Why is data unique?

This short course looks at 3 different characteristics of data, that makes it a fantastic asset completely different from the other assets that you have in your organisation.

Data is unique

One thing to bear in mind when you think about the data you have in your organisation is how unique it is. Any time that you:

• Transact with one of your customers
• Record some new knowledge from one of your employees
• Operate a business process

This is data that is very likely only you will have access to, and that is what drives up and provides value to it – if it’s used in the right way.

Think about these implications:

Given the data you have about your customers is only available to you, what can you do with it? What do you know that your competitors don’t? What insight are your employees creating that only you know? What about your processes? Are they generating unique insights that no other firm has? 

When you know something that others don’t know, you have a competitive advantage. You can leverage these advantages to create opportunities when building a Data Strategy.

Data is valuable

Data inherently has value! Lots of organisations are trading their data or buying data and selling data to make sure that they can get the most from it. From credit reporting agencies to modern tech giants and FAANGs, organisations barter data all the time.

When we think about the value that data has, there are some basic things like the ability for us to run our business. So if I’ve captured some data that a customer has purchased something on my website, I need to fulfil that order and data is going to help me to do that. But I can also start to mine that data for insights and get a better understanding of these customers. For example, look through unstructured data in our support tickets to start to pick out when customers are frustrated or when there’s a potential problem that I could be fixing if I got ahead of the curve.

Data can be duplicated

One of the unique characteristics of data is it’s easy to duplicate! It doesn’t cost much for us to make more copies of data. And it doesn’t actually hurt us if I share my data with somebody else. I haven’t lost access to it, or at least not most of the time. So the ability for us to be able to quickly duplicate data and then share it elsewhere allows us to unlock some of the value of that asset and makes it easier to share it around compared to something physical – which you can’t duplicate. An example would be gold where you need to factor in the cost around storage, shipping and handling.

Is data the new Oil?

You might be asking yourself, is data the new oil or is data the new gold or any of these other kinds of comparisons that people make? And obviously, no, it’s not. It is an asset in its own right. And it’s there for us to leverage in the best way possible, making as much money for our organisations and for us to be able to reduce costs, reduce risk and drive up revenues.