Monetizing Your Dark Data

Worked several projects along these lines.  Good provocative thoughts here.   More links to process using data and the means to monetizing that description of business effectively.

Untapped Economic Assets? How to Monetize Your Dark Data
Posted by Bill Schmarzo   in DSC

What if you had a corporate asset that was never used?  Your first response might be that corporate asset obviously has no value.  And you’d probably be right. However, there are costs – acquisition costs, maintenance costs, storage costs, depreciation costs, salvage costs – associated with all assets. So, to incur all of those costs and then not do anything with that asset would be fiduciary negligence at its worse. 

Welcome to the world of dark data! 

And it’s not just dark data; it’s Dracula Datain the sense that the costs and potential liabilities (associated with GDPR, Personal Identifiable Information, Fair Credit Reporting Act, etc.) slowly eat away at the organization’s balance sheet while exposing the organization to unnecessary compliance and regulatory risks.

But if you think dark data is an Information Technology (IT) problem, then that’s probably why you have a dark data problem.  Let me explain…

Data Strategy Driven by the Business Strategy

“Organizations do not need a big data strategy; they need a business strategy that incorporates big data!” – Bill Schmarzo

I love starting my customer meetings with this statement. I want to immediately challenge my customers with how they determine the value of data.  Many organizations view data as a cost to be minimized.  These organizations view their data strategy as an activity independent of supporting the organization’s business strategy.  The result: Dracula Data.

Instead of developing your data strategy as an independent activity owned by IT, contemplate how your data strategy supports your business strategy with the customer, product and operational insights uncovered in the data. Organizations need a value engineering mindset that links their data strategy to the organization’s business initiatives (see Figure 1).    ... "  (Much more at the link)