To protect customer privacy, the initiative from the leading company in the North-Northeast region seeks to adapt its business to the General Data Protection Law (LGPD).
With the entry into force of the LGPD (General Data Protection Law) in September 2020, all companies began to prioritize compliance projects to protect the privacy and data protection of customers, users, and consumers and the search for compliance tools.
But not every company left it to the last minute; many had already been working on this for a long time and today have the most advanced mechanisms and systems for LGPD to guarantee the privacy of customers, employees, and suppliers: We're talking about Pague Menos pharmacies.
With nearly 40 years of experience, the company was founded in 1981 in the Carlito Pamplona neighborhood of Fortaleza. In 1985, it pioneered the drugstore concept in Brazil, selling, in addition to medicines, hygiene, beauty, and convenience products through a self-service model. According to Valor Econômico, Pague Menos is the third-largest drugstore chain in Brazil, with strong leadership in the North and Northeast regions, where the company holds 10,7% and 20,5% market shares, respectively. Furthermore, the publication reports that the company has over 1.100 stores, giving it a 5,7% market share, most of which were opened through organic growth.
The LGPD (Brazilian General Data Protection Law) regulates the "processing" of data, a broad enough expression to encompass any operation performed with personal data of individuals located in Brazil or that has been collected here, involving collection, production, reception, classification, use, access, reproduction, transmission, storage, among other activities.
The LGPD compliance project began with the creation of committees and the appointment of the DPO, the person responsible for processing personal data within the company. Choosing an LGPD tool is a crucial step, as it will help those responsible for the privacy program to be better managed.
In the case of the pharmacy, the best LGPD platform was Privacy Tools, a Brazilian solution that already serves large companies in compliance projects. The Privacy Tools platform provides the pharmacy with tools for cookie management, a data subject service portal, application privacy, data mapping, consent management, integrations, and other systems to minimize manual work.
According to Clayton Soares, DPO and Executive Manager of IT Governance and Information Security at Pague Menos, regarding the choice of Privacy Tools: “We chose a national company that had a lot of flexibility for customizations. We deal with B2C and there are many business areas, each with its own managers and specific needs; we needed a partner, not just a supplier.”
In the pharmaceutical industry, there are many complaints and discomfort from customers who are required to provide extensive information to make a purchase. Pague Menos's concern for privacy aims to break this taboo by implementing an effective privacy program that provides transparency to users about how their data will be used.
In the pharmaceutical trade, in some cases the request for data is perfectly legitimate due to ANVISA Ordinance No. 344/1998, which obliges pharmacies to fill or dispense medical prescriptions only when all items on the prescription are completed (art. 52, §§ 2 and 3), and art. 36, caput, subparagraphs “d” and “i”, includes the identification of the user (full name and address) and the buyer (full name, identification document number, full address and telephone number).
Furthermore, according to Clayton, "Having a system for managing LGPD compliance is essential, but it's not the only thing. Companies need to address the cultural aspect so that everyone involved is concerned about privacy, from the pharmacy clerk to the supply provider. It's a collaborative effort to ensure that the customer's rights are protected."
PrivacyTools is a PrivacyTech company, meaning a startup in the privacy sector, accelerated by Obr.global and is one of the pioneers in Brazil in offering solutions for LGPD (Brazilian General Data Protection Law).
The company aims to transform how businesses protect and manage the privacy of personal data and has over 150 clients, including Rede D'or, Banco RCI, Pague Menos, Farmácias São João, Grupo Bom Jesus, Universidade de Fortaleza, Synnex Corporation, among others.
For media outlets, PrivacyTools solutions help maintain the privacy of those browsing online articles by managing cookies authorized by readers, writing Privacy Policies, and mapping user data that is collected and used, in order to recognize and minimize the risk of leaks or misuse of information.
