PRAGUE, Czech Republic, May-1-2018 — /EuropaWire/ — ZOOM International, a leader in call recording, workforce optimization, and compliance software for the omnichannel contact center, today announced support for the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). By making simplicity, speed, and cost-effectiveness the goals of the release, ZOOM has created a new industry standard—companies who need to support GDPR in any region of the world don’t have to purchase and implement more software. GDPR support is a standard part of the ZOOM 6.3 Suite.

Former Gartner executive and Chief Research Analyst at IT-Harvest, Richard Stiennon, explained the scenario in a November 2017 article on Forbes, “The looming imposition of a new data protection regulation in the EU is already sending tremors through the legal and IT worlds as organizations wake up to the fact that by May 25, 2018, they have to comply with the most intrusive technology regulation ever. Law firms and consulting firms are starting to use phrases like ‘this is Y2K all over again.’”

Companies in and outside the EU are taking immediate action to make applications compliant while also planning for larger, cross-department initiatives in parallel. For any company (in any country) managing EU citizen data, fines can be as much as €20 million or 4% of global annual revenues. To add to the pressure, many WFO vendors force additional software purchases of complicated “compliance suites.” Unlike ZOOM, these companies add a burden, creating additional friction for their customers—forcing longer timelines for decisions, approval, and implementation.

“GDPR is a monster of a regulation for companies to tackle,” explained Brian Shore, CEO of ZOOM International, “So, we designed ZOOM 6.3 to simplify and streamline the effort it takes to achieve GDPR compliance. It also gives customers enough flexibility to evolve over time without becoming a beastly, bloated, and outrageously expensive application—like we see from many of our competitors. In addition, GDPR truly puts the ownership of data completely in the consumers’ hands, even allowing them to have all their data erased. To address this, companies really need quality management software more than ever. Perhaps they could afford to have upset customers in the past, but now it is much more expensive. GDPR will enable a different type of attrition than we have ever seen in the history of the world.”

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