Case study: Jaywing

Positive data protection advice for a data services innovator

Jaywing is a data services organisation that works with companies like BT, Barclaycard, and internet bank Egg, to help them to segment customer behaviour and develop marketing campaigns and manage customer communications.

Pinsent Masons advises Jaywing on the issues that arise when dealing with others' data. Partner Shelagh Gaskill explained:

"Jaywing's clients are the people responsible for ensuring they comply with data protection laws when dealing with customer data. Jaywing, therefore, must provide services which deliver compliance. If it doesn't, its clients won't buy its services. What we do is to help Jaywing to structure its services so that it can convince clients that, by using Jaywing's services, the client will be delivering the services its customers want, in a compliant way."

Part of this involves training Jaywing's staff. Pinsent Masons runs courses to help Jaywing's staff to understand the principles of data protection law, from data collection to the use of e-mail marketing and internet cookies. In turn, when Jaywing is selling its skills to clients, it can show that its people are reliable and know how to ensure compliance.

Jaywing's Managing Partner Martin Boddy said:

"I've always found that when dealing with a client's compliance department, which will tend to have little or no data protection expertise, they give us the easy answer to every request: 'no.' With Shelagh's help, we overcome these problems, making sure we comply, but also helping us to help our clients achieve their commercial objectives."

See: www.jaywing.com