Data has become essential for businesses. According to a study by IDC, 40% of companies are expected to create new lines of business around data.. The incipient adoption of Big Data, however, has not yet led companies to make the most of their data. Although there are currently a multitude of tools to do so, it is a complex process that must bring together huge amounts of information from different sources. Monetizing data represents a great business opportunity and a further step in the digital transformation.
Types of data and where to obtain them
As we mentioned, data can come from very different sources, but this does not detract from their usefulness and, much less, their profitability. These are the sources from which to extract the most data:
- Social networks: The analytics of the social channels in which the company has a presence will give us a useful idea of what our potential customer is like and how the one who has already converted behaves.
- IoT: Network-connected devices capture a large amount of data that we can reuse.
- Open data: Many institutions have decided to share their data and allow its free use.
- Internal data: These may be stored on the company's own servers, e.g. in the ERP and CRM of the company.
5 opportunities when monetizing data
To achieve data monetization, it is necessary to distinguish between data that we will use and data that will not contribute anything, as well as to identify clearly exposed patterns. It will be necessary to unify them in a single system, since, as we have seen, they come from different sources.
- Savings in maintenance costs: Operational information allows us to better manage resources and eliminate cost overruns. Being able to access data in real time allows us to foresee incidents and act accordingly, in order to avoid the economic losses that this may entail. Data also gives us an overview of our resources and what we are spending them on, which helps us to make better forecasts and optimize these resources.
- Improve the way products and services are sold: The Marketing, Commercial and Sales departments will be responsible for taking advantage of the data collected and its analysis, creating personalized offers or redirecting strategies or campaigns towards a more segmented and clear audience.
- Change and improve the customer experience: We can to know the customer's behavior through Big Data more in depth, in order to offer you more personalized content and more in line with your expectations. This applies both to those who are not yet customers and those who already are, as the data allows us to identify behavioral patterns in both.
- Make changes in the business: Data analysis allows us to have a competitive advantage and anticipate market needs. With it, we can propose new ways of doing business or change existing ones to make them more profitable.
- Obtain a more strategic vision of the business: Data helps make decisions that will influence the future of the organization.
Beyond monetizing the data, it helps make the organization stronger, because in the process we not only learn more about the customer and the product, but about the entire operation of the company.