How Data Products Change the Game

Data products are all the rage these days. At times, there are trends that are more hype than reality. The trend toward data products is not one of them. This blog will discuss what data products are, why they are suddenly so ubiquitous, and how they might change the game for your business – both as a supplier and a purchaser of data products.

While I am a huge fan of data products and what they can provide, I am not as sold on the name. A “data product” sounds like it would just be a dump of data for the purchaser to then use for some type of analysis that the purchaser must create. If that’s all there was to data products, I don’t think they’d be growing in popularity so fast. The reality is that most “data products” are actually “analytics products.” They provide analytical insights based on the underlying data that provide new value to the purchaser. They go beyond just the data.

At first glance, that distinction might sound a bit semantical, but it goes beyond semantics. While companies may be willing to buy raw data (and often do), they would rather buy packaged insights that have already been derived from the underlying data. That way, there is a much faster speed to action and value because there is no need to figure out how to derive the insights from the data. The insights are provided as part of the purchase.

I’d liken the difference between a true “data product” and an “analytics product” to be like buying raw ingredients or a completed meal. There is a place for both, but when you’re hungry you’d rather have a complete meal delivered than the raw ingredients. Hence my preference for the term “analytics product.” However, I know I will not win the naming battle, so let’s accept that today’s data products are really analytics products but that the naming convention isn’t going to change!

At the end of 2020, I wrote about how a struggle with Data literacy is a great problem to have. The explanation that the blog gave in the Data literacy context, which applies equally here in concept, was:

“Data literacy is a 2nd order problem that only manifests itself as a problem as you begin to get past some first order problems.