Why is my data an asset?

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A ‘data asset’ is another term we continue to hear in the media, but do we really understand what it means?

A data asset is the terminology used to explain that your data is valuable.  But why? because it can tell you things you don’t know yet (yes it can!) – Used in the right way it will provide insights into your business activity, what your customers are telling you, and what activity is happening.

In the insurance industry, the Loss Adjusting community has to continually manage peak periods where case loads rise significantly.  When we (the policy holders) see floods on the news this means many claims are generated and it’s good for business.  Conversely when there’s long periods of dry weather, business is good too.  However, having a business model that (partially) relies on the UK’s weather can have it’s down sides.  When the claims come through resourcing in call centres comes under huge pressure (like Christmas in Retail, but you don’t know when it’s going to happen..) and consequently the cost of resourcing calls & claims goes up significantly.  The impacts are both financial, and have consequences for brand value.  The problem is no one knows how many cases are going to come through or when. We can’t see into the future right?  Well, you can see more if you use your data correctly…

Loss adjusting companies hold masses of case data.  But on it’s own, it’s limited.  The insight that can be drawn from the data will relate only to the clients, cases, and customers (those entities that are included in the available data).  This is no doubt useful.  But if we took case data, customer data, client data and most importantly MetOffice data and mashed it up (forgive me!), now we have the capability to understand what’s happened, and if we get the model right, what’s going to happen!  Now we can pre-empt resourcing (yes, of course to a degree of accuracy), provide a better service, and manage costs.

In the Public Sector we see vast amounts of data from a huge array of systems and open source data sets.  We’re seeing a number of local authorities generate massive savings (£millions) from data that’s always been available.  But only now have they started to implement Information Strategies that have enabled data models to be built and show the insights that clearly show where the issues reside.

Most of the C level execs I talk to, think ‘data asset’ applies to only to retail organisations that [data] mine and upsell to their customers (which they do very well!).  Too often we miss the value our data holds because we’re not asking the right questions.

Data is an asset, and possibly the most important one we have.  I always ask execs how many times they wish they knew about this or that? but because the didn’t, they couldn’t make an informed decision…

Information | Insight | Intelligence

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