Privacy and Cookie Policy

We have updated our privacy policies with effect from 25th May 2018 to include additional information required under applicable data protection regulations - including the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

This policy applies to data and information relating to past, present and potential customers or suppliers and visitors to our company or to our websites.

We continue to take data protection and information security very seriously. Our updated privacy statement below highlights why we collect your personal information, what we collect, how we use it and how long we store it. We also want you to know how you can access, amend or in some cases delete your information.

The following Privacy Statement describes:

• Why we collect information
• Why we process personal data
• What data we collect and what we do with it
• Your rights under the GDPR and how to exercise them
• Contact information for Automation Technology Ltd data controller
• Contact information for the Automation Technology Ltd privacy officer

Why we collect information

There are different bases that we rely on to use your personal information, namely:

Performance of a contract

The use of your personal information may be necessary to perform the agreement you have with us. For example, to complete your purchase of a Product or Service, to register and maintain your account, to help with delivery issues, to handle returns, to register warranties, to provide technical support, to respond to your requests and to make sure that Products perform their basic functions in a secure way.

Legitimate interests

We may additionally collect your personal information for our legitimate interests.

You can access our website and browse our site without disclosing your personal data, but in the event where you volunteer personal information such as download our content, and/or opt-in to our marketing communications we will process your personal information for certain legitimate business purposes, which include some or all of the following:

• We collect personal information to send you notifications about Product updates or information about Products and Services which we believe to be relevant to you.
• We collect personal information when you request our content marketing assets, in order to provide useful content and report on its effectiveness for marketing purposes.
• We collect personal information when you submit an inbound enquiry via our web forms, web chat or directly so that we can follow-up with a response.
• To send relevant communications i.e. sending regular email marketing communications which we think will be of interest to you.
• We collect anonymous information sent by your browser to enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our visitors/customers.
• We collect information about your business its areas of operation and your role within it to provide a personalised user experience that we think will be relevant to you.
• We collect business information to provide direct mail or postal communications which we think will be of interest to you.
• We collect personal information through online customer surveys in order to gain an understanding of customers' experiences working with us and how to improve our products and services. We retain this information to understand customer satisfaction.
• We collect information to better understand how people interact with our website and to analyse and improve the content on our websites and apps
• We collect information to determine the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, content and advertising.
• We collect information for administrative, fraud detection or legal purposes.
• Our website does not enable our visitors to communicate with other visitors or to post information that can be accessed by other visitors.
• Should you disclose your personal data when opting into our mailing list, we hold your name and email address solely for the purpose of sending you emails in your professional capacity with your employer. Our lawful basis for sending these emails is our legitimate interest in promoting our products, services and solutions. We have conducted a legitimate interest assessment to establish that this does not pose a significant risk to the professionals receiving these emails and that our commercial interests outweigh the risks.
• Where we process your personal information based on our legitimate interest and no opt-out mechanism is apparent, you may exercise your right to object by sending an email to sales@automatech.co.uk

What we collect

To the extent permissible under applicable law, we collect information about you and any other party whose details you provide to us when you:

• Register to use our websites, applications or services (including free trials); this may include your name (including business name), address, email address and telephone number. We may also ask you to provide additional information about your business and your preferences;
• apply for a business credit account
• place an order using our websites, applications or services; this may include your name (including business name), address, contact (including telephone number and email address) and payment details;
• complete online forms (including call back requests), take part in surveys, post on our message boards, post any blogs, enter any competitions or prize draws, download information such as white papers or other publications or participate in any other interactive areas that appear on our website or within our application or service;
• interact with us using social media;
• provide your contact details to us when registering to use or accessing any websites, applications or services we make available or when you update those details;
• contact us offline, for example by telephone, fax, SMS, email or post
• when you visit our premises

We will also collect your information where you only partially complete and/or abandon any information inputted into our website and/or other online forms and may use this information to contact you to remind you to complete any outstanding information and/or for marketing purposes.

We also collect information from your devices (including mobile devices) and applications you or your users use to access and use any of our websites, applications or services (for example, we may collect the device identification number and type, location information and connection information such as statistics on your page views, traffic to and from the sites, referral URL, ad data, your IP address, your browsing history and your web log information) and we will ask for your permission before we do so. We may do these using cookies or similar technologies which are described in our Cookie Policy.

How we use personal information

We do not sell or rent your personal information to other companies or individuals.

The data you pass to us may be processed within or outside the European Economic Area and will always be held securely and in line with the requirements of UK data protection / GDPR legislation. By communicating with us, you acknowledge and agree to our processing of personal data in this way.

Third Parties that collect anonymous data on our behalf:

• Google Analytics: We use Google Analytics to analyse the performance of our websites and follow up on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. Google Analytics allow us to analyse data in aggregate, we do not collect or store any personal information in Google Analytics. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)
• IP Lookup - We may use IP Lookup companies to find out the names of companies visiting our website/s and what pages visitors from those companies have viewed.
• Vimeo & YouTube - We use Vimeo and YouTube to store videos that we show on our website. Vimeo and YouTube use a cookie to collect anonymous viewing information that we use to find out how videos are being viewed.

Third Parties with whom we share legitimate data

We have assessed the data security of the following data processors with whom we may share your data for the legitimate purposes of data communication, and IT development, service and support and consider it to be wholly compliant with the requirements of current data protection and privacy legislation. Names of specific third-parties are available upon request by emailing sales@automatech.co.uk

• Email Marketing Service Providers
• Web Development Service Providers and Maintainers
• ERP System Suppliers and Maintainers
• Visitor Management Software Providers

We may also directly send you a product, company news and service updates that are relevant to your use of our website, products and services. We will process this personal information for legitimate business purposes stated above.

If you do not wish to receive email marketing content from us, you can opt-out at any time using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email marketing communication. If you do not wish to receive any telemarketing or direct marketing from us, please email sales@automatech.co.uk

Advertising

We may use a number of services, listed below, for advertising based on your web activity, or remarketing. We use this to show advertisements to visitors that have been to our websites, on other participating websites. If you have an account with any of the vendors below, their privacy statement may allow them to connect the fact that you have been to our websites and the pages you have viewed with your profile. Your anonymous browsing behaviour may in turn be shared by the following partners as outlined in their privacy statements. We do not share any personal information with these vendors.

• Google Adwords, Doubleclick and Google’s display ads
• Google Remarketing
• LinkedIn Advertisements
• Bing Advertising Services

If you do not wish to receive this type of advertising from us, you can opt-out using the Google Ads Settings here or by using the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

Trade Industry & Events

• If you have registered for an event, we may share your personal information with the event venue or industry partners (only if the event is co-hosted) to help with the logistics on the day. We will clearly state the venue and partner on the event landing page. If you meet us at a trade show or industry event, you may leave your contact details in order for us to follow up with you, or subscribe to our newsletter. We will collect the information that is available on e.g. a business card and upload it to our CRM system.
• Marketing Assets - If you have requested a marketing asset or have participated in a marketing event, we may use your personal information to follow-up with important announcements and follow-up on the effectiveness of our marketing. 

How long we keep personal information

We keep your business / personal information as long as it is warranted for us to fulfil our commitments to you, or to adhere to legal or regulatory requirements.

If you are a customer, supplier or partner or prospect, we keep information for the duration of the relationship and will keep records of business transactions for an unlimited period thereafter in order to update you about relevant product changes, recalls or safety matters.

 If you have requested to receive marketing communications, we will keep your personal information only as long as you interact with us, or until the data subject opts-out or asks to be forgotten. If you are a prospective customer we will keep your personal information only as long as you interact with us, or until the data subject opts-out or asks to be forgotten.

Information collected through online methods is kept for a maximum of 5 years. This is so we can establish year-on-year comparisons to determine trends in customer satisfaction.

From 25th May 2018, user and event data (associated with cookies, user identifiers, or advertising identifiers) on Google Analytics will be retained for up to 50 months; Google Analytics will automatically delete user and event data that is older than 50 months. Note that these settings will not affect reports based on aggregated data.

Your Rights: Subjects Access Requests & Unsubscribe Options

Opt-Out: You can choose to opt-out of marketing communications at any time, whether you are a customer, supplier, partner, or none of the above (see below.)

Subject Access Requests: You can request a copy of your personal information and you can update any incorrect information (see below.)

Right to be Forgotten: You can ask to have your personal information removed, or in some cases limit our processing of personal information. This does not apply when we need to keep your information for legal reasons. 

Unsubscribe from Email Marketing Database

If you do not wish to receive email marketing content from us, please email us at sales@automatech.co.uk

Unsubscribe from Google Analytics Monitoring

If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Opt-out of Telemarketing and Direct Marketing

If you do not wish to receive telemarketing or direct marketing from us, please email us at sales@automatech.co.uk