Join us in conversation with William Trepp, our Co-Founder & COO, as he tells us about Rockport’s stance on clients’ data and how he believes Rockport is the custodians of client data, not the owner of it. Across many industries today, data is often seen by SaaS companies as something that they are entitled to re-sell in aggregate. With over 20 years of being a trusted leader in CRE technology, Rockport goes against the grain by making it clear that its clients’ data is never for sale.
With the uncertainty surrounding data ownership policies and how they are going to be managed, Rockport keeps it simple: We do NOT Sell Your Data!
https://www.therockportgroup.com/resources/our-data-pledge
Spent the better part of the last, well, thirty years since I grew up, with my father in the data industry, but twenty years professionally in data. And it's taught me that data is very valuable. And so we've come out very strongly that data is not owned by SaaS systems that just simply have it put in it. It's owned by the entity that creates it. Basically, as such, we believe we are the custodians of data as a SaaS, not the owners. So, we believe that SaaS systems are the custodians of data, meaning we have an obligation to hold it on our client's behalf, not use it for our own best interest.
Not everyone agrees with that, but that's our position. I think it is a huge question right now, where a lot of SaaS systems believe that they should have the right to monetize and resell client data. We disagree. We believe it should be clear across all industries that the person whose data it is the one that owns it. And where that is not the case, in for instance a B2C kind of transaction, it should be very clear what the policies are so that there's informed consent, not forced consent.
It means that clients should be the one that drives the benefit from if they choose to resell the data. A SaaS provider, simply because they have client data, should not be able to sell it to others. They should have to keep it confidential and secret. We believe it's your data. Plain and simple. And so you should have control of where it goes, in the same way you'd expect that from your iPhone or your tax software. You should be able to enforce that privacy and not have a SaaS system insist upon the right to resell.
It's your data. Very simple. We do not resell your data.