tips to get the most out of your data

This phrase is often used in vendor presentations, conferences, and advertising. Data can be an asset for some companies.

High-tech companies such as Google, for example, are built around the value of their data. Google started by analysing data from the internet. Google’s search engine is at the core of data collection. It could provide data gathering in adjacent fields and analysis using that data. Each acquisition Google makes contributes to the personal information they gather to serve their markets. Their advertising dominance is powered by data.

Google, Amazon and Microsoft are valued at $5 trillion. This is roughly equivalent to the Netherlands’ value. What keeps these high-tech businesses growing?

Data. They have data.

• Information about consumer purchases
• They create devices.
• They offer services such as cloud and gaming.

Each of these data contributes to a company’s overall value.

Your company also has data, which can be as valuable to you business as Google’s. These are the steps you can take to get the most out of your company’s data.

1. Analyze the market to find your data

Before you can place your data on the market, you must first determine whether you have an asset others may want and whether the asset is available for sale. Let’s look at each of these separately.

Are you able to sell assets that other people will buy?

Your information may not be as valuable as you think. If you have a tractor business and collect IOT data from these tractors, it is possible that you believe your dealers will pay for information that can predict when parts will fail. Dealers might think this information is unnecessary because it helps them better service your product.

Let’s take a look at other data assets. Let’s say you have been collecting information over years about URLs that belong to suspicious actors. This information could be useful to security app providers, security officers or the government. Are you able to answer this question?

This calculator will help you get an idea of what personal data is worth. This calculator has been created by the Financial Times. It helps you understand the value of the information you have. This calculator is an important step in understanding data’s value.

Market research is a must for product managers. This will help you determine which market segments your data appeals and what price they are willing to pay. Once you have this information, it is possible to begin “packaging” your data product for sale.

Are you allowed to’sell’ data that you own?

Marketers often think of buying data when they think about customer lists and their email addresses. This data was collected in accordance with regulations such as the California Consumer Protection Act or the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union.

You will need to have a legal basis before you can process personal data of your customers. The most common legal basis is consent, or opt-in. Consent means that personal data may only be used to fulfill the purpose they were collected.

You must inform your customer if you intend to use the data for any other purpose. If you intend to sell your customer data, it is important that you have informed your customers about this when they consented to you marketing to them. You will need to amend your privacy statement.

A privacy statement usually outlines your intentions regarding how you will use data. If the privacy statement is not available and you wish to sell customer data you must inform the customers. They must be given the option to opt out. This could have a negative impact on the data you retain and the ability to use it, and therefore your data revenue.

Deeper: Data compliance is more important than consent management

2. Check the quality of your product

Let’s look at the steps every product owner should take to ensure high quality products. They must first assess the data that they have determined is suitable for sale. Data has certain qualities that must be maintained regularly. These qualities should include:

• Accuracy – How accurate is the data field? Are the data fields valid?
• Completeness How many fields in your data collection actually have data?
• Coverage – Does the data set that you sell adequately cover the market segment and use case required by the buyer?
• Consistency – How consistent is your data formatted? Are dates and street addresses represented in the same format?
• Duplication – How many records in your database are duplicates? Buyers do not like paying twice for the exact same record.
• Timelines: Is the data set that you are selling comprised of new data or old data? What are you interested in selling?
• Detail – How detailed is your data set? This is particularly important if you’re selling unstructured data, such as web transactions. Most buyers will require that images are properly and consistently tagged when selling them.

A quality report on the data that was purchased is a requirement for most buyers. Now you have a data set that is of sufficient quality to attract a buyer. What next?

Get deeper: Why clean information is crucial to organizational success

3. Create a strategy to maximize your ROI

There are many questions that may need to answered when you create a strategy for selling your data. These are just a few.

• Is the data available for purchase on a per-use basis?
  • This means that the buyer has exclusive access to the data for a specific event, but cannot or again.
• Do you intend to make the data available as a service or product?
  • The buyer would be able to access the data as required, but the whole data set would remain with you, possibly in a dedicated cloud for this purpose.
• Is it possible to transfer data sets from one company to its partners or resellers.
• What format will the data be available in? Is it possible to transfer the data via FTP?

It is important to ask yourself why you are considering selling your data. Do you want to generate additional revenue for your business? To foster stronger relationships with your partners To start a new company within the company. It is important to be clear about your goal for selling data.

Next, you need to determine why your customer would purchase your data. You may need to conduct primary research with your intended buyers in order to find out if they are willing to buy the data and what they want to do with it. This helps you gain clarity.

Next, evaluate your expected revenue and the cost to package, market, and monitor data sales. Organizations often forget that this is a highly specialized task and cannot be managed by the same data team as their day-to-day operations. Selling company data requires support from all levels of the organization.

Doug Laney’s book, “Infonomics”, will provide you with a solid background on the various considerations involved in turning data into an asset.

Get deeper: How to increase marketing ROI using clean data

4. As a product developer, you need to develop organizational support.

You have now established an ROI for your venture. A structure and marketing program will be required to sell data. You will need budget, people, and executive support to make this structure work. Executive support is the most crucial of these requirements.

The team responsible for data management and quality assurance also receives organizational support. As quality metrics are visible both internally and externally, the outcome of their work is put in the spotlight. Managers and subject-matter experts need to understand the implications of this new perspective on their work.

Executive management will request accountability on a scale if the organization doesn’t have a governance capability. This brings us to the last step.

5. Establish governance

No matter if your company has established a governance council or data policies, or just ensured that your data team is well managed and managed, selling your data puts a new emphasis upon accountability. This often requires a formal structure.

Data governance refers to a collection of policies, roles and metrics that allows for efficient and effective use of information. John Ladley’s book, “Data Governance” will help you understand how to set up and maintain a governance program.

Data can have other uses than being sold on the open market. Data can also be valuable in other ways. American Airlines used their Advantage data value to obtain two loans from the government as part of the CARES Act at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each loan was valued at $4.5B. At the time, American Airlines said that third-party evaluators had appraised their data at between $19.5B and $31.5B.

MarTech first published the post 5 Tips to Extract True Value from Your Data.