We process your data for the purposes explained below. Further information is set out in Sections 12 and 13 for online services. These purposes and their objectives represent interests of us and potentially of third parties. You can find further information on the legal basis of our processing in Section 5.
We process your data for purposes related to communication with you, in particular in relation to responding to inquiries and the exercise of your rights (Section 11) and to enable us to contact you in case of queries. For this purpose, we use in particular communication data and master data, and registration data in relation to offers and services that you use. We keep this data to document our communication with you, for training purposes, for quality assurance and for follow-up inquiries.
This is for all purposes in relation to which you and we communicate, whether in customer service or consultation, authentication in the event of use of the website or for training and quality assurance (e.g. in the area of customer service). We further process communication data so that we can communicate with you by email and telephone, as well as messenger services, chat, social media, letter and fax. Communication with you is usually in connection with other processing purposes, e.g. so that we can provide services or respond to a request for information. Our data processing also serves to provide evidence of the communication and its content.
We process data for the purpose of establishing, managing and processing contractual relationships.
We conclude contracts of various kinds with our business and private clients, with suppliers, subcontractors or other contractual partners such as partners in projects or with parties in legal disputes. In doing so, we process in particular master data, contract data and communication data and, depending on the circumstances, also registration data of the client or the persons to whom the client procures a service.
In the context of initiating business, personal data – in particular master data, contract data and communication data – is collected from potential customers or other contractual partners (e.g. in an order form or contract) or results from a communication. We also process data in connection with the conclusion of a contract to check creditworthiness and to open the customer relationship. In some cases, this information is checked for compliance with legal requirements.
In the context of the processing of contractual relationships, we process data for the administration of the customer relationship, for the provision and collection of contractual services (which also includes the involvement of third parties, for advice and for customer care. The enforcement of legal claims arising from contracts (debt collection, legal proceedings, etc.) is also part of the processing, as is accounting, termination of contracts and public communication.
We process data for marketing purposes and relationship management, for example to send our customers and other contractual partners personalized advertising for products and services from us and from third parties (for example from advertising partners). This may happen in the form of newsletters and other regular contacts (electronically, by e-mail or by telephone), through other channels for which we have contact information from you, but also as part of marketing campaigns (for example events, contests, etc.) and may also include free services (for example invitations, vouchers, etc.). You can object to such contacts at any time (see at the end of this Section 4) or refuse or withdraw consent to be contacted for marketing purposes. With your consent, we can target our online advertising on the internet more specifically to you (see Section 12).
For example, with your consent, we will send you information and product offers from us in printed form, electronically or by telephone. For this purpose, we mainly process communication and registration data. Like most companies, we personalise communications so that we can provide you with personalised information and offers that meet your needs and interests. To do this, we combine data that we process about you with preference data and use this data as the basis for personalisation (see section 3).
Relationship management also includes addressing existing customers and their contacts, possibly personalised on the basis of behavioural and preference data. In the context of relationship management, we may also operate a customer relationship management system (“CRM”) in which we store the data on customers, suppliers and other business partners necessary for the relationship management, e.g. on contact persons, on the relationship history (e.g. on products and services purchased or supplied, interactions, etc.), interests, wishes, marketing measures (newsletters, invitations to events, etc.) and other information.
All this processing is important for us not only to promote our offers as effectively as possible, but also to make our relationships with customers more personal and positive, to focus on the most important relationships and to use our resources as efficiently as possible.
We further process your data for market research, to improve our services and operations and for product development.
We strive to continuously improve our products and services (including our website) and to be able to react quickly to changing needs. We therefore analyse, for example, how you navigate through our website or which products are used by which groups of people and how new products and services can be designed (for further details see section 12). This provides us with information on the market acceptance of existing products and services and the market potential of new products and services. To this end, we process in particular master data, behavioural data and preference data, but also communication data and information from customer surveys, polls and studies and other information, e.g. from the media, from social media, from the Internet and from other public sources. Where possible, we use pseudonymised or anonymised information for these purposes. We may also use media monitoring services or carry out media monitoring ourselves and process personal data in the process in order to carry out media work or to understand and respond to current developments and trends.
With your consent, we use non-anonymised location data to point you to interesting offers and products in the vicinity based on your position, to infer your interests from the position data (dwell time) and to tell you which products and services other contractual partners with similar interests have used.
We may also process your data for security and access control purposes.
We continuously review and improve the appropriate security of our IT and other infrastructure (e.g. buildings). Like all companies, we cannot rule out data security breaches with absolute certainty, but we do our best to reduce the risks. We therefore process data, for example, for monitoring, controls, analyses and tests of our networks and IT infrastructures, for system and error checks, for documentation purposes and as part of security copies. Access controls include, on the one hand, controlling access to electronic systems (e.g. logging into user accounts), but also physical access control (e.g. building access).
We process personal data to comply with laws, directives and recommendations from authorities and internal regulations («Compliance»).
This includes, for example, the implementation of health and safety concepts or the legally regulated fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. In certain cases, we may be obliged to make certain inquiries about customers (“Know Your Customer”) or to report to the authorities. The fulfilment of obligations to provide information or to report, e.g. in connection with supervisory and tax obligations, also requires or entails data processing, e.g. the fulfilment of archiving obligations and the prevention, detection and clarification of criminal offences and other violations. This also includes the receipt and processing of complaints and other reports, the monitoring of communications, internal investigations or the disclosure of documents to an authority if we have sufficient reason to do so or are legally obliged to do so. We may also process personal data about you in the course of external investigations, for example, by a law enforcement or regulatory agency or an appointed private body. For all these purposes, we process in particular your master data, your contract data and communication data, but possibly also behavioural data and data from the category of other data. The legal obligations may be Swiss law, but also foreign regulations to which we are subject, as well as self-regulations, industry standards, our own “corporate governance” and official instructions and requests.
We also process data for the purposes of our risk management and as part of our corporate governance, including business organization and development.
For these purposes, we process in particular master data, contract data, registration data and technical data, but also behavioural and communication data. For example, we need to monitor our debtors and creditors as part of our financial management, and we need to avoid becoming victims of crime and abuse, which may require us to analyse data for relevant patterns. We may also carry out profiling and create and process profiles for these purposes and for your and our protection against criminal or abusive activities (see also section 6). In the context of planning our resources and organising our operations, we need to evaluate and process data on the use of our services and other offers or exchange information on this with others (e.g. outsourcing partners), which may also include your data. The same applies with regard to services provided to us by third parties. As part of the development of our business, we may sell or acquire businesses, parts of businesses or companies to or from others or enter into partnerships, which may also result in the exchange and processing of data (including from you, e.g. as a customer or supplier or as a supplier representative).
We may process your data for further purposes, for example as part of our internal processes and administration.
