Autus Consulting Ltd – Data and Privacy Policy (Effective 17th May 2018)
Autus Consulting Ltd (“We”) of 272 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 4JR, are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
In accordance with the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), effective 25th May 2018, this policy and any other documents referred to on it sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.
We will only use the information that we collect about you lawfully (in accordance with the new General Data Protection Regulations 2018). Under the terms of the GDPR legislation, we are required to explain to you how we will treat any personal and/or private data which we collect from you.
Who we are
We are Autus Consulting Ltd. We are also known as the data controller. We are a CRM and Digital Marketing Solutions, Consultancy, Training and Services provider. The Autus Consulting website, is owned and operated by Us. Should you wish to access any of the information that we store about you, or wish to request we remove the data entirely, please simply email us (via the details below).
Collection of Information from our Clients.
In order to fullfil your business enquiry or / and order (for example – for attending a training event or procuring a solution/service from us), we need to know certain personal information collected at that time.
We may collect and process the following data about you:-
(1) information that you provide by filling in forms on our website (or via those on the partner websites we make use of);
(2) information provided at the time of registering to use our website, subscribing to our service, posting material or requesting further services;
(3) correspondence from you and your responses to any research surveys sent to you by us;
(4) details of transactions you carry out through our site and of the fulfillment of your enquiries and/or orders; and
(5) details of your visits to our site including but not limited to traffic data, location data, and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or not.
It is our policy that this information is private and confidential. Unfortunately the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information the personal information you provide to us (where required) is stored in a secure location, and is accessible only by designated staff. We will use it only for the purposes for which you provide the information under this privacy statement.
We will not sell, rent or trade to third parties any personal information you provide to us, and we will only store it for as long as is necessary to continue providing the required service(s) to you.
Security Best Practice
Our website uses SSL to help protect (and encrypt) any data sent between your browser and the site (submitted forms etc). We are also fully insured with public/product liability, employee liability, and professional indemnity insurance.
Keeping you informed
We would like to tell you by e-mail or other electronic means about our news, products and services which we believe would be of interest to you. If you do not want us to do this, simply do not check this option during the order or enquiry process, or email us at any time and request removal or simply unsubscribe from our email or other communications.
Please note that by choosing not to opt-in means that we will not be able to tell you about additional benefits and services available to our current and future customers.
Computer Tracking and ‘Cookies’
Autus Consulting makes use of internet browser cookies, which we use to ensure that your experience of our website and business offerings is as effective as possible. Cookies are small amounts of information which we store on your computer and exist to improve the ease of use of this site. You may choose not to use cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies.
However if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site.
In addition to cookies, our website also makes use of ‘tracking code’ (often called beacons, or pixels) from organisations such as Google Analytics, Facebook, Hubspot, Linkedin, MailChimp, Sharpspring and Twitter. Google Analytics allows us to better understand traffic patterns and user behaviour while on our website, and the social media pixels allow us to share our news and services with you on these 3rd party platforms. None of the data collected through cookies, analytics, or social media pixels allows us to identify you as an individual (we don’t “see” any personal data about you, other than things like your IP address), and with regard things like Facebook etc, you can opt out of such tracking within Facebook’s privacy settings, and won’t impact you at all if you’re not actually a Facebook user.
Our website is designed/developed by ourselves (Autus Consulting Ltd).
For more information on cookies, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Partner Websites and Data Collection/Storage
In order to provide some of our key services, we utilise the services of trusted partner websites and cloud based systems.These include: MailChimp and SharpSpring Email Marketing
Since our business inception beginning of 2016, we’ve built up a sizeable mailing list, collecting emails (lawfully) through a variety of methods, primarily by allowing people to “subscribe” themselves via a form on our website and at various training and business networking events. We use MailChimp and SharpSpring – email marketing and automation systems to manage and store this data, and to send out occasional commercial emails to everyone who has consented to this.
In preparation for GDPR we’ve simplified things. We’ve cleaned up the data, deleted old (unused) subscribers, merged subscriber lists (into 1 simple list) re-requested opt-in consent from those who hadn’t already explicitly given it, and reduced the information we collect (and store) to essential information such as name (optional) and email address and your business interest in specific services we provide, if you have cared to provide this.
If you have previously given your consent to receive such emails, you can choose to opt-out (or change your preferences) at any time by clicking the relevant links included in all marketing emails sent to you.
We believe the data held in MailChimp and SharpSpring to be safe, secure, and only available to Autus Consulting Ltd for the purposes listed above.
For more information on MailChimp, please visit their Privacy Policy and Terms of Use (which we are legally bound to comply with). Autus Consulting has also signed MailChimp’s Customer EU Data Processing Addendum and more information can be found on this here.
For more information on SharpSpring, please visit their Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy and EU Data Processing Agreement (which we are legally bound to comply with). SharpSpring has Privacy Shield certification. With this certification, European Union customers and visitors can be confident in the way SharpSpring processes and handles their data, and that SharpSpring meets European Union requirements in doing so.
Customer Relationship Management System
We use Hubspot CRM and SharpSpring for keeping us organised with our commitments towards our customers e.g. Getting back to you with information by a specific date about a quotation or service information request or scheduling meeting with you or emailing you on a private one to one basis (not used for bulk / mass email marketing). As an Agency partner of both Hubspot CRM and SharpSpring we adhere to all legal requirements. In addition to the SharpSpring information already presented above, you can also find Customer Terms of Service, Acceptable Use Policy, Privacy Policy, Data Processing Agreement and other Legal documentation in relation to hubspot CRM here.
FreeAgent Cloud Accounting System
We use FreeAgent for our business accounting, specifically to invoice our customers for products and services that we have supplied to them under contract.
HMRC require businesses to keep company financial records for at least 6 years from the end of the last financial year, so if you’ve been a paying customer, then we’ll likely hold data about you on FreeAgent which was required to invoice you for the goods/services supplied.
While legally we cannot delete this data, we can make changes to the contact details etc where it is inaccurate. If you’d like to see what data we hold, or you think we should update the accuracy of it, please just contact us at any time.
We believe the data held on the FreeAgent systems to be safe, secure, and only available to Autus Consulting Ltd for the purposes listed above. For more information, please visit FreeAgent and GDPR Compliance.
Eventbrite Booking System
We use Eventbrite to manage bookings for training classes and other events. As well as collecting the required data from attendees, Eventbrite also handles the associated credit card payments. Autus Consulting Ltd are not privy to the payment details (only gaining access to attendee name, phone, email, and booking information). Typically we only keep your data on the Eventbrite systems for 3-4 months following the event booked, and thereafter delete it in full (although you may chose to maintain an actual Eventbrite account directly with them).
We believe the data held on the Eventbrite systems to be safe, secure, and only available to Autus Consulting Ltd for the purposes listed above. For more information, please visit the Eventbrite Privacy Policy.
Giving your consent
It is important that you read and understand these statements. By ordering any of our products or services, a binding agreement between yourself (and/or your business) and Autus Consulting Ltd will be created such that we can use your information in this way.
Disclosures
We warrant that we will not disclose your information or personal details to any other third party without your approval other than is set out elsewhere in this privacy statement
We will not send you any unsolicited commercial e-mail unless you have given your prior consent. We will seek to act in the best interest of our customers, and will not abuse our position of data controller for any commercial gain.
In the event we sell our business or assets the personal data we collect about you may be transferred to the purchaser of our business or assets. We may also use the information we collect about you in order to enforce or apply our terms of use or supply. To prevent or detect fraud or abuse of this site, or to assist in verifying your identity, we may make searches of our data records and reserve the right to cooperate with law enforcement agencies should fraud or illegal activities occur. If you give us false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraud, we will record this. We may use this information to protect our interests including without limitation to protect the rights property or safety of Autus Consulting Ltd, our employees, customers or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of credit risk and fraud reduction.
Contact us
Should you wish to contact us regarding this privacy statement please contact us using the contact details set out at the bottom of this webpage. For the purposes of complying with GDPR, please note that our Managing Director Tom Berry is our appointed Data Protection Officer (DPO), and can also be reached directly via the contact details below.
Have we done something wrong?
If you think there is a problem with the way we have handled your data then be aware you have the right to raise a complaint to the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office). We’d be grateful if you spoke to us about the issue first, but if you’d prefer to go direct to the ICO please visit: https://ico.org.uk/.
Thank you for your trust.
Tom Berry
Managing Director and Data Protection Officer (DPO)
Autus Consulting Ltd
Telephone: +44 (0) 141 356 5815