General terms and conditions of service

1. Service provider and purpose

Data I Know, SASU (simplified joint-stock company with a sole shareholder) with share capital of €2,000, RCS Le Mans 948 777 354, 21 rue Jean-François La Pérouse, 72000 Le Mans, France (the “service provider”), carries out assignments in consultancy, data analysis, implementation of management steering tools and decision preparation for its business clients (the “client”).

Sections 1 to 13 concern only business-to-business relationships; section 14 applies to candidates offering their skill. They do not apply to goods trading transactions, which have their own terms.

2. Proposal, order and duration

Each assignment is the subject of a written proposal describing the question addressed, the planned work, the deliverable, the timeframe, the price and the payment terms. The proposal is valid for 30 days.

The assignment is ordered by written acceptance of the proposal (signature or email), together with payment of the deposit if one is provided for. The timeframe runs from receipt of the data and documents requested from the client in order to begin and, if provided for, from payment of the deposit.

Any change of scope during the assignment is the subject of a written amendment, with its own price and timeframe.

3. Prices

Prices are fixed fees expressed exclusive of tax, in euros, unless otherwise stated. VAT is added at the applicable rate where due.

Travel and accommodation expenses, purchases of paid documents or databases, certified translations and bank charges relating to payment are re-invoiced at actual cost, on presentation of supporting documents, after the client’s agreement.

For a client established outside France, prices are exclusive of any taxes, duties and withholding taxes of the client’s country: the invoiced amount must be received in full by the service provider.

4. Invoicing and payment

Unless otherwise provided in special conditions, the assignment is invoiced as follows: the deposit provided for upon order, the balance upon handover of the deliverable. Monthly follow-up is invoiced at the beginning of each month.

For a client established in a country that is not among the high-income countries according to the World Bank classification, a 50% deposit is required upon order, and invoicing is in euros or in United States dollars.

Invoices are payable by bank transfer within 30 days of their date. No discount is granted for early payment.

Any late payment automatically gives rise, without prior reminder, to late-payment penalties at the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its most recent refinancing operation plus 10 percentage points, as well as a fixed compensation for recovery costs of €40 (Articles L441-10 and D441-5 of the French Commercial Code, code de commerce). In the event of late payment, the service provider may suspend the assignment after a reminder that has remained without effect for 8 days.

5. Each party’s commitments

The service provider carries out the assignment with care and in accordance with professional standards (règles de l’art). Its commitment relates to the means employed, not to an economic result: decisions taken on the basis of its analyses belong to the client.

Each figure in the deliverable states its source and its assumptions. Where data provided by the client is also estimated by the service provider, both are presented side by side and any significant discrepancy is flagged.

The client provides accurate and complete data in good time, appoints a contact person and gives access to the relevant people. A delay or inaccurate data attributable to the client postpones the timeframe accordingly and may change the conclusions.

The assignment is followed from start to finish by a dedicated expert, who draws on the service provider’s team and, where necessary, on qualified partners bound by the same confidentiality obligations.

6. What the service provider does not do

The service provider does not carry out any regulated activity. In particular, it does not provide: legal or tax advice, chartered accountancy (expertise comptable) or statutory audit of accounts (certification des comptes), banking, financial or insurance intermediation, investment advice, debt collection on behalf of third parties, customs representation, or intermediation in real estate transactions or in sales of businesses (fonds de commerce).

Where the assignment touches on these areas, the service provider prepares the figures and refers the client to the authorised professional (lawyer, chartered accountant, bank, customs broker, estate agent), who remains solely responsible for their opinion.

7. Deliverables and intellectual property

After full payment, the client may freely use the deliverables handed over (reports, tables, quantified models, dashboards) for its own needs, including modifying them and communicating them to its advisers, funders and partners.

The service provider remains the owner of its methods, its know-how and its analysis tools, which are not transferred. It may reuse the know-how acquired, without any data or information specific to the client.

8. Confidentiality

The information and data transmitted by the client are confidential. The service provider uses them only for the assignment and does not disclose them to anyone without written consent, except where required by law. This obligation lasts for 5 years after the end of the assignment.

At the end of the assignment, the client’s data are returned or deleted at the client’s request, and no later than 90 days after handover of the deliverable, unless otherwise agreed in writing for follow-up. Until then we keep the assignment file: the files received, the validated answers, the assumptions adopted, the column mappings and the documents delivered. At the end, everything is deleted, copies included, and the client’s data appear in no backup. Only documents that a legal obligation requires to be kept (invoices, accepted proposal) are retained.

The service provider may cite the client’s name as a reference only with the client’s written consent.

9. Use of artificial intelligence

The service provider’s analyses are carried out with its own tools, without any external artificial intelligence service.

By default, no client data is transmitted to an artificial intelligence service. Such a transmission takes place only with the client’s prior written consent, for a specific use. In that case:

• only professional offerings from providers that contractually undertake not to use the data to train their models are used;
• the data transmitted are limited to what is necessary, and anonymised where possible;
• the client is informed of the provider used and of the country where the data are processed;
• any output produced with the help of such a tool is checked by the team before being handed over.

10. Personal data

Where the assignment leads the service provider to process personal data on behalf of the client (customer, employee or supplier files), the service provider acts as a processor within the meaning of Article 28 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It processes such data only on the client’s instructions and for the assignment, ensures their security and confidentiality, engages a sub-processor only with the client’s agreement, assists the client in responding to requests from data subjects, and deletes or returns the data at the end of the assignment. A data processing agreement is signed together with the proposal where the assignment so requires.

The client remains the data controller and warrants that it is entitled to communicate such data to the service provider.

11. Liability

The service provider may be held liable only in the event of proven fault. Its liability is limited to direct damage and, for all causes combined, to the amount excluding tax paid by the client for the assignment concerned. The service provider is not liable for the consequences of inaccurate or incomplete data provided by the client, nor for decisions taken by the client.

12. Cancellation, postponement and force majeure

The client may cancel an ordered assignment in writing. The work already carried out is then invoiced pro rata, and the deposit is retained to the extent of that work. A postponement requested less than 5 working days before an on-site intervention entails the re-invoicing of travel expenses already incurred.

Neither party is liable for a failure caused by an event of force majeure within the meaning of Article 1218 of the French Civil Code (code civil). If the impediment lasts more than 30 days, either party may terminate the assignment in writing, the work carried out remaining payable.

13. Governing law and disputes

These terms and each assignment are governed by French law. The French version prevails. In the event of a dispute, the parties first seek an amicable solution for 30 days. Failing this, the dispute is brought before the Tribunal des activités économiques (economic activities court) of Le Mans or, at the end of the experiment that established it, before the Tribunal de commerce (commercial court) of Le Mans.

14. Candidates: offering your skill

This section applies to people who offer their skill through the “Offer my skill” form. Sections 1 to 13 do not apply to them.

The service

By sending the form, you ask Data I Know to offer you introductions to organisations (companies, institutions, public bodies) looking for your skill. A dedicated expert describes each need to you, and your profile is only introduced to an organisation with your consent, asked for each time. The contract is made directly between you and the organisation; Data I Know is not a party to it and does not guarantee that an introduction will take place.

The service is entirely free for you: no payment is ever requested from you, directly or indirectly (Article L. 5321-3 of the French Labour Code). No profile is set aside on any ground of discrimination prohibited by law (Article L. 5321-2 of the French Labour Code).

Regulated professions: practising certain professions, healthcare in particular, requires in each country a recognised diploma or an authorisation to practise issued by the competent authority, then, depending on the profession, registration with the professional Order. Data I Know grants neither authorisations nor diploma equivalence; before introducing you for such a profession, we ask you where your application stands.

Your data

Controller: Data I Know (details in Article 1), contact@dataiknow.com.

Data: first name, last name, email, occupation, country, region if you give it, and your optional message. Later, only if an introduction comes up, we ask you in the course of our exchange for your availability, your CV and, for a regulated profession, the status of your authorisation to practise. Fields not marked “optional” are needed: without them we cannot offer you an introduction. We never ask for your social security number (Article R. 5323-9 of the French Labour Code), nor for a photo, date of birth, nationality, origin, religion, opinions or health data; if you give any by mistake, we delete it.

Purpose and legal basis: offering you introductions to organisations looking for your skill, at your request. The processing is based on the performance of the service you request by sending the form (Article 6(1)(b) GDPR). Each introduction to an organisation only takes place with your express consent.

Recipients: Data I Know. An organisation only receives your profile if you have agreed to be introduced to it; if it is located outside the European Union, we tell you before asking for that consent. OVH SAS, host of the site and email, acts as technical processor, in France. When Data I Know’s internal tracking tool is in service, an encrypted copy is placed on the hosting, collected by that tool (hosted in the European Union) and then deleted. Your data is never sold or shared.

Retention: 2 years after our last exchange, then deletion, and in any case no more than 6 years after it was recorded (Article R. 5323-11 of the French Labour Code).

Your rights: you may access, correct or delete your data, restrict or object to its use, ask for portability, and ask us at any time to stop offering you introductions, by writing to contact@dataiknow.com. We reply within one month. You may also lodge a complaint with the French data protection authority, the CNIL (cnil.fr).