How Companies are Using Data to Drive Value

Many are referring to data as the new oil, an untapped resource with the potential to change the world. Companies across multiple sectors are taking note, and as a result, data use is on the rise. Through data, companies are making measurable and positive impacts on business strategy, revenue generation methods, and overall operations. In this article, we’ll showcase a few ways that companies are utilizing data.

New Marketing Methods

By far, marketing is becoming one of the most profitable means for data. In fact, most companies are rebuilding their marketing strategies with a central emphasis on data analytics; this type of data usage takes on numerous forms. The first is through customer interaction personalization. By accessing a combination of demographic information (gender, age, geographical location, etc.), companies can develop new insights about customer preferences and cater their marketing efforts around them. A report conducted by Salesforce found that 52 percent of customers are extremely or somewhat likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize their communications with them.

Another great example of this is channel analysis, with new and improved data analytics tracking systems, companies can closely monitor their marketing efforts. Social media based A/B testing has become a popular method for this reason. Companies can track what platforms are yielding the best traction and which ones are falling behind.

Buying and Selling Data

Another way to use data is to exchange it, in fact;  buying and selling data are the only true means of data monetization. There are numerous factors driving data exchange, among them are data creation and data ecosystems. Companies are going digital, it’s hard to find an organization who doesn’t have a website, and it’s even harder to find a company that isn’t utilizing a technological system of sorts. Whether advanced or simplistic, these companies are creating data that can be mined, refined, and made actionable. It’s estimated that roughly 90% of the digital data ever created in the world has been generated in just the past two years, and only 1% of that data has been analyzed.

This brings us to the second driver of exchange, decentralized data ecosystems; new-age blockchain companies like DACONOMY are leading this movement. DACONOMY is the world’s first decentralized ecosystem for the exchange and monetization of multi-protocol data. The company aims to increase participation within the data economy by enabling individuals, companies, and organizations of all sizes to monetize their data. They do this by taking loads of data from sellers, regardless of the data’s state, and making it tradeable. After the data is made tradeable, DACONOMY helps match the seller’s data with buyers. Companies like DACONOMY enable organizations and individuals to buy and sell data. They also offer services to help companies make their current data, or newly purchased data, more actionable.

Optimizing Operations

Companies are using data and analytics to optimize their internal operations. A great example of this can be seen in hospitals, clinics, and healthcare providers, these entities can easily lose track of the services they’ve rendered. Each procedure has a description and an assigned code, both of which may include errors. Using analytics, these organizations can identify patterns associated with the codes and procedures so that patient invoices can be flagged for potential errors or missing charges. Intelligent data use also helps those same organizations improve the ROI of collections. Specifically, they can identify the right person to contact, the channel that is most likely to elicit a response, and the time of contact that is most likely to yield a positive result.

Industries tend to move along a path until some astronomical force makes them change course. Today, data is that new force.  According to SocialGoneViral, worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics are likely to grow from $150.8 billion (2017) to $210 billion by 2020; that’s a compound annual growth rate of 11.9%. Data growth is inevitable, and with new methods being created and refined, so is data monetization.