Data monetisation is not a new concept
by Anton Grutzmacher. For many companies, data has been a liability: storing it, managing it, and protecting it. But it is also a tremendous potential source of revenue.
The biggest issue for market-leading organisations that use data to give them an edge over their competitors right now is not demand, but supply. This is especially true for retailers who need a “360-degree view of customer” in order to add more member-value to their rewards programmes (ensuring retention and advocacy), and FMCG companies looking to understand consumer behaviour better (driving innovation and alignment with trends).
And the organisations that sit on extremely valuable data assets find themselves paralysed by challenges they don’t know how to overcome. Three of the most common challenges leading to Data Monetisation paralysis:
- Ensuring data security and privacy: What are the risks from a regulatory and liability perspective?
- Building a solid business case: What is the value of my data and is it worth the effort and resources required to monetize it?
- Finding a secure marketplace: How do I find buyers and transact with minimal risk?
It’s clear that answering the “Risk vs. Reward” question first is a pivotal step to curing the paralysis: There is no point going on the data monetization journey if you can’t overcome the privacy or security challenges or establish that your data has value in the market place.
How to ensure data security and privacy
Privacy-preserving data collaboration platforms are a fairly new phenomenon, but there are a few players globally that have emerged to enable Business-to-Business data sharing without the risks of compromising data security or breaching data privacy regulations.
By providing a platform that enables independent cryptography (i.e., not designed or operated by the data seller or data buyer) these independent platform providers can enable a “Safe Zone” or “Virtual Switzerland” for data sellers and buyers to share customer data insights without ever sharing PII (Personal Identifiable Information) or Intellectual Property. This is done by de-identifying their customers’ personal information and then sharing only matchable tokens (personal information that has been transformed into an anonymous, irreversible match keys) with the other party. This means both parties can onboard anonymised but matchable data without privacy or breach risk concerns.
If the technical explanation was somewhat confusing, the simpler explanation is this: privacy-preserving data collaboration platforms that provide independent cryptography enable data sellers and data buyers to share data insights without ever sharing their customers’ personal information, so PII-privacy is maintained at all times – thereby adhering to all privacy regulations.
How to build a solid business case AND find a secure marketplace for your data
Let’s look at the OLD way of data collaboration first: you manage to engage a potential buyer for your customer data. But then both parties have to go through the hugely complex compliance and IT security process, before even trying to negotiate commercials, exacerbated by the fact that the potential buyer had no means of ascertaining exactly how much value your data could add. So not only a tough ask, but also an onerous one, resulting in a minimum lead-time of 24 months before data-collaborating parties could even start sharing data (verified by a number of our own clients). More recently – with the introduction of GDPR, POPIA or CCPA – many companies’ data collaboration initiatives have been totally thwarted after tremendous cost and resource allocation.
Let’s now look at the NEW way of data collaboration:
With the advent of Privacy-Preserving Data Collaboration platforms, a potential data buyer can access a sellers’ anonymised data in the Cloud (sans the ability to remove it) and use the Machine Learning and AI capabilities of the platform to quickly evaluate if the seller’s data would add value to the potential buyer’s use cases.
This turns data-hungry prospective buyers into a data seller’s most valuable resource by helping them to establish a rock-solid business case: a business case where all parties are clear about the value of the data and the business opportunity.
Instead of an arduous journey with one single prospect, you can use the secure data collaboration platform to enable multiple potential buyers to rapidly evaluate your data and communicate the value to you. Multiple buyers will help you establish a benchmark of perceived value.
For the sceptics who fear that buyers might try and low-ball you, you need to remember that by allowing them to prove the value of your data first, through analytics in the platform, gives you the advantage. A buyer that knows your data will create significant ROI is far less likely to not be equitable, especially when they are up against multiple buyers that also value the data.
Turn paralysis into action
SA start-up, Omnisient, has more than 50+ organisations collaborating on our privacy-preserving Data Collaboration Platform. We’ve helped businesses that have been in Data Monetisation paralysis for years move from ‘no buyers’ to ‘multiple buyers’ investigating their data value in as little as 3 months. These clients all remain in full control of their data asset and who gets access to evaluate it for commercial purposes, along with an audit trail as verification.
Once the business case is clear, we see these clients move to monetisation quickly as the data sharing eco-system is already in place. This significantly accelerates their time-to-value.
Paralysed by perceived data monetisation challenges? Make the move to overcoming them and turn your data from a liability to a revenue-generating asset. Contact me if you’d like to learn more about how you can make the move and join the hundreds of businesses already creating new sources of revenue through their first-party data.
Anton Grutzmacher is Omnisient’s Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer – a B2B Data Collaboration platform provider that enables businesses to enrich and monetise their data, rapidly, securely and cost-efficiently.