These functions will also be available in IFS Field Service Management via an update in the first quarter of 2018. The European Union's new General Data Protection Regulation comes into force on May 25, 2018. With new functions of its business software, IFS supports companies in meeting the requirements of the GDPR. These functions are now available in IFS Applications 9 with the latest update 10. IFS will also provide the same functions for IFS Field Service Management 5.7 with Update 3 towards the end of the first quarter of 2018. The new functions support GDPR compliance across all core processes in which personal data is used. The functions enable:

1. legally compliant data collection. According to the GDPR, personal information may only be collected for clearly defined purposes and only stored for as long as is necessary to fulfill these purposes. Companies have the option of identifying each data subject - i.e. all "data subjects" in accordance with GDPR Art. 4.1 - and assigning one or more processing purposes, including the storage periods. One or more legal bases can be assigned to each processing purpose.

2. secure storage. Personal data must be able to be entered securely into the systems by which it is processed and stored securely there. These systems may only be accessed in accordance with the authorizations required to fulfill the purpose of data collection. To ensure this, new functions supplement the existing mechanisms for role-based data access. They offer a set of dedicated mechanisms and windows for the management of data subjects, elements with personal information, processing purposes, data deletion and anonymization as well as date-controlled consents.

3. reliable retrieval. An essential requirement of GDPR compliance is to be able to retrieve all personal data of a person at any time and present it on request. A new standard report in IFS Applications and IFS Field Service Management is available for this purpose, which lists all relevant information. This includes all stored data, data collection purposes, storage periods and the legal basis for the data and its collection purposes.

4. secure data maintenance. Other key requirements of the GDPR include keeping personal data up to date at all times and fulfilling people's right to be forgotten. To this end, companies have new functions at their disposal that support the corresponding data maintenance processes. Company data protection officers can use them to cleanse, delete or anonymize data depending on the wishes of the individuals or the expiry of the storage periods.

5. lawful use. Being able to retrieve, show, delete or anonymize personal data at any time if necessary is essential to meet the requirements of the GDPR. The prerequisites for this are a correct setup, proper data maintenance and the lawful use of the data. These tasks are facilitated by easy access to the data as well as clear and visualized information. To this end, the new functions provide a central access point to access and control the purposes and basis of data processing.

"The new functions of IFS Applications and IFS Field Service Management not only enable companies to meet the requirements of the GDPR in an integrated and intuitive way," says Steve Treagust, Global Industry Director of Finance, HCM and Strategy at IFS. "They also help them to optimize their data management processes. Companies can reduce the amount of irrelevant data, thereby increasing data quality and achieving significant cost savings on the bottom line."

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