Make the most of your data

Data, data, everywhere.

Strangely enough most organizations, while discussing how valuable data is for them, don’t deal with their data an asset.

While every organization keeps careful track of the performance and health of their employees, financial assets, customers, building, plants or machinery, data is still not managed and accounted for with the same rigour as more traditional assets.

With the emergence of new business innovations and new forms of competition, catalysed by advances in digitization, analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet of things or robotics - the capability to manage data as a corporate asset is now critical, allowing to yield the full potential of these new technologies to enable the competitive edge, that makes the difference in an increasingly competitive business environment.

By definition, assets are the resources owned by an organization that will provide financial benefits in the future.

Organizations have apprehended the importance of data in their businesses and are looking deeper into data to gain a competitive advantage, implementing machine learning and artificial intelligence to achieve new business objectives and to move ahead of competitors in the industry.

How can an organization thrive in this context without the capability to generate value and monetize its data, without being able to measure its performance?

What if the value being generated by data doesn’t cover the costs of collecting, storing, and securing it?

A data asset is every piece of data that organizations use to generate revenues, they are currently among its the most valuable assets, and organizations must invest seriously on managing these assets.

Managing an organization’s data assets improves their decisions, their customers experience and loyalty, it impacts offer and innovation, impacts operation efficiency, it impacts processes, minimizing inefficiencies and reducing costs, it impacts risk and compliance, and may generate new revenue streams.

Organizations that manage their data as a true corporate asset rely on their data assets to develop new products, improve current products, and create better ways of providing value to their customers, employees, and stakeholders.

On the other hand, it can also to cut costs on infrastructure, storage or software licences being spent on underperforming data - Data that doesn’t generate business value.

Investing in data capabilities and technology without clearly defined business purpose and objectives, is a step towards failure. Data’s purpose is to create business value, so any data strategy must be oriented towards the organization's strategic priorities and key business objectives.

Only when data is managed as a proper business asset, managed from capture and production through its consumption and utilization, can its true potential to generate business value be activated.