January 26, 2018
January 26, 2018
Contributor: Heather Pemberton Levy
7 steps to uncover opportunities to monetize your data and information assets
Monetizing information today is no longer just the purview of data brokers, and it can involve a variety of methods beyond simply licensing it.
Take real estate websites for example. Users drive 90% of the activity by clicking on photos. However, most of the photos and objects in them are not tagged, leaving the sites with no way to determine visitors’ interests.
One U.S. real estate information provider solved this problem by creating and training a 1-billion-node neural network to learn what was in each photograph. This made it possible to learn which home features are viewed by whom, how often, and for how long. Shedding this light on “dark data” gave the company enhanced marketability and a new revenue stream from its information assets. Now users can search, for example, for “Pictures of wine cellars in houses in the Hamptons.”
“Traditionally, information managers have had a limited view of how they can help business leaders generate value from information, mainly focusing on operational and analytical benefits,” said Douglas Laney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, and author of the book, Infonomics.
“Business leaders increasingly see others in their own or adjacent industries monetizing their information in various ways, but don’t know how to get started doing it themselves,” he said. Additionally, in many organizations, information sharing is rare because of turf wars, information silos, or poorly managed and governed information assets.
To realize true economic benefits of information, start treating it as an actual business asset. Infonomics is the theory, study, and discipline of asserting economic significance to information. It provides a framework to apply both economic and asset management principles and practices to the valuation, handling and deployment of information assets.
Read more: Treating Information as an Asset
The following seven steps will help your organization take a structured approach to monetizing information and treating it as an asset.
Monetizing information shouldn’t be perceived as something extraordinary, or only for new age digital businesses. Rather, it should be a core competency for every organization today - one that generates significant economic value from the burgeoning array of information assets at their disposal simply by applying traditional product management methods.
This article has been updated from the original, published on January 7, 2016, to reflect new events, conditions, or research.
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Seven Steps for Monetizing Your Information Assets
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