How to Choose Reliable Policy Management Tools for UK Retail Businesses

For retail businesses in the UK, policies, processes, and procedures have never been so critical. They ensure legal compliance amidst a growing regulatory landscape, consistency for employees and stakeholders, and protection for an increasingly informed customer base.

Policy management tools are imperative software for any well-functioning business, helping to establish clearly defined expectations across all forms of company codes of conduct. And, importantly, a means to track and monitor them.

Key takeaways:

• GDPR breaches are more frequent than many may believe, with the total sum of fines surpassing €5.88 billion as of 2025.
• Retailers process vast amounts of personal data every day – even one gap in a business’ policy management can have detrimental impact.
• Policy management and risk scoring tools can effectively manage a business' legal obligations, and demonstrate accountability to the ICO.

Here’s how to select the right policy management tools to achieve compliance in your retail business.

Choosing a reliable policy management tool

• What are policies and procedures?
• How can UK retailers ensure they meet data protection requirements?
• Why is risk scoring in a retail business so important to avoid GDPR fines?
• What should you look for in a reliable policy management and risk scoring tool?
• Using policy management tools in retail business: FAQs

What are policies and procedures?

In the simplest terms, a company policy is a formalised set of rules or guidelines which outline:

1. how a company must conduct its operations and business; and
2. how a company’s employees must behave, in accordance with those codes of conduct.

These may be in adherence to a legal requirement, such as GDPR and data protection laws, or to a company-owned policy, such as a work policy or IT usage.

While a policy ensures a business meets its legal requirements, it’s also a means to set clear expectations for all parties. Meaning a company can operate consistently, efficiently, and fairly.

A company procedure is how those policies are carried out in practice. They’re often a detailed step-by-step instruction to inform standards, and embed behaviours across a company. And critically, include a process of reporting a break in policy.

How can UK retailers ensure they meet data protection requirements?

The UK has some of the most stringent data protection requirements. All businesses and organisations must comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 or face significant fines.

For retailers, this means treating all data lawfully.

1. Understand the legislations in-depth, and keep up to date with amends to the regulations, such as opt-in policy revisions.
2. Identify your business’ role, for example, whether you’re a data processor, a data manager, or a data handler, or any combination of these.
3. Maintain a clear privacy policy to communicate your conduct with all parties – be it employee, customer, partner or other stakeholder.
4. Collect, store, and manage data securely, ensuring you implement all necessary measures, such as Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
5. Manage all third-party partners and suppliers, building data protection clauses into your contracts. This is particularly critical if you work with businesses outside of the UK.
6. Establish full regulatory training for all employees, educating teams on collective and individual responsibilities, policies and procedures.
7. Invest in a strong policy management and risk scoring tool – more on this below.

Why is risk scoring in a retail business so important to avoid GDPR fines?

While the current statistics are vague, it’s thought that some 40% or more of UK retail businesses may have violated GDPR, and as of 2025, the total sum of fines is estimated at around €5.88 billion. Given today’s competitive market and instability, a GDPR violation – and subsequent fine and reputational damage – could have drastic impact on your bottom line.

Internally, this means sophisticated scenario planning to help mitigate breaches, applying safeguards proportionate to the data set, and reducing the chances of a serious breach.

Externally, a risk scoring tool demonstrates a company’s commitment to compliance to its customers and employees, and to regulatory bodies like the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). In the event of an investigation, being able to present a risk assessment framework could lower the likelihood of ICO fines.

What should you look for in a reliable policy management and risk scoring tool?

When it comes to selecting the right tool for your retail business, there are a number of factors to consider before investing. Fundamentally, it must be an efficient, effective, and easy-to-use software.

Here are five things to look for in a policy management and risk scoring tool.

1.Central team management

A reliable system will enable teams to manage policies and procedures, risk and impact assessments, incident reporting and more all on a single platform to avoid silos.

2. Scalability

Due to the nature of the retail ecosystem, businesses can see a vastly increased data footprint over time, so a scalable tool is required to integrate with the likes of customer-facing systems, third-party suppliers, CRMs and more to provide ease of use.

3. Accessibility

Policy management tools need to be accessible to a wide variety of user types to accommodate the different levels of seniorities and capabilities; it should also offer a simplified means to track compliance.

4. Ongoing service and support

GDPR and data protection regulations can be complex and changeable, so for UK retail businesses, having reliable regional support to help navigate the regulatory landscape.

5. Clear dashboards and interfaces

Strong dashboard reports enable you to access what training employees have completed and the policies they’ve attested to, and aid ICO reporting in the event of an investigation; these should be easily attainable.

Using policy management tools in retail business: FAQs

How do you manage policies?

Keeping on top of regulation and making sure that policies reflect the latest changes can be easier said than done. Agreeing and then articulating each policy is a time-consuming process that needs business-wide input to master.

A strategic approach is needed spanning problem emergence, agenda-setting, consideration and then the selection of policy options.

Once drafted and approved, corporate policies need to be accessible and easy to understand. Then once read, employee attestations must be sought to confirm business-wide understanding. In certain cases, for employees to fully understand, policies need to be available in their own languages, especially if they are not proficient in other second languages they speak. The final step is regular monitoring to ensure your company and your people are in check.

Where does policy management go wrong?

Most companies use word-processing tools to write and amend their corporate policies. Then drafts are exchanged over email, with all the version control and tracking issues that entails. Then once signed-off, policies are emailed to employees. Finally, employees attest that they have read and understood each policy – again by email.

This approach is inefficient, fragmented and most importantly, makes it very difficult to track who has attested to what and may prompt regulators to ask some serious questions about compliance processes.

How do I know if a compliance platform will actually engage employees?

Look for platforms with interactive training, gamification, and feedback tools. Employee experience should be part of the demo and trial process. When it comes to employee engagement, relevance is key. Some polices are relevant to all staff while other policies should to be targeted to employees based ondepartment role or seniority. At Skillcast, this is automated. For example, new joiners automatically recieve the right policies and attestations based on whether they are line managers/their job titles.

How can RegTech help manage policies?

Luckily, there are RegTech solutions that can help address these challenges. Policy management platforms are a proven and cost-effective means of creating, socialising and driving attestation for up-to-date corporate policies and demonstrating constant compliance with moving regulation.

Our Artificial Intelligence Digital Assistant (Aida) allows employees to simply ask a question and get an instant, contextual answer, instead of having to reread entire policies. This really boosts engagement and efficiency. In terms of ensuring policy understanding and referencing, Aida is a valuable partner.

RegTech systems can automatically notify corporate policy owners when their policies need to be updated and reviewed, while changes can be instantly cascaded to respective teams and employees. They can limit who accesses which documents, meaning that the right employees engage with the right subject matter. And they can even control the format and language too.

Perhaps, most importantly, employee completion can be analysed according to geography, department and level. That helps you target your resources to where they are needed most, boosting compliance levels and ultimately saving you time and money.

How long does it take to implement a new compliance platform?

It depends on the company size and complexity. Many platforms offer phased rollouts or pilot programmes to minimise disruption.

Want to explore our Policy Hub capabilities and integrations?

With integrated Learning Management Systems, user-friendly interfacing, dedicated service support and more, Skillcast’s proprietary Hub acts as your one-stop system for policy management and risk scoring. 

Our full compliance portal has its own built-in LMS to manage and deliver training, AI assistance, reporting capabilities and compliance tools. Together, these tools provide a complete compliance ecosystem that helps UK retailers manage policies, training, and regulatory obligations seamlessly. This complete toolkit:

• Compliance Registers
• Compliance Surveys
• Compliance Declarations
• AI Digital Assistant (Aida)
• Training 360
• SMCR Registers
• Events Management System (EMS)

If you would like to access leading insights and compliance tips, you can browse our free resources by topic to find guides, modules, compliance bites and more.

References and further reading

• The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003
• What Are ‘Controllers’ and ‘Processors’?