The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union and the European Economic Area.

The GDPR became enforceable on May 25, 2018.

In a nutshell, the GDPR requires companies to safeguard their users data and protect their privacy rights. Companies that handle personal data of European users must build their systems and processes with data protection by design and by default.

Nikon has set a goal of introducing a unified central CRM system. One of the several years of preparatory steps involved coordinating the content and legal environment of the databases with the marketing department of each country. It was necessary to develop a standardized data loading, an automated, repeatable data cleaning procedure performed during the loading process. As a result, customer data from individual countries gradually appeared integrated in the central Salesforce system. The loading process was accompanied by the mandatory customer communication required by the GDPR, the results of which and the resulting tasks were reported back to the Nikon headquarters located in different countries.

Nikon as a worldwide company had to modify their data handling processes and make the necessary modifications of their internal applications to be compliant with the GDPR regulation.