Data helps organizations understand customers better and create new monetization opportunities. Source: Shutterstock

Data helps organizations understand customers better and create new monetization opportunities. Source: Shutterstock

Three strategies to help organizations monetize their data

ORGANIZATIONS collect data from a variety of sources — be it from their own operations, from partners in their distribution and supply chain, or from customers; but do they gain from it?

Except for a handful of organizations that have climbed the digital maturity curve quite quickly, most businesses are still assessing and auditing the data they have and making sense of how it can be stored and protected effectively.

To truly make use of the data, however, organizations need to capitalize on it and think about monetizing it.

In most use cases and scenarios, companies need to remember that they’re the custodians of the data and that exposing any data to outsiders can have significant consequences.

As a result, data protection and governance should be prioritized before implementing any data monetization strategy — but having clarity about how data can help the business makes securing data easier.

According to a recent PwC’s whitepaper Putting a value on data, business leaders looking to monetize their data can explore three strategies:

# 1 | Enhancing the existing portfolio of products and services

Organizations can use data to improve and turbocharge their own businesses. Data can provide insights about how customers react to certain products and solutions as against others.

As a result, it can help companies understand what changes need to be made in order to better align their offerings and portfolio with their customer’s needs.

Further, this data can help with new product development and the creation of new platforms to better serve customers.

# 2 | Developing products and services in adjacent markets and categories

According to PwC, this strategy taps into data to generate new insights about the customer’s needs and wants.

As a result, the organization is not only able to better utilize data to understand what other areas the business can expand to but also can create platforms to help partners along its value chain optimize their operations as a result of the company’s data assets.

Obviously, such opportunities need to be monetized, but they also provide a strategic advantage to those who’re able to build such platforms to serve the bigger ecosystem in their market.

# 3 | Developing new lines of business or new offerings

Organizations can benefit from this strategy in one of two ways. One, they could create new data products, or two, they could create new business offerings.

In the first instance, organizations must evaluate their data and understand how collaborating with partners along their value chain can help augment their data and allow for the creation of an entirely new and more powerful data product.

This new data asset could be monetized as a platform or support the creation of new offerings that are beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole.

The creation of new business offerings, which is the second instance, helps organizations by allowing them to get a finger on the pulse of their customers and determine what they will really spend their money on.