Edgewood Consulting Group (in this document, the firm) approaches business people by email, now and then by phone or letter, and runs this small website. What follows sets out, term by term, what the firm records about those people and about visitors here, how the records are used and passed on, and the quickest way to be left alone.
- The firm, and what this document reaches
-
The firm is a consultancy in strategy and advanced analytics for sales and marketing, whose clients make consumer packaged goods or sell them at retail. Its work runs across assortment, price, promotion, net revenue management and shopper research, and is taken through to implementation with the retailer's buyer. Letters reach it at 1719 State Route 10, Suite 226, Parsippany, NJ 07054.
The document covers this website together with every business email, call and letter the firm sends while looking for clients and serving them. Information handled for a client under a signed engagement answers to that engagement first; this document speaks only where the engagement is silent.
- Whom the firm approaches
-
People whose jobs touch the kind of work the firm does: category management, sales and customer development, shopper insights, revenue management, marketing and general management, at manufacturers and at retailers. Messages go to the work mailbox. Occasionally the firm rings an office number or sends a letter to an office address.
An approach is made only where the firm believes its services could bear on that person's role and that company's situation. Nothing goes to consumers in bulk. Anyone who asks to be left alone is left alone; the mechanics are under the heading on stopping contact.
- The records the firm keeps
-
Only what is needed to decide whether an approach is worth making, to make it, and to deal with the answer. In practice that means some or all of the following.
- Contact details for work. Name, title, employer, work email, office phone and, where one exists, a professional profile address.
- Facts about the employer. Its line of business, size and sector, the retail channels it trades through, its locations and its website.
- Public activity. Hiring notices, press coverage, announcements and public professional posts that show what a company is working on.
- Address checks. Whether a work email address is live, tested before anything is sent to it.
- Exchanges. Messages to and from the firm, notes of calls and meetings, and any instruction to stop.
- Visits to this site. No cookies are set and no analytics or advertising code runs here. The host records ordinary server logs: the requesting network address, the page fetched and the time. The typeface arrives from an outside font provider, and that provider sees the visitor's network address when it delivers the font files.
The firm neither seeks nor knowingly records sensitive categories of information, such as health, religion, politics, sexual orientation, government identity numbers or bank details. Please do not send any.
- Where the records originate
-
Three places.
- The open web. Employer websites, hiring boards, trade and general news, and professional networking profiles.
- Licensed business-data suppliers. Firms that assemble professional contact and company records for use by other businesses.
- The person concerned. On answering the firm, completing a form on one of its sites, or talking with someone who works there.
- What the records are for
-
- Deciding whether the firm's services are likely to matter to a particular person and company.
- Getting in touch at work about those services.
- Testing a work email address before it is used, so that mail is not sent to addresses that have lapsed.
- Answering, and where invited, discussing, proposing or delivering services.
- Running the do-not-contact list, which is what makes an instruction to stop hold good.
- Protecting the firm's systems and meeting its duties under law.
The firm's emails carry no tracking image. It does not try to learn whether a given message was opened.
- Stopping contact
-
An answer, in any wording, to any email from the firm ends the approaches. So does telling the caller. No form, no login, no account.
The instruction is carried out promptly, and in no case more than ten business days after it reaches the firm. The person's name and address then go onto the firm's do-not-contact list. No fresh approach is made after that, even if the same details turn up again from a different supplier or source. For that reason the list entry is the one thing the firm retains after everything else about a person has been erased.
- Who else sees the records
-
Nobody buys or rents personal information from the firm. Nothing is handed to any other business to market with, and nothing is handed over for advertising directed at particular individuals. Disclosure happens in three situations only.
- Suppliers working for the firm. Providers of email and mailbox services, of address verification, of business data, of hosting and of file storage. Each may handle the records solely to perform its service for the firm and is obliged to safeguard them.
- Public authorities. Where a statute or a valid legal demand requires it, or where handing them over is necessary to protect the firm's rights or property, or anyone's safety.
- A successor to the business. If the firm, or the part of it these records belong to, is sold, merged or restructured, the acquirer takes the records subject to this document.
- Retention
-
Business contact records stay for as long as they serve the purposes above; stale entries, such as a person who has moved on from the employer recorded, are cleared out. Records tied to a client engagement remain while the engagement, and the firm's legal, tax and accounting duties, call for them. Do-not-contact entries remain for the whole time the firm approaches businesses at all, since that is what gives the list its effect.
- Safeguards
-
Only those at the firm, and at its suppliers, who need the records for the purposes above can reach them. Protective measures, administrative and technical, are matched to the sensitivity of what is held. No storage or transmission method is beyond compromise, and the firm makes no promise of perfect security.
- Your rights
-
Anyone, anywhere, may ask the firm what it holds about them and from which source, may have it corrected, and may have it erased. Erasure covers everything except the do-not-contact entry, which is kept precisely so that the person is not approached again.
Residents of certain states have further rights under state privacy statutes, typically to learn what is collected, to correct or erase it, and to refuse having personal information sold, or shared for advertising directed at them. The firm neither sells nor shares personal information in that sense, so that refusal has nothing to bite on; every other statutory right is honoured. Exercising a right brings no less favourable treatment from the firm.
A request can be made by answering any message the firm has sent, through the contact form on the firm's main website, or by letter to the postal address above. Before acting, the firm may check that a request in fact comes from the mailbox it approached. Answers come inside the period the governing statute sets. Someone authorised to act for you may ask on your behalf; proof of that authority may be requested.
- Under-eighteens
-
The firm's services and this site exist for businesses and the adults who work in them. The firm does not knowingly hold information about anyone under eighteen. Anyone who believes otherwise should say so, and the record will be removed.
- Geography
-
The firm works out of the United States, approaching people at companies doing business there. Processing may take place wherever the firm or its suppliers run their systems, which may be outside your own state or country. This document travels with the records wherever they are processed.
- Revisions
-
A revised version replaces this page and the in-force date at its head is changed to match. Whichever version is showing at the time of a visit is the one that governs.
- Reaching the firm
-
By letter: Edgewood Consulting Group, 1719 State Route 10, Suite 226, Parsippany, NJ 07054. By answering any message the firm has sent. Or through the contact form on the firm's main website, which is the fastest route for anything that is not a stop request.