Data Valuation. Much more than a number - Anmut webinar 24 February

[RachelJudson]

@David Willans of Anmut recently sent me this invitation and I thought I should share it here (with permission).

On 24th February, 11am GMT, Anmut are running a webinar about data valuation. When we mention the term, people tend to think it’s about setting a price for monetisation. That is one benefit of doing valuation, but it’s a third order benefit at best.
 
The first and second order benefits are much more valuable and best described with two words, translation and focus.
 
Translation
 
Businesses are, in a simplified way, about choosing which assets and activities to allocate limited capital and resources to, to get the desired results. Data is just one of those assets, a powerful one because it enhances all the others by making decisions better, and can identify unseen problems and new opportunities. 
 
These allocation decisions are made using the money as a measure, a language if you will – invest £XXX in product / advertising / a new team / training, to get £XXXX in return. Data doesn’t fit with how a business allocates capital, which makes realising the value of it much harder. When you value it, ‘it’ being the different data assets in a business, data can be compared to other assets. It fits the ways the business runs naturally. The second order impact of this is culture change. Suddenly the business understands it has a sizeable portfolio of data assets (in our experience this is approx 20 - 30% of the total business value) and, because businesses manages through money, the business starts to naturally manage data. 
 
One caveat though, for the translation effect to happen, the way data's valued matters. If it’s just a simple cost-based method, or linear, internal estimates of use case value, the resulting valuation won’t be accurate and people won't believe it, because the figures will be based factors heavily influenced by internal politics and issues. 
 
Focus
 
Capital allocation is a game of constrained choices, of where to focus. When a business’ portfolio of data assets is valued, it becomes very clear where to focus investment in data to move the needle – on the most valuable data assets. Again, this puts more pressure on the valuation method, because it has to be based on the ultimate source of value truth – the stakeholders for whom the organisation creates value.  
 
If you need to translate the value of data so the rest of the business gets it, or need clearer focus on how to create more measurable value from your data, this webinar will help. 
 

Find out more here or sign up