Last week I attended an informative Gartner Briefing titled “Innovating with Information and Analytics.” Presented by Gartner VP Distinguished Analyst (and my former high school classmate) Doug Laney, this presentation covered a wide gamut of ways to innovate your company using your data, your database, and many real-world examples of companies viewing their data assets differently to create new revenue streams to improve their bottom line and customer relationships.

Much of the presentation was on how companies are monetizing their databases. Gartners’ findings are that only 50% of companies are trying to monetize their databases today.  Laney discussed the direct and indirect benefits of trying to monetize data.

Talking to clients, I often think of many of the direct impacts from trying to generate revenue from your database ( ie. sell, trade or barter with data; receive more favorable terms & conditions; license data; offer data/analysis/subscriptions).

I was intrigued with the non-direct results from monetizeing data, which can be more intangible. Frankly, I don’t think of these as often. Some of these non-direct benefits Laney discussed included:

1. Improved efficiencies
2. Reduced risks
3. Improved partner relationships
4. You can possibly introduce branded index–more data avail for sale than teaser info for free

Coming from the marketing perspective and my past experience, I want to add a couple non-direct results from monetizing our data to his list,

1. Increased knowledge about your audience
2. Decreased list fatigue from smarter marketing
3. increased communication between departments

As departments work together to monetize data, I think that there will be multiple views of the benefits of monetizing data.  If you have attempted to monetize your database, what are other tangible or intangible benefits you have seen?

The journey continues.

C