Privacy notice

This notice explains what information Benchmark Lab collects when you use this website or send us an enquiry, why we collect it, and the choices you have. We keep it short and plain. If anything is unclear, email index@benchmarklab.co.uk and we will help.

Who we are

Benchmark Lab is a trading name of The AI Adoption Lab Limited, a company registered in Scotland under company number SC900444, whose registered office is 5 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4AN. The AI Adoption Lab Limited is the data controller for the information described here, and is registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number ZC251110. The AI Lab is a trading name of the same company.

For any privacy question, contact index@benchmarklab.co.uk.

What this notice covers

It covers this website: the pages you read, the enquiry and free partner application forms, emails you send us, and the analytics we run if you accept them.

It does not cover taking an index. This website explains the indices and links to ways to take part, but the questionnaires, organisation profiles and reports are on a separate platform. The privacy information shown when you take part explains how information collected there is handled. It is not this page.

Our indices are primarily offered through delivery partners, including The AI Lab, our own delivery partner, and the AI Adoption Index can also be taken direct with us, without an invitation. Read the privacy information provided when you take part.

When you take part on our own platform, at hub.benchmarklab.co.uk, whether a partner invited you or you came direct, that information is our participant privacy notice.

For the current ways to take part, see For your organisation. Benchmark Lab and The AI Lab are trading names of the same company.

If you send us an enquiry

The forms ask for your name and work email address so we can reply. The homepage enquiry form also requires a message; the full enquiry form makes the message and other details optional. Depending on the form, you can provide your last name, how many members or clients your enquiry is about, and the subject of your enquiry. A free partner application requires every field: your full name, work email, your organisation’s name, and how many and what kind of members or clients you would invite. If you apply for the free partner tier, the form also needs your organisation, which we use to decide whether to approve the application and, if we do, to name you on our indices. Apart from that, we use what you give us to respond to your enquiry or application and to discuss what you asked, and for nothing else.

The form sends your enquiry by email to the team that runs The AI Lab, and the reply comes from index@benchmarklab.co.uk. It is not stored anywhere else on this website. If the form cannot send your enquiry, what you entered is written to this website’s technical logs so that it is not lost, and the page tells you so and gives you an address to write to instead.

To blunt automated abuse, the form counts how many submissions come from one internet address in a minute. That count is held in memory for a minute at a time and is not stored or kept.

Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us.

If you email us

If you email us at index@benchmarklab.co.uk, we keep your message and our reply so we can deal with what you asked and have a record of it. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us.

Analytics

With your consent, we use Google Analytics to understand, in aggregate, how this website is used and which pages people visit. Nothing is sent to Google unless you accept. Until you choose, and if you decline, this website does not load Google’s analytics tag at all, so no request goes to Google and no analytics cookie is set. If you accept in the cookie banner shown on your first visit, Google Analytics sets first-party cookies (for example _ga) to measure visits. If your browser does not run JavaScript, the banner does not appear and no analytics runs at all.

We do not use Google Analytics for advertising: Google signals and ad personalisation are turned off, and IP addresses are anonymised. Our lawful basis is your consent, which you can withdraw at any time from the “Cookie settings” button at the foot of every page. It reopens the cookie banner, tells you which choice you are on, and lets you change it. If you withdraw it, we stop analytics straight away and delete the analytics cookies from your browser.

Cookies

We do not set advertising cookies. On this website:

• Analytics cookies from Google Analytics are set only if you accept them in the cookie banner. Until then, and if you decline, Google’s tag is not loaded and nothing is sent to Google.
• Your cookie choice is kept in your browser’s local storage, so that we do not ask you again on every page. This is strictly necessary to remember your choice.

You can change your analytics choice at any time from the “Cookie settings” button at the foot of every page, or by clearing this site’s data in your browser, which brings the banner back.

Who we share it with

We use a small number of trusted providers to run this website and to reply to you. They process data on our behalf, under contract, and only as needed:

• Microsoft Azure hosts this website and the small service that handles the enquiry form.
• Azure Communication Services delivers enquiries from this website to our inbox.
• Microsoft 365 holds our email, which is where your enquiry arrives and where our reply is written.
• Google Analytics provides aggregate measurement of how this website is used, when you consent.

Nobody else receives anything. We do not sell your information, we do not share it with partners, and we do not use it for advertising.

Where your information is held

This website and the service that handles the enquiry form run in Microsoft’s West Europe region, in the Netherlands. UK law recognises the European Economic Area as protecting personal data adequately, so no further safeguard is needed for them. The mailbox your enquiry arrives in is in Microsoft 365 in the United Kingdom.

Azure Communication Services, which carries your enquiry from the form to our inbox, holds email data in the United Kingdom.

Google may process analytics data outside the UK, including in the United States. Google relies on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses with the UK Addendum to them, and on its certification under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework.

How long we keep it

Enquiries and emails are kept for as long as we need them to respond to you and for a reasonable follow-up period, and then deleted. If an enquiry becomes an agreement, the correspondence is kept with the record of that agreement, for as long as we need it for the relationship and for the accounting and legal periods that follow it.

An enquiry the form could not send is written to this website’s technical logs. We connect no log store to this website and do not keep or search those logs ourselves; what the hosting platform holds in order to run the service is Microsoft’s, on its own periods, and is not something we read.

Analytics data: 14 months. If you accept analytics, Google Analytics keeps the measurement data it collects for 14 months, and then deletes it. The reports built from it are figures about visits rather than about you.

You can ask us to delete any of it sooner at any time.

Your rights

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, to have it corrected or deleted, and to ask us to restrict how we use it while a concern is looked into.

Where we rely on your consent, which is analytics on this website, you can withdraw it at any time and we stop using your information for that from then on. Withdrawing it costs you nothing and changes nothing else.

Where we rely on our legitimate interests, which is responding to your enquiry, application or email, you have the right to object. We stop unless we have a compelling reason not to that overrides your rights, which we would explain.

To exercise any of these, email index@benchmarklab.co.uk. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk). Our ICO registration number is ZC251110.

Changes

If we change how we use your information, we will update this page and the date above.