GDPR compliance services covers four quite different things sold under one phrase: document packs, an audit or gap analysis, an outsourced data protection officer, and an EU or UK representative. Only one of those is ever a legal requirement, two are sometimes worth buying, and one is usually a repackaging of work a small company can do in a week.
The four things being sold
A document pack is templates for the notice, the register, the request procedure and the processing agreement. A gap analysis is somebody reading your processing against the regulation and producing a list. An outsourced data protection officer is a named person and an ongoing retainer. And an EU or UK representative is a contact point in the region for organizations without an establishment there, which is a specific obligation in specific circumstances rather than a service you buy for reassurance.
What a small company can do itself
The register, the notice and the request procedure, in that order, which is most of the work. They are each a writing task grounded in a list of your own tools, and nobody outside your business can produce that list faster than you can. Buying a document pack to fill in without doing the tool inventory produces documents that describe a generic company, which is exactly the failure mode a pack is bought to avoid.
When buying is genuinely right
When you process special category data at scale, when you make automated decisions with legal effects, when you are answering an enterprise customer's security review and need somebody to stand behind the answers, or when an authority has already asked you something. A representative is right when you have no establishment in the region and the regulation requires one. An outsourced officer is right when the regulation requires a DPO, which most small companies do not meet.
Questions to ask before you sign
What exactly do I own at the end: documents, a register, a list of findings. Who does the tool inventory, you or us. What happens when a request arrives next month: is that included. Will you produce the record of processing activities or edit ours. And what is the ongoing cost after the first engagement. A provider who cannot answer the first and the last plainly is selling reassurance rather than work.
Questions people ask about GDPR compliance services
Do we need a data protection officer?
Only where the regulation requires one: public authorities, and organizations whose core activities involve large scale regular monitoring or large scale special category data. Most small companies do not, and should still name a contact in the notice.
Do we need an EU representative?
Where you are caught by the regulation and have no establishment in the region, yes, subject to the exemptions for occasional low risk processing. It is a named contact point, not a compliance service.
Is certification worth it?
There is no general certificate of compliance. Approved certification schemes exist in specific areas; a badge from a vendor is a marketing claim you would have to evidence yourself.