Treating Information as an Asset
The emergence of achief data officer(CDO) in many organizations and across industries indicates a growing recognition of information as a strategic business asset – one distinguished from the technology through which it flows. By 2020, Gartner predicts that 10 percent of organizations will have a highly profitable business unit specifically for productizing and commercializing theirinformation assets.
According toDouglas Laney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, to achieve directmonetization of datarequires supplementing your existing business model. This implies creating a team with a specific job of defining, developing and productizing the market for the information asset, similar to the product development life cycle established for managing and marketing traditional products.
Infonomics, the theory, study, and discipline of asserting economic significance to information can provide a framework to apply both economic and asset management principles and practices to the valuation, handling and deployment of information assets. CDOs are well poised to lead these new initiatives.
In most organizations CDOs will participate in, if not lead, data monetization efforts as a way to demonstrate their own value. This leadership can play a pivotal role in their growing influence. Gartner estimates that by 2020, 50% of leading organizations will have a CDO with similar levels of strategy influence and authority as their CIO. To gain authority, CDOs can verify that their organization owns and controls its data and that it has probable future economic benefits.
Because this role and its functions are new in most organizations, the majority of these data leaders are learning on the job. Their first task is to create an information strategy that both mitigates risks and improves business outcomes (or balances “defense versus offense” as some say). The most difficult issue for many CDOs is creating relevant metrics that tie the activities of information management to key business drivers.
