SaaS companies struggle with complex GDPR compliance and data mapping
Reddit Community
Community Problem
Elevator Pitch
US SaaS companies face unexpected GDPR compliance hurdles, particularly with intricate data mapping, requiring significant resources and expertise beyond initial assumptions.
Full Description
US based SaaS company here (Tx), around 60 people. We don’t even market that much in Europe but a few bigger customers started asking detailed GDPR questions and it's become inevitable at this point.
We assumed it was mostly privacy policy updates but it apparently isn’t.
Data mapping alone took longer than anticipated. Understanding where personal data actually flows internally was uncomfortable, and it's not that we were reckless or anything I think it's because nobody had ever drawn out the full picture.
Any tips and tricks that help you get this over with in a easier way or even that helps you stay more consistent at it would be really helpful.
Get involved
Discussion
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts.
From the Reddit thread(6 top comments)
- 30·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
Data mapping 100%. Everyone underestimates it A tip from me to you is that the sooner you accept that this has now become a part of your daily ops the better.
permalink ↗ - 15·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
For what it's worth, I am actually an expert on gdpr implementations; I started a company doing them. Though I haven't worked there for years. Broad issues you will encounter: if you're b2b, prospects will want a DPA covering exporting to the US (ie using you); the framework for that shifts every couple of years as court cases work through; If you're b2c, it's at least clear that using you isn't an export, but you still have to service access or deletion requests. Deletions require you to delete data, but they're more narrow than you think: you have to maintain data as required by contrac…
permalink ↗ - 12·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
Well said. Mapping forced conversations we’d been avoiding. We started tracking our GDPR stuff in Delve just to make ownership clearer but the bigger change was just visibility. Deletion workflows fit in that bracket too, they're a nuisance to deal with
permalink ↗ - 10·Reddit commenter·1mo ago·reply
Right on the money. I think the mistake we made was treating it like a project with an end date
permalink ↗ - 8·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
Went through this at a \~40 person B2B SaaS. The thing that saved us was starting with customer-facing data flows first and ignoring everything else initially. Your enterprise customers care about where their data goes, not your internal HR spreadsheets. One shortcut that probably covers 80% of your DPA responses: get engineering to grep your codebase for every third party service that touches PII. That single inventory doc is usually what the big customers actually want to see.
permalink ↗ - 5·Reddit commenter·1mo ago
Yeah same I'm from the EU and even I thought it was way simpler or way more lenient, I've now started to integrate it in every project so it won't hit me on the head later. Best wishes! It's part of the course
permalink ↗