

Impact of Technographic Data on Business Intelligence

Strategic decision-making is the primary focus of technographic data, enhancing the overall business digital intelligence. It allows organizations to shape their digital approach on:

Improved Customer Segmentation: Prospect and customer digital segmentation can be based on technology adoption. For instance, SaaS providers can market targeted technology adoption to organizations already using dependent technologies. This indicator helps identify organizations that are likely to integrate, enhancing technology adoption.

Better Strategy Closures: With technographic data on hand, your marketing and sales professionals can create more individualized pitches. Not any random pitch, but one that demonstrates how your product complements a prospect’s CRM or alleviates a specific pain point on their current software.

Coordinated Sales \& Marketing: Both teams having access to technographic data helps create a cohesive and streamlined customer experience. Marketing can initiate the lead generation process based on the tech usage, while sales can tactically continue the conversation to reflect a nuanced understanding of the prospect's current tech ecosystem.

Guided Product Innovation: Knowing which technologies your target audience loves helps your product teams prioritize which integrations to undertake, and which features to build to meet the demand.

GDPR and Data Enrichment

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most extensive data privacy regulation in the world, enacted by the European Union, and one of the most important aims is to provide greater control to people over their data. For data to qualify as “GDPR compliant”, its collection, as well as its processing, needs to be lawful, fair, and transparent.

This is important for data enrichment which is adding data from other sources to your existing customer data. Although technographic data is usually for companies, it can be connected to people (like the contact info of an IT manager), which is then under the scope of GDPR. If you don't collect this data ethically and respect the privacy of the individuals, the risks of non compliance are huge. There is potential to get big fines, be negatively exposed and lose your customers loyalty.

GDPR Compliant Methods of Enrichment of Technographic Data

If there is no way you are going to enrich your data in the breach of GDPR, how can you ethically enrich your data? Focusing on ethical and transparent enrichment of data for technographic data from technographics is a good start.

Consent Based Data Collection: The easiest way to do it is to simply ask for it, this can be done through onboarding, forms, or surveys.

Data Partnerships: Engage in collaboration with reputable data providers and brokers who have the ability to guarantee that their data is GDPR compliant and ethically obtained.

Publicly Available Data: Use data that companies have made publicly available data on their website, in job postings, or press releases. The ethical web scraping is something that needs to be placed here, and it needs to be done in a way that does not collect personal data.

First-Party and Zero-Party Data - Collect data from your audience and leverage it. First-party data is obtained from user activity on your website; zero-party data is the information that customers give to you without you prompting them to share it.

Regular Compliance Audits - Routinely reviewing your data sources and processes to make sure they stay compliant with your data handling regulations.

Use Cases Across Business Functions

Sales - More efficient prospecting. Rather than cold calling, sales representatives can determine the companies using a competitor's product, or a technology that integrates with yours.

Marketing - They are able to design more personalized, and therefore more impactful, campaigns. They can target ads to users of particular marketing automation platforms, or segment email lists according to the analytics tools a company is using.

Product Teams - More efficient roadmaps. They can analyze the tech stacks of the customers and the prospective customers to build integrations that are most valuable.

Customer Success - More tailored onboarding and support based on the implementation of the client’s existing systems. This leads to a better overall experience as well as a more efficient onboarding process.

A Comprehensive GDPR-Compliant Technographic Strategy

How to Build Your Strategy Step by Step. Step 1: Assess Your Data Needs. Your Business Needs Must First Define What Technographic Data Is Most Valuable To Your Business. Step 2: Source compliant Data. Data Providers Or Methods Must Be Ethically Selected To Comply With GDPR. Step 3: Integrate Your Data. Your Technographic Data Must Be Integrated With Your CRM Or Marketing Automation To Make It Available To Your Team. Step 4: Validate And Refresh. Because Companies Keep Changing Their Tech Stacks, Technographic Data Becomes Outdated Quickly. To Keep Your Data Updated, Refresh It And Validate It Periodically. Step 5: Monitor Compliance. To Keep Your Strategy Compliant, Stay Current With GDPR And Privacy Regulation Changes. Step 6: Monitor Compliance. To Keep Your Strategy Compliant, Stay Current With GDPR And Privacy Regulation Changes.

Challenges And Best Practices Technographic Data Strategy Implementation Comes With Certain Challenges. These Include Data Incompleteness, Data Decay, And Inter-Country Compliance. To Help Make These Challenges Easier, Here Are Some Good Practices: Step 1: Maintain Documentation. Keep Comprehensive Records Regarding Your Data Sources And Compliance Documentation. Step 2: Embrace Data Minimization. Only Collect Data That Is Absolutely Necessary For A Defined Specific Purpose. Step 3: Train Your Teams. Make Sure Everyone In Your Business Comprehends The Importance Of GDPR Compliance And Knows How To Use Data In A Compliant Way.

A more intelligent, better, and more secure approach to growth

Intelligent operational strategies are efficient, and technographic data provides the insights necessary to customize efforts, synchronize internal groups, and create market-fit and product development offerings.

Most companies see the GDPR as a hurdle, but it can be reframed as a chance to build trust with customers and reduce potential legal and financial risk by ethically sourcing data and being transparent about data usage. Navigating technographic enrichment with a GDPR mindset is about making the right choice for the future, as this will positively affect the growth trajectory of the company.