by Angela Guess
Rob Karel, a keynote speaker at next week’s EDW conference, recently shared his thoughts on the monetary value of data: “trying to place a monetary value on data and information itself is a red herring, an effort that I highly recommend all avoid – unless you enjoy philosophical exercises that don’t translate to actual business value. (Apologies to those that fit in this camp — have fun!)”
Karel continues, “The ‘data is an asset’ rhetoric doesn’t translate to putting a monetary value on a customer record, as an example, because data in and of itself has no value! The only value data/information has to offer — and the reason I do still consider it an ‘asset’ at all — is in the context of the business processes, decisions, customer experiences, and competitive differentiators it can enable.”
Karel writes that data value should lie in the consuming process: “My process data management approach recommends that all data management, data governance, data quality, and MDM efforts be put into context of the most critical business processes that consume and depend upon trusted data. The alternative is attempting to boil the ocean and trying to solve Customer, Product, or Financial data for all processes and decisions across the whole organization — too big of an effort, destined to fail before it starts.
photo credit: DeeganMarie
